Preliminary Task Research

What I have Learnt

When I first started this course I had already had some experience of Media Studies as I had chosen Media Studies for GCSE. I had expected that it would be harder, but at the same time very similar to what i had done the previous year.

My perceptions have changed, as I am going to have to work a lot harder this year. The reason behind this is that if you don't work hard you easily fall behind on the course.

The writing task has gone well for me because it gave me a chance to refresh my memory of the topics in hand and to gain more knowledge of different aspects of the Media Course.

The thing i haven't understood so far is the different types of camera angles and the different types of sounds like digetic and non-digetic.

The thing I have learnt from watching the Casino Royal DVD is that the sound tracks used within the film are not all whole to start with but all separately made and then mixed together to make one big sound.

The things I have appreciated about the short film of Gone Fishing is that it was very cleverly made and the camera work on the slow motion viewing when the boy is reeling in the fish is very clever as it makes the viewer watch it and enjoy the experience the boy is having.

So far the course is going fine, and I hope that I achieve everything to my highest potential so that I get the grades that i want.

Website Brief

I am going to be creating a website, www.savetheglobe.com, which is going to bring awareness to the effects and causes of Global Warming. There will also be pages on how to prevent around the home, gallery, effects etc.

What is the website going to be about?

The website is going to be based on Global Warming and the factors and effects on the world we live on. For example; switching the light off in a room when you are not in there or turning the television off at the plug instead of leaving it on standby. These adaptations to your lives will not only help the environment you live in, but also cut your energy and electricity bills down by quite a bit.

Aims?

I am going to try and produce a very helpful and useful website that will be able to be used by all ages ranging from young children to the older generation. I will hopefully do this by using colours and themes that would attract young people (children), but at the same time I will try and make the colours not too off putting for adults. Also I may add a kid’s page with games and other child related subjects like crosswords but with educational words to do with global warming. If I achieve this, it means the website will be of use for all types of people and the users can actually take in the point I am trying to get across in the website.

What an I trying to achieve by producing my website?

I hope to widen peoples knowledge on Global Warming by creating this website, www.savetheglobe.com. Hopefully I will achieve this with helpful pictures from a trip to Antarctica, that my partner will produce, to show melting of the ice caps and useful information that will shock people such as the rise in the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere causes expansion of the ocean leading to the effect of rising sea levels. This will hopefully change the way they live so they can care more for the environment and the effects it has on people all around the world. If we are successful, it will mean that the younger generation today will be able to live a more enjoyable life and be able to bring up their children into a wonderful world, hopefully free of global warming.

Global Warming Questionnaire

Name: __________________________________________

Age: ____________________

Gender: Male/Female

Please fill in the survey provided, and circle the required answers if appropriate.

What is your postcode? For example BR6

___________________

What are your religious beliefs?

________________________________________________________

How much do you earn a year?

10,000 – 20,000

30,000 – 50,000

60,000 – 100,000

100,000+

What is your current occupation?

Professional

Management

Skilled

Semi-skilled

Unskilled

Unwaged

Do you use any of Global Warming websites regularly?

How many times do you use these a day-

Yes

No

Sometimes

Never

Do you think Global Warming is an important factor?

Please circle the most appropriate answer-

Yes

No

Maybe

Not Bothered

How often do you check on your Carbon Footprint?

Please circle the most appropriate answer-

Everyday

Every Week

Every Month

Every Year

Do you turn off your electrical appliances when you’re not using them?

Please circle the appropriate answer(s)

Yes

No

Sometimes

All the Time

Hardly Ever

What would you like to see within a Global Warming website?

Please write in as much detail what you would like to see-

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

Thank-you for your time!

First Sketches

These are the first sketches of my website that I was going to base my website on. During the time of the course a lot of changes were made to the pages so therefore these are not exactly the same as the finished product.

Survey

Algorithm

Website Research

This shows the annotation of the websites that I studied to get an idea of websites within the genre of my website.

Global Warming Evaluation

In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

The website I have created called savetheglobe.com; I feel is a website that is completely different from all the others that are in my class and all the other websites which are based around global warming. You can interact with the website right from the front page, other similar websites about global warming are quite boring and are over loaded with facts, but with savetheglobe.com it makes learning about the awareness of global warming a lot more simpler and more enjoyable than reading pages and pages of facts that do not make sense to anyone apart from the people who are experts on global warming.

The front page is the main page of the website; it is a picture of the globe with each country and main oceans as hyperlinks, with the titles of the pages on them. This makes it aesthetically nice and more interactive than just clicking a rectangular box down the side of the page like the other global warming pages found on the Internet. I think this because it gets the viewer interacting straight away by having to use the hyperlinks to navigate to the other pages.

I like the fact that my website is more knowledgeable and sophisticated than the others in my class, I like how it is suitable for all ages but still has a way of being looked at as a more adult website. By this I mean that the colours, pictures, layouts etc. are easily functional and easy to understand but they still look make the website look as if it can be used by adults as well as the younger generation.

How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

The social groups of people, that my website targets are all of them. It is designed to provide for every type of person from class to their ethnicity. Age may be a key factor for the design and layout of our website www.savetheglobe.com. The layout is very easy to read and make out with which makes it easy for the young and old generations.

The structure of my website is representing the people who are also trying to stop climate change and global warming. Our website will help people understand all there is to know about global warming. This is done on the website by the interactive front page which allows you to find your way around the site by finding the hyperlink that best fits your needs that are situated on a globe, if a student wished to explore the facts about global warming, then that child could come on my website and interact and learn.

