How did you use new media technologies in the construction a

Evidence

Throughout the filming process Jade used her iPhone to take pictures of us acting and filming as well as the locations we were using. Charlotte also used a Canon Legria HFG25 to record behind the scene videos. This allowed for us to create more content – in turn allowing for us to interact more with our audience as well as practicing our filming and editing techniques. Using this camera meant that it was easily portable due to its lightweight, which was useful as we were filming at multiple locations a fair distance from one another. In addition to the Legria HFG25, we used by camera – The Nikon D3300. Due to this being a DSLR, it was much higher quality and achieved a cinematic look due to the lense having a low f. stop meaning the background was blurry in some shots, making it look more like an actual film. However, an issue which occurred was that there was no auto-focus meaning we had to do everything manually, which wasn’t too difficult as I am used to shooting manual from past experience.

Evidence

Using Premiere Pro again, allowed for us to edit the final parts of our film together – something which would have not be able to be done without the programme. During A2, we created the start of a two minute film, however this year we had to create a full 5 minute short film. This means that more editing had to have been done, however, due to our skills developing over the two years this was not too much of a challenge. As, we were using a good editing program, using different editing techniques was not too much of a task, as we could easily make the nightclub scenes of our films into fast paced editing sequences, which added to the effect of the film. Using Premiere Pro means we could add voiceovers, colour correction and cinematic crop lines, for example. We recorded a voiceover at the start of the film with a Hi Zoom Recorder, which was easy to use and easy to export onto the computer. We used this again, during the radio advert when we hear Grace talking.

Evidence

Video Questionnaire

During the construction of our film, we used a programme called Adobe Photoshop, which is a photo editing software. This software allowed for us all to create posters, which we then narrowed down into deciding which was the best one for us to use. Creating the poster was an easy task for me due to my previous knowledge of graphic design. The poster includes a photo of the main character Grace, played by Jade, fading into a dark blue background. I used the colour blue to connote mystery due to the film being suspenseful and having a twist at the end. I also used red writing, not only to stand out against the dark colours of the poster but to symbolise danger and warning as that is included in our production. The Poster is fairly straight forward in its design and content, however, that was the effect I was going for. I didn’t want the audience to know too much about the film without watching but I still wanted it to be effective and have subtle hints. I also followed the same sort of structure with the teaser poster, as it featured a black background, implying that the film has a dark theme running throughout.

ShortOfTheWeek

BBFC

Google

In order to carry out research we had to use the search engine, Google. Google allowed for me to access websites such as filmsshort.com and shortoftheweek.com and discover short films, which would give me ideas when I came to create my own film later that year. Watching these short films made me realise what I could include in my own film and helped me to develop my own ideas, leading to me making a better finished project as I know what techniques to include to improve the storyline and develop characters within such a short period of time. After researching these films we uploaded them to Blogger, allowing for our group to store all of our research all on one website.

Construction

Audience Feedback

After we had decided on a film idea and an age rating, we designed a questionnaire and asked people from a college what they thought of our film. Feedback was vital to us so that we could make the film is best it could possibly be. We decided to collect the answers in a video format. This way the results would feel much more personal to us as we can see true facial expressions and reactions to the questions. This was also a good excuse to practice filming and video editing, to refresh our minds from the year before.

Research

BBFC

Once my group had decided on a film idea we took to the BBFC website to decide an age rating for our film, which could still possibly change depending on our final finished film. As a group we decided that a 12A would suit our film idea the best, giving us a wider audience to work with rather than a 15 as we are not restricting possible viewers from watching our film.

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

Slideshare

Elliott Summerscales

Slideshare was useful when you have created a powerpoint. I used Slideshare a number of times when I was uploading powerpoints onto our Blogger page as Blogger doesn’t let you upload powerpoints directly onto their website. However, once I found out how to use Slideshare, that was no longer an issue. Slideshare made it extremely easy to upload powerpoints onto and also made it easy to link that slideshare onto our Blogger page. This helped make more research posts about our film as well as distribution companies

(http://bca2media2017group3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/possible-distributor.html) which we could potentially use to distribute our film, if it were to be popular enough.

Evaluation

Blogger

Premiere Pro

Blogger is an online blogging website. This would be beneficial for us to use as it allows for us to record and save research that we have collected. Whilst Blogger has provided us with an easy way to access our research and to organise our project, it still came with some issues. One of the main issues is the fact picture formatting does not always work. Also, uploading PowerPoints doesn’t work, we had to use a website called SlideShare to upload them onto instead. However, Blogger proved to be extremely useful as we can save research work and upload content of what we have created and share it with our group. It is a very useful website when it comes to doing group work as it is easily accessible to everyone in the group.

After we finished filming, we used Premier Pro to edit the footage all together for both the questionnaire and final film. This wasn’t too difficult to put together due to us previously using this editing programme a year before in AS. I also had editing experience in the past but not with Premiere Pro. Although, this was still useful and I had a good understanding of what to do. We used Premiere Pro during the planning stages of our films as we had to do an ‘elliptical editing’ practice video, showcasing our editing techniques as well as improving upon them. We also had to have character profiles for all of the actors used in the film, but, as a group, we decided to take it one step further by creating them via a video format. This made them feel more personal and allowed for the audience to connect to the characters in our film before it actually releases.

Powerpoint & Word

Evaluation

Powerpoint also proved to be very useful. This website was already on the college computer meaning it was free and easy to use – especially with most schools providing learning support on this programme before coming to college to study media. This technology allowed for me to create research projects and to collect and present data when uploading information about my film onto Blogger. Word also fits the same sort of category. With the majority of people knowing how to use Word already means that it was one of the first programmes we used as a group. Word helped use to write essays and collect data with no hassle – the programme rarely (if ever) crashes, meaning it is an all-round enjoyable, smooth experience.

Celtx

Prezi

During the evaluation process we used Prezi, Powerpoint, Word and Slideshare. Each one has its pros and cons but all are useful for different things, especially for evaluations due them it being hardly any fuss when uploading them onto Blogger.

Planning

Celtx is a software used to write scripts. This software allowed for us to make a clear, easily understandable script which we could use when producing our film. This helped the actors to distinguish their lines and allowed for them to revise what they have to say as we handed the scripts to the actors before we started filming.

Prezi proved to be very useful due to there being free, easy to use templates which we could use to share and present our work in different ways. Prezi is a presentation website, mostly used to present things in businesses, such as meetings, etc. However, due to you being able to press one arrow button, you can easily go through a whole lot of information very quickly. Using Prezi is a more effective way of presenting things to an audience – for example, I could easily stand up in front of my class and present my fourth evaluation question, if confidence wasn’t an issue, due to it being an easy to use website.

Canon Legria HFG25

YouTube

At the beginning of the College Year we decided to film a ‘journey’ of people walking from one location to another. We had to use different shots, angles and camera techniques. This was important for us as a group as we could practice both filming and editing before we started on our final film, which would help for us to make our film as good as possible. Using the same camera which we would use for filming our film means that we would get some practice in, and learn all of the ins and outs of how to use this specific camera. Using this camera allowed for us easily pull focus from one object to another by setting it to manual.

YouTube allowed for us, as a group, to upload our work/ projects before embedding them onto our Blogger page. The questionnaires, elliptical editing practice and character profiles were all uploaded onto YouTube before we began filming. YouTube is a very good website for video sharing and uploading content onto and proved to have no issues, except the uploading and processing time which didn’t actually take too long and you can still do other things on the computer whilst it is uploading in the background.

Premiere Pro

Blogger

YouTube