Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 4

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

At group level, we realised how important planning is to the production of a film. We used YouTube to post our production and trailer, as it is a suitable and reliable platform to showcase our film, along with Blogger. Other websites such as vimeo were used to gain information about other short films, and to get inspiration for our own. These websites gave us the opportunity to further our research into the genre, and to get ideas for different camera shots, as these sites enabled us to watch other peoples videos, both professional and amateur free of charge.

Social media was key for our group planning stage, as we had a group chat on Facebook messenger, which was important as I kept each group member connected and on task. This being used before our initial storyline was written, and throughout the whole planning, filming and editing stages, to bring together and brainstorm our film ideas. Once our ideas were together, we used simple software such as Microsoft word as to create a brief storyline before using Celtex to write our script. Again, social media was paramount regarding audience feedback on all drafts of our film. Once finished, a twitter account for the media production was created to advertise our film to friends so they can give us feedback, and view our film.

Other websites also came in handy during our planning and research of our film. Sites such as BBFC was useful when researching into film certifications and what certificate our film would be most ideal for our film. To find similar films, and to help with research into genre, we used the internet movie database (IMDB), and Google was used to search for these.

 

To actually produce our film, we used a Canon Legria camcorder as to film all our scenes audience feedback with ease, and fore great ease in difficult shots, especially when pulling focus which would have been harder to do in editing. A zoom recorder was also used to record sounds that we couldn’t quite get using the ordinary camcorder, making sure the sounds were much clearer. The zoom recorder was also used for our radio trailer as only sound was needed and no video recordings. Scene photos were taken using an iPhone 6, and the pictures of a good quality.

To edit the film we used a Fujitsu computer .The software available on the college computers is what we used to edit our film. Adobe premiere pro was our editing software which we used to edit our film, radio trailer and feedback. It gave us access to many effects that allowed for transfers over scenes, such as a fade in and fade out, as well as simple editing. Other useful effects include slow motion, colour correction, other types of fading and cutting, and the ability to add an opening title sequence and credit scene at the end of the film. As well as video editing, it allowed for the editing of the diegetic sound from within the scene, as well as non-diegetic sound added on-top of the scene. While we used Adobe premiere, other movie editing software such as Final Cut was readily available to us on a PC.

As well as video editing software, we also used image editing software in creation of our film poster, film logo and film title. Previously stated, majority of the pictures taken were taken using an iPhone 6 and then imported onto the computer to be placed on Blogger, or placed onto the Adobe Photoshop application. This was used to create the film poster, the film title, and production logo. All our own images were used on every image piece. Photoshop helping with any editing that we needed to do to make it more accurately like movie poster, adding any effects where needed.

Our only problem regarding the different technologies was battery life and losing work, which was easily resolved with a spare battery and backing up files.