The layouts of the pages of the website are very aesthetically satisfying, this is so it can be easily read and taken in by any type of person of any age. This was one of the key points that my associate and I took into thought a few times so that we could get the correct and appropriate layout. We also had a little trouble with what colours, this was when we needed to decide which colour fonts we were going to have on the globe and what colour fonts we were going to use when creating headings. I believe that now we have the best colour possible, which is very unique and would be found on no other global warming website.

The photographs we have used are of a high resolution as they were hand taken with my associate’s camera. There is a slideshow on the gallery page, which shows pictures from an Antarctica Expedition Trip that he went on a few years ago. Luckily he had kept hold of them and this is how we have now been able to link them to our website.

The style of language that I used in the website provides for all types of people once again. It is not overly packed with long technical words that only specialists would understand, but at the same time it has still got the same information just not as hard to understand.

With a bit of luck the mixture of the pictures, layout and the text, should generate a successful website.

What Kind of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product and Why?

-What server will you use, and how will you have the site publicised?

The web server that I am going to use to publicise my website will be Apache. I have chosen this web server because it seems to be one of the most commonly used servers within the internet. Using www.netcraft.com, I compiled some research and when I searched a certain website, for example www.wikipedia.com, Apache would be the server that came more frequently than others and therefore I believe that it would be a very reliable server.

I will have the website publicised through www.google.com as they are service provider that can make my site visible and searchable. The way I would make my website visible and searchable through ‘Google’ is to go onto the site and type in the search box “how to make Google find my website” and then click onto the first link. Once that page has loaded up, I will then click on the link that reads www.google.com/addurl.html, which will then take me to the page where I will be able to make my website visible to the world.

Who Would the Audience be for Your Media Product?

The audience for my website has been identified as near enough everyone. To work this out, I made a questionnaire which I then asked people of all ages to fill in. When I got the results back, I found that people aging all the way from the age of 15 up to 65 would like a website on global warming to be created, this is because the effects and causes are not highlighted enough at the moment and I aim to change this. Along with the ages my questionnaire asked what the people would like to see within the website and based on the feedback, I have tried to fit as much of their ideas into the website to please all types of people. Some of the ideas were having limited amount of writing to make it easier to understand and a diagram of where the places in the worlds are producing a higher carbon footprint than others.

I asked 34 people from around my area for their opinions on whether global warming is an important factor at the moment and the results came back that 85% of the people I asked feel that Global Warming is an important factor. Here is the evidence of my results:

I also asked the same 34 people whether they turn off their electrical appliances when they’re not using them. From these results, I have realised that turning of your electrical appliances isn’t going to help save Global Warming because out of the 34 people 41% of them said they do and 50% say them sometimes do. Here is the evidence of the results:

Along with asking them those two questions, I also asked them to leave a little comment at the bottom of the questionnaire on what they would like to se within a Global Warming website. From the feedback we got, I have tried to add at least one of the ideas into my website. One of the ladies I asked came back with a point of letting people know what the main causes and effects of Global Warming are and from that point I have tried to put that into my website as much as possible.

How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

The way in which my website attracts the audience, is down to a few factors. These few factors are the language, font colours and the positioning of the writing. The language I have chosen to use with my website is not complicated and can be understood by all people. This is achieved by not overloading the page with a lot of writing and long winded equations and facts about how global warming started and so on.

The font colours I have chosen to use are unique to my website. This is has been done by taking a font and adding the pattern of the globe merged into it. Although this is only on the Home Page, it gives the font uniqueness. The rest of the websites fonts are dark blue as I thought that if a bright colour was used then it would seem childish and people wouldn’t be interested in it.

The way the writing is set out on the page is quite basic. I have made boxes on the pages that are consistent throughout the whole website. The boxes are not big and not small, but big enough to fit a good amount of writing into. The boxes are positioned with one box going down the side and then two boxes on top of each other inline with the box that is positioned along the side.

What Have You Learnt About the Technologies from the Process of Constructing this Product?

I have learnt a lot about the technologies from the process of constructing my website. Although iWeb is a very competent web page maker and is used by some small companies, but it is not ‘industrial strength’. I have used iWeb because teaching html is very complex, but on the other hand I have used other kinds of software such as Photoshop and PhotoImpact to create images and make final touches to photo’s that have been taken.

Looking Back at Your Preliminary Task, What Do You Feel You Have Learnt in the Progression From it to the Full Product?

From looking back at my preliminary task, I like to think I have learnt a lot about the software I have been using and the web servers that that I could have used if I wished to make my website fully functional and visible to the whole world.

The software I have used to create my website is Apples iWeb. The programme is designed to create and build websites, which is why the rest of my class and I, have used it to make our websites. The programme has many features that are easily operated however, the website had to be made from scratch and therefore we were unable to use the templates that were already set up on the software. This made it harder to use the programme as I didn’t know how to use it, but at the same time it allowed me to explore it and understand it a lot better than I would have, if I were to have used a template and all the easily functional applications.

Also, I feel I have developed my knowledge on how to create a fully functional and aesthetically pleasing website. Since the preliminary task, I have had to do research on other websites that are linked to the topic I have chosen, which allowed me to see the best ways on how to make the website nice to look at, but at the same time still manage to get the information across that I wanted. In addition to this, it made me realise how hard it is to create websites, because the software I am using is very basic and the software the professionals use is of a higher standard and is a lot more complex.