Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Working as a group, together we realised the how thorough planning posed a great importance to our media production. Websites such as YouTube and Vimeo contain a lot of content in which we was able to view several videos and specifically other short-films similar to our own intended project. Because of this we took the opportunity to study these films that have been made by professionals, other students and other filmmakers, as too assist us with our research into making our film as good as possible.

Even during the planning of our film, we would use various technologies to communicate with each other to make sure we was all on the same page when we finally came together in person. Constant communication was essential to organisation, using our mobile phones and the applications on them such as Facebook, Blogger, and Messenger. These being used at the start before our film idea had even been created, to collaborate our ideas for the beginning of our film. Once we’d brought our ideas together, we intended on using simple processing packages such as Microsoft word as to create a brief storyline to work our script off of.

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. IMDB was also another good website to research off of, as this allowed us to view similar films in our intended genre, and what synopsis of these films was compared to ours. Finding these sites was obtainable by using the Google search engine.

Hardware to create the film had to be the best as to create our film as good as possible. Using a Canon Legria camcorder as to film all our scenes with, and to film some of our audience feedback with. This technology made our filming experience very easy, allowing use to add effects to our film before the editing stage (using the pull focus to take away focus from one object to another).  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’s camera, as this was as good a quality as we required.

One of the most important pieces of hardware we used was the Fujitsu computer, as this is where we essentially put together and made our film. The software available on the college computers is what we used to edit our film. Adobe premiere was the key software application where we edited all our film, created our radio trailer, and edited our video questionnaire. Other than giving us the ability to simply piece different scenes and clips together, it gave us access to many effects that allowed for transfers over scenes, such as a fade in and fade out. 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 diagetic sound from within the scene, as well as non-diagetic 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 other 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.

Using social media again was important for gaining client feedback on all drafts of our film. Especially at the overall completion of our film in which we created a Twitter account to advertise our film to friends so they can give us feedback, and view our film. Our film was uploaded onto YouTube, and this is the primary way of viewing our film. It’s also viewable on our blog as well as the draft versions.

While the technology is greatly effective in what we wished to accomplish, there was occasionally a delay due to some issues we experienced. Battery length was a significant contributor, having to record parts across several days as we was unable to record full scenes in one day. As well as this, when proceeding to move the recording over to the computer, it appeared to be missing which resulted in having to spend more time re-creating the scene. This could’ve partly be done to human error however, in not checking if our scenes were recording or accidently deleted. This could’ve been stopped if we backed-up our work and saved it in another place.