Question 4 Laura

Blog

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

When creating the blog, we used hyperlinks, prezi’s, we had Twitter feeds, and we also created something called Behind the Blog.

Hyperlinks: these meant we could explain certain terms in more detail by linking it to a specialist website. Or, we used hyperlinks linking to one of our own blog posts, so that we were not too repetitive.

Prezi’s: these have much nicer visuals, therefore making them more entertaining to read. Also, it means they can easily be split up into sections, for example, for this Prezi I have split it up in terms of the different technologies used. I also used them during construction, when I talked about the problems we had with filming, and also during planning, when I analysed the dialogue we used and it’s effects. However, there is a disadvantage to them, as they are very time-consuming.

Twitter: this meant we could do live Twitter feeds when filming etc, meaning our audience was always updated on the process of filming.

Behind the Blog: this is a very original idea, which makes the blog much more easy to navigate as it is split up into sections.

Laura Geall

Lighting: this was a really good effect to have as it meant that our film was much more realistic, as if we had to keep the unnatural lighting people would have been focusing on that, which would not have been good in the final, vital scene.

Voice Recorders

Youtube

Garageband

The Camera

Still camera

The Camera

We created an LMMJ account for this, which meant we could convert videos from the Mac onto Youtube, meaning we could access them from home. This helped with getting our audience feedback, as we cannot get Facebook at college, we had to do our Feedback posts at home.

The weakness, however, was that by converting it, the videos lost a lot of quality. This did not alter the video too much though, as people were still able to comment.

As well as allowing us to get photos along the way for our blog, it also helped us with continuity. On the first day of filming we took pictures of the locations, so that we knew exactly which props went where the next time we filmed. We also took a close-up picture of Mark’s bruise (as well as measuring it), to make sure it looked the same each time. A weakness on our part, though, was not taking pictures of the costume, which led to the continuity error of the hoodie, which resulted in us having to change the structure of our film to get around.

These vlogs also provide evidence of the extra work we did when filming. For example, our audio vlogs show how we did not just rely on natural sound for the film, but how we created our own foley effects to use. These really show behind-the-scenes of our filming, for example with the cupboard vlog where we put clingfilm and lots of flannels in the sink to make sure we were protecting the camera.

Interestingly, by doing progress round ups at the end of each filming session, we could see all of the changes we made. For example, in one vlog we are talking about doing the “microwave scene”, whereas the next day, and in the final film, it is the oven scene, showing how we changed the difficulties behind filming.

We used this for the hospital scene, when we used the audio bleed of the sound of the phone hanging up, into the sound of the heart monitor, signifying Sam’s death. In our audience feedback, our viewers thought that this was really chilling, also because of the fact that you could not see the visuals, only a static shot of the hospital, which is a location that has negative connotations. Garage band gave us the sounds in the first place, as the sound of the heart monitor from the hospital was too quiet. It also let us merge the sounds together, then on Final Cut we changed the volume so that they were the same volume, to make the transition clearer.

However, there were weaknesses to garageband, as there were some sounds which were not available, or, they were not as good. For example, the sound of an iphone ringing, so we ended up having to record this ourselves.

As the camera was at college, it meant we could use it, not only in the construction, but also in the planning for the film. So during one of our lessons, we took the camera out and planned for certain shots that we thought might be hard to do e.g in terms of framing, angles, or distance. This was good as it meant we were much more prepared for filming, yet it did not help a great deal, as during filming we were working in a different location to the one we practised in, earning not all of the practise shots helped.

I also used the camera in the evaluation stage - filming my answer to question 2. This means that by editing it on Final Cut, I can insert images so the examiner knows what part I am talking about at which point.

We used a HD Sony camera, which most of us had had experience with last year. This was good as it gave our film better quality. Also, being HD, it meant we did not have to reset the white balance after every shot, which can be very time-consuming. Yet, this is what we thought the first day of filming, however after loading our footage onto the Mac, we found that there were some shots where the lighting was unnatural. Luckily, during editing we could use the effects to change this lighting, but the next day we made sure we kept on resetting the white balance just in case. Also, in the living room where we had trouble with the orange lighting, despite resetting the white balance, it did not change, so we changed the lighting to ‘indoor’ on the menu, which toned down the colour much more.

We also used this camera to interview Kate Rogers, the nurse at the hospital we filmed at. We could have used our iphones, however, by using the camera it made us look much more professional.

