Evaluation - Question 4.

Evaluation - Question 4.

Media Technology

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

New Media in the Evaluation stage

New Media in the Construction Stage:

New Media in the Reseach Stage

Video Camera - this was used to present question 2 of my evaluation. As the nature of our coursework is on blogger, it makes it more visually appealing and more interactive by having a variety of presentation.

The process will take slightly longer as parts may need cutting and then will need to be uploaded.

Snipping Tool

This was something I'd never really thought of using before Media Studies, but with increasing workload it makes it a lot easier; by just snipping one specific frame, it meant that I could analysis easier as I could save the shot and go back to it, without the hassle of going through the whole clip.

DSLR Camera

This was a piece of equipment that we were all familiar with in some way, so so didn't take us a long time to get to grips with all of its functions. We decided to use a camera of our own as we knew we always had it available and it gave a really good quality to our footage.

Other movements such as focus pulling were made a lot easier using or own as opposed to the ones provided.

The one issue we had throughout filiming however, was white balance; it was difficult to set especially as a lot of our scenes were different locations.

Blogger - has been used throughout the course and therefore will stay the same for the evaluation to keep it all together and make it easier for people to access the work.

Here is a video showing the difference that focus pulling can make to a piece of footage:

Blogger

Sound & Recording

Prezi

Blogger has been used for us to post our coursework and therefore reasearch on, for this year as well as last.

Knowing how blogger all worked, it made creating work a lot quicker and easier as I knew how all of it aspects worked i.e. creating links for references or inserting photos to make a more interesting and interactive post.

Images were probably the only annoyance that cropped up whilst using Blogger. This is because once you had opened the image you wanted, it wouldn't always sit where wanted and would jump. To overcome this, I would try and find a similar image of a different size or have to click 'preview' as it was sometimes different to what is actually shown.

Blogger also gave the advantage of recieving instant comments via the comment section from our teachers and peers meaning we could quickly update and improve work.

We were all new to the whole concept of

additional recording equipment alongside the camera itself.

With the help from our media technicians, we thought that using a boom mic (the microphone attached to a long pole that could be help above what we needed to record) would work well to capture the conversation, however due to lack of experience with the equipment, we weren't able to capture anything.

A lot of our scenes included further ambient sound, so when we next filmed we changed to use lapel mics - these were simple to use as they attached to the clothing meaning we would get a clear sound and could easily adjust volume when we came to edit. This time we made sure we knew how to use them properly and did a few test runs.

Prezi is a really easy programme to use; the array of layouts means that my work can be presented in an aesthetically pleasing way and a more interesting way of presentation.

The mindmap-like style means its easy for people to navigate through it. Also with being able to create separate categories, It has been easier for me to organise, as I've done with this current prezi!

PhotoShop & InDesign

Virgin Media Shorts

These editing programmes were something we hadn't used in our AS year, although studying Graphics at college, I already had a good knowledge on how to use PhotoShop and knew a few basics on InDesign.

PhotoShop was used for our poster design, and with a few design ideas in mind, it was quite an easy process. I also learnt a few things I hadn't used before such as the 'motion blur' effect, which we ended up using on our final poster design. The programme has a clear and simple layout so I found it enjoyable to create. With tools such as rulers and text effects I was able to manipulate certain aspects to fit with current conventions of film posters. For example, we were able to create a motion blur effect on our title to create the look of something moving/falling.

The selction and blur tools also gave me the opportunity to create a vignette effect which in turn set a better atmosphere for our film.

InDesign however for me was more difficult. I think this was because a lot of it was new and is more complex than PhotoShop. We still managed to create a good review with help from others so I think it turned out well.

This website allowed me to gain a lot more knowledge into short films whilst researching which benefitted us as a group, as we knew more about differerent conventions and were able to think of a solid story and plot.

The website has a vast array of films which were easy accesible with the different tags allocated to each film i.e. "thriller" and is also free meaning it was very convenient!

Editing Software

New Media in the Planning stage

We used the same software this year as we did previously in our first year. This made it a lot easier to get on with as we could get started i.e. converting and importing files, without too much help from the technicians. As we were all familiar with it, we could use more of our free time to edit.

A small problem we had was for some unknown reason, a piece of our footage had flipped upside down, which made it hard to visualise. When exported, it did turn upright though so it was fine in the end.

We wanted to incorporate text into our final short film; instead of simply using scrolling text, we were show and demonstrated on how to create an affect where text is fixed to an item, and can therefore move when the item moves to make it look more proffesional - as opposed to just planted on the screen.

We were able to use interesting transitions which worked to our advantage as we incorporated a flashback within our film. The fade to black showed the passing of time easier that any other effect would. Combined with this we were able to add a black and white filter affect to the scene. The abscence of colour demonstrated the flashback well, which was supported by our audience feedback.

Communication

Audience feedback was also obtained from social networks. One of the problems that could've risen was 'slang language' from our respondents such as: "yeah that looks cool". We had to make it clear that we needed contructive comments in order to be able to improve! However it is a quick service meaning we got very instant replies.

Whilst planning we used email, text, and social media to connect and contact various people we needed.

I used phone calls to one of our locations as sorting detail was easier to speak to one another and quick. Emails were used by most of us to be able to confirm things with people in charge of the locations we used.

Texts was another quick way of getting hold of our actors. As we knew them as friends, we managed to have relatively quick responses which was really helpful.

And between us as a group, Facebook Messenger kept us organised as we could easily arrange anything over it, aswell as send images or ideas to eachother.

Equipment- whilst planning (especially once we had a solid story and plot) we began to experiment with different types

of media equipment that we thought might be of use to us to create our film i.e. forms of sound recording and LED lights.

After trying them out and using different techniques, we were able to decide how and what we were going to use, ready in time to film.

Digital Camera & Mobile Phone

We were lucky that our mobile phones took very good quality photos. This meant that when we went location scouting , it was easy to be take a few photos without the hassle of having to set up a camera. The photos from our phones could be easily sent over email or uploaded straight to the blog (via the app) which made it quick.

The photos made our blog more interesting and better for our audience to be able to visualise where event would take place - which was also good for audience feedback.