4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and

evaluation stages?

After we had decided on the topic of tattoos as we thought this was an interesting choice and would be quite fun to look into and film. As a group we decided on locations and where and what we could and needed to film. This involved more mind maps and research into tattoo studios where we could have permission to film and who we could film/interview with or about tattoos.

In the planning stages , to create the formal proposals we used simple pen and paper to plan and decide about our documentary. We made mind maps, proposals, a running order and so on then used blogger.com to record our progress as we went along.

All of our filming was done with one camera to film it all just shot at different examples, except for when we first interviewed Liam (above) we used two of the Sony HXR cameras so that we could view him from either side, one also being more zoomed in and focusing on the left side of his face. We Also used one of the cameras hand held and recoded Liam’s hand actions over his shoulder as he was talking about the design of his tattoo on the paper.

We decided our documentary would work best with some narration as this would help to lead it along and give it more of a focus than it would have had without one. So after choosing which voices we would use, we set up in a quiet area, attached the clip microphone and began to record. We simply had to separate the different parts of the narration and using Adobe Premiere, we were able to do so and then fit them in accordingly to various parts of our radio sequence and documentary sequence.

To document the questions for the narration and to create the questionnaire we used Microsoft Word then onto blogger.

We rang up many tattoo parlours in search of permission to film, eventually finding ‘Dark Arts’, this was a good choice as we also had a friend who’s brother owned the studio. They kindly allowed us to come in and interview and film the studio and the artists whilst they were at work.

These two shots show how we used just one Sony HXR camera but were able to still film from different angles. We used the tripod and the camera to set up the first shot which was a simple rule of thirds shot which also abided by the mise en scene.

Google images allowed us to find the images we used for the rest of our archive. We found interesting and high quality images to use for our documentary which we could easily put into premiere then using cross dissolve ease them into the next part of the documentary.

A web based feature that we used a lot was YouTube. This was the source of all of our archive footage and also where we got our music for the documentary and radio ad. To bring the music or YouTube videos off of YouTube and into premiere, we had to use Firefox and plug ins so that we could easily download the videos and then use them.

Firstly, we used the shape tool to create a black rectangle which covered the image then used layer mask and reveal all, then used the white brush tool create the gradient black to transparent. We chose to do this as it makes the person in the image stand out.

The image for the poster was taken as a still shot on the Sony HXR. We liked this image as it is simple and the writing of the documentary’s name on the

We then got the channel 4 logo and used the magic wand tool to delete the extra areas/background that we didn’t need. We then just used control and alt to resize the logo.

Then to create the title and the tag line we firstly found a font we liked and what we thought would fit in with the style of the poster and then typed up what we needed to. Next we used the rectangle shape tool in white to create the blocks behind the writing.

Overall, we were happy with the final outcome of our poster as it represented what the documentary was about and it worked as we incorporated the theme with the name of the documentary.

Adobe Premiere We used Premiere to keep and edit all of our documentary and radio advert. The footage we took we simply out into a section and then would drag certain clips into the first window and then use the tools to cut and select sections which we could then place into the timeline sequence at the bottom. The actual video footage is on the sequence at the top and the sound is parallel to this but further down the sequence in the sound part.

When editing the sound so that it fitted in and out of the various other pieces of footage in the documentary, each audio had its own level so that we could use level points to increase and decrease the sound at certain points along the audio piece. This level could be changed all the way along the piece of sound.

When using the YouTube videos for the music to out into the sequence, we would simple have to ungroup the footage and the sound then delete the footage so that we just had the sound that we needed.

The archive footage had to be a total of 30 seconds so we had to make sure we kept to this and kept check of it and also the final amount of the documentary time.

The transitions between clips were needed most of the time to keep it flowing. We mostly used cross dissolve or dip/fade to white. However at other points, like in the opening sequence/montage, we just placed the clips next to each other so they just quickly changed which was a great effect for the montage.

Fill left was used on a sound clip so that it could be made into stereo which would allow for it to be heard fully in both speakers/sides of headphones.

We learnt a lot from the using premiere, it was hard to start at first but once we got used to using it and the tools we were able to successfully create our work.