These vlogs were not just for the purpose of the examiner, but also for us. For example, in our vlog where we were preparing for the second flashback, in the screen you can see Meg and Mark, as well as the camera. By filming this, we could get an outsiders perspective on what the framing looked like in the camera, and also Meg and Mark could watch it back, to check that their body language represented their characters well (for example Sam looking vulnerable, and Amy looking dominant).

The only disadvantage to the vlogs were that, as they were on our iphones, the quality was not as good as on a camera, so sometimes the sound quality or visual quality is quite poor.

However, it was much faster and easier to load footage from the iphone as this could be done at home, as opposed to having to go to the editing suite.

Final Cut

We used these vlogs to…

Reflect on filming

Interview people (including ourselves)

They show us setting up elements of mis-en-scene (such as lighting and make-up). We did quite a few lighting vlogs as this was something that we found quite difficult, especially having trouble with the light in the living room as the natural light was too orange, and the light in the kitchen as this was too white. So, this meant that we could show the audience for the vlog, the different types of lighting that we could use, for example in the hospital lighting vlog and the film poster lighting vlog, where I evaluated which lighting was best on each video.

When editing, we found that we did not like some of the natural sounds we created whilst filming, so we used the voice recorders to make our own. For example, we used a coat to replicate the sound of Amy hitting Sam with a pillow. As this is a key part in the flashback, it meant we could then turn the volume up on this sound individually to heighten it. These were good as they were portable, so it meant we could decide which sounds we wanted to create, then do the sound there, so we could load it up onto the Mac straight away. The weakness of this technology though, was that when James created the answer phone message, we wanted to give it a muffled tone to make it seem as if he was outside, as he is a football trainer. This was not easy to do without getting rid of the sound completely.

Overall, we made 49 vlogs. In our group, 3 of us had iphones, so we used these to create vlogs. These were good because…

They were portable, so it meant we could create vlogs on the spot of filming, so we could evaluate filming after doing it. This meant we would not forget about any problems we had, and it also made it much more real, for example, we did vlogs in the car, McDonalds, in the editing suite, any filming that was done outside and in the shower when we were using the hazy appearance of the screen to reinforce Sam’s isolation (though none of these shots were used in either filming or the poster, it shows how we wanted to think about lateral, creative ideas when filming). This gives our blog variety.

By having a video, it makes it much more entertaining, as it is not just a wall of text

It meant that we could divide the talking between us, as opposed to doing individual posts, showing our group work together

This is really good software, that is even used in the film industry. Even some films that have won Oscars, such as The Kid’s are Alright, used Final Cut.

There were lots of effects that we could use, for example, as previously mentioned, we could change the lighting, we used the flop effect when we got the 180 degree rule wrong, and finally, it gave us a range of different style fades that we could use for the flashbacks. In the end, we used a white fade, as our media technician said that this signifies death, and we also felt it had an ominous tone, which is the tone of our film overall. Furthermore, it also meant that we could use the glow effect, which we again had lots of choices for. I do not like this gold, as I would have preferred something that made the screen look slightly more fuzzy, to really signify that it is in his mind, however, in the end we decided to use this effect as a group.

Flop: this was a really good effect to have, as it meant we did not break the 180 degree rule. Sadly, it shows that I had not improved since last night year in terms of this aspect of Continuity Editing, as I had to use this same effect in our Preliminary Task at AS level.

Photoshop

In Design

In order to make our poster, we used Photoshop. This was really good to use, as it meant we could make it look really professional, by using similar methods that real posters in the industry used.

We could manipulate different aspects in order to represent our film. For example, by using the iphone font 'Helectiva', it represented the technological side of our film.

This was really good, as it meant we could replicate the 'house style' of Little White Lies, which was key for this Ancillary Text as we were meant to be journalists for the magazine, as opposed to ourselves.

This meant we could make the columns the right alignment, use the same font, and, finally, we could also copy the 'Little White Lies Recommends' symbol,

The weakness though, was we had never used this before, meaning we had to have a lesson learning about it.

The 'layer' tool on Photoshop is one of it's strong points, as it means we can change things without having to move everything around. For example, when we decided to change the hospital image, we could remove this, but still keep the framing of the poster the same with the new image. Yet, this is also where it's weakness lies. As we had so many different things on our poster, there were lots of different layers. This meant it got quite confusing at times. However, we could get around this by using the 'naming tool' on Photoshop, where you can label your layers, meaning you know what you are clicking on.