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

RESEARCH & PLANNING

When we first got the brief to create a five minute film, we had to think of a good story line to fit which would fit in titles, beginning, middle, end and credits. I used the internet to research previous short films to give us inspiration; After researching existing production I thought that the theme of peer pressure should be covered throughout our film, because I thought it would be good to publicise a common issue at the moment, I researched possible genres for our film and then our group came up with the storyline of ‘misguided’ where a stereotypical geek got the ticket to fit in with the popular people she felt like she should go along with everything that they wanted, which lead to harsh consequences.

I used websites such as https://www.google.co.uk/, http://www.filmsshort.com/, and http://www.youtube.com/, BBC films to help me do this.  Google was my main search engine for anything i needed to know or any specific searches, such as existing short films.

We used microsoft word and paint when planning our project, we created storyboards, mindmaps, floor plans etc in order to get the best idea of what our film would look like before we started researching into whether it would work well or not. we did this so we were prepared to either get going with creating the film, or so we had lots of ideas just incase it wasn't the best one, so we didn't have to start from scartch.

we used facebook and twitter to distribute our draft video, in order to get suitable responses from our potential audience, so that we could finalise our film, with the audience in mind.  we used facebook as a means of getting a wider demographic responce, rather than just showing it to people in college.

The internet has also allowed me to create a blog which has posts on all three stages (construction, planning, and research) of production on it, illustrated through a variety of media types; videos, pictures, essays, web links etc.

when we wrote up the idea, we wanted to collect some audience research to see if the film would be a hit, to do this we thought of a series of question to ask a variety of students in college,we used HD1000 cameras to video peoples responses, and I used final cut express to edit the questions and responses together to make it look presentable when I put it on Blogger, when I was putting it together I learnt how to wire frame still frames to resize images in order to make the overall video look better.

wire frame was used in order for the little box's of stills would extend to full screen in the middle, for the video clips to play,i did this for the audience research video to look more effective. 

we used celtx software to develop a script, in order to learn and follow in filming our main product.

FILMING

After we collected our audience feedback, we started filming for our project. When filming the piece we had to involve a lot of new media technologies, we filmed the piece with HD1000 cameras, using HD settings, we learnt how to make sure all HD settings were on correctly and how to make sure everything was white balanced and focused; this was something we had to re-learn from last year, 
because after our first filming session we realised that we used auto focus throughout the whole of it, which made the film bouncy and unfocused(http://www.videomaker.com/article/7710/- http://www.friendsofhdvideo.com/hdv-tips/sony-hdr-fx7-hdr-fx7e-tutorial/) due to this we had to work around a situation which meant that we had to re-film the piece and also had to re-cast it; we went back to film it and made sure that all the settings were correct this time and we filmed to the best of our ability; putting in extra shots that we thought of just in case they would look good when in process of editing. We also used, laptops and zoom recorders in making our film. Due to our film involving a party we had to record the music separately to the dialogue to make sure that the voices were loud enough to hear over the music; this was something we had to make fit when we came to editing it. 

We used the zoom recorders in order to record the two voiceover within it, the first being the conversation between Alice and Fiona, and the second being Fiona’s thoughts of being asked to the party which plays over her journey in the car; we had a few problems using the zoom recorder where we had to record Robyn’s voice(play’s Fiona) a few times before it was correct, because of her mouth being too close to the microphone that it made bumping noises and also her voice being too quite; we eventually had to double up the recording.

EDITING

Here we used compisite
mode and turned up the
brightness in order for it
to look better without
making it look out of place

I learnt a lot when doing the editing part of the construction because I ended up taking a lead role in doing it, using final cut express has helped me with my creativity with both visual and audio effects; we have incorporated elements such as flashbacks to identify the rape scene, we filmed short clips of what happened, and edited them together with quick cuts and put in flashes between them for effect, voice collaborations,cross fades between both audio and video were also used, in order to smooth out the film, so it was easy to follow, making it easier to watch, and also learnt how to place visuals in sync with the beat of the music in the background to make it look much more effective. 

this is the colour correction as the
colour of this shot was originally
too blue and needed some oranges to
make the light much more natural.

Also how to change colour and brightness(some of the filming was really dark, therefore we had to brighten it up when we came to editing it).

EVALUATION & ANCILLARY TEXT

When we came to uploading a draft version of our film to get some audience feedback, the band width of YouTube through college wasn’t big enough therefore I had to upload it from home with took up a considerable amount of time and held us back in getting feedback to improve; however overall I feel that media technologies have definitely helped my creativity in all stages of making our film. We used youtube and facebook in order to get a wider respoce from our target audience.


we had to make a radio trailer and a poster to advertise our film, i have developed my skills from graphic design in using the software photoshop when i went on to develop ideas for our film poster, the limitations of photoshop elements though interrupted my creativity as it didn't have all the features i knew how to use. I developed versions of our poster, by playing around with some features such as feathering, bluring and sharpening; i didn't know how i wanted my poster to look like, so i developed ideas whilst creating it. after, we had a photoshoot, using an SLR digital camera; in order to help us make our poster as good as it can be; when we found the picture we wanted i created a further one on basic editing software, and robyn then created our final poster on the newest version of photoshop.


we had the choice of using garage band or final cut to edit our radio trailer together, we though that using final cut would give us an advantage of making it as good as it can, because we knew how to use it properly, and how to create effective pieces of work. we used sound bridges and fades, and overlapped effective music over the top of a voiceover and sound clips from our film, therefore we combined the two softwares in making our radio trailer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qccgpr6eajQ - Radio Trailer

In conclusion i believe that media technologies have allowed me to be creative and to make things look professional and to link the ancillary texts easily and efficiantly