EVALUATION 4

Q4)How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Through the whole process of creating our film we used various technologies to help develop and achieve our aims in creating our final media products.

                                                    

First of all the blog itself was the first technology we were introduced to, researching into other blogs and the use of blog widgets I created a space to present my work that’s easy to access and I’ve found the style of my blogging has developed throughout my film making process. For my research and planning I found it effective at organizing and presenting what I had done and allowed me to experiment with showing my work and findings. Especially the use of videos, images and audio clips in my research, they played a big part in presenting my inspirations behind ideas and examples of techniques that made a large impact on the development of our film.

The use of comments and posting on my blog had also been a good use of gaining and showing feedback from the audience about my blogging, film and ancillary tasks. I found there were few limits as to how I could present my work on my blog and enjoyed the freedom it brings to research tasks and pitching. This is linked to my use of the internet as a technology. The internet arguably played the biggest part in research planning and construction stages, by given a wide knowledge of themes, stories, filming techniques, filming styles and helping me to show my work in various ways, such as my use of Kizoa image slideshows and Muzicon audio widgets.

Internet is a mass media that’s played a large role in my participation in all stages. The internet was also were we obtained our music from London grid, a copyright free music site ( www.lgfl.net/pages/index.aspx ) . This allowed us to explore many different types of music which was suitable for use in our film.
Our use of camera when filming ranges from the use of a canon still camera and the canon XHA1. The still cameras were a useful technology in our research stage in which we carried out our cinematography tasks. The use of camera was essential during filming, we listed a variety of different shots and angles and made sure we stuck by it. For example we performed extreme close up (ECU) in a variety of shots firstly when Kieran staggers slowly down the stairs-we zoom into the banister ledge and can clearly see his hand gripping tightly for his own safety(this was to exemplify his lack of confidence and physical barriers .

We then move on to show a low angle shot from the bottom of the stairs positioned at the base of the stair case looking upwards (we see Kieran’s whole body coming down the stairs along with his movements-we wanted to let the audience see how hard simple everyday things are for him to do).

I found I learned a lot of how to present visually with it being the focus of our silent film. Also used in the photo storyboard

.  and log while filming it gave us an idea of how our shots are planned and will look in our final product, we also chose to log our filming days to show the filming process and what we did to create your Mise en scene and sets. The Canon XHA1 was our camera used to film and we practiced with the model before our filming days. Developing on from AS with our basic use of panning and tracking movements we aimed to use the camera more creatively in our A2 production. The camera was easy to use when we experimented with using action, reaction shots and lower angles, it allowed us to take steady shots from otherwise difficult positions. We were surprised at the success of this use while filming. The images we had from both cameras were also used in the ancillary tasks at a later date, which we found very useful in creating professional posters and a review.

Adobe Premier Pro was the editing software we used and after researched into styling we wanted we found we were very limited as to what we could do. We originally wanted the use a filter or hueto replicate a black, white colouring style such as in films like Sin City however we found his wasn’t available to use and also had issues with the use of an ‘Echo’ effect in the daydream/flashback as seen in the scene where Kieran sits on the wall with his friend just before he saves the girl at the car scene.  As a result of this it affects other parts of the film, causing them to turn black which was something we unfortunately could only solve by removing the effect (we found an alternative which was a grey wash to show through the seatbelt and wall scenes). Although the use of transitions such as cross fades, dip to whites were used effectively and now at A2 level I felt far more confident in editing music into our film and using tools to change volume levels to create transitions between music. For example you’ll notice meeting visual transitions of scenes the music falls quieter and fades out smoothly and then into the next piece.

Overall technologies were a big influence on how I’ve developed and created my products, and I’ve used a wide range to create my work and present it virally. Photoshop was one of the last technologies I used to create my media products, using knowledge I gained from online tutorials I was able to use the program well and created my review and poster using screen grabs and images from both the film and photo shoots I carried out with the cast. The software allowed me to edit the colourings and sharpen the picture, which gave the poster a much more professional look, tools such as hue and saturation, focused on the black, grey and white colour washing. In addition the use of the magic wand tool enabled me to use my actor images against a clean background, creating a poster I felt gave a more movie poster style to it, as well as it fitting to conventions I found in my research. Creating my film review I also used Photoshop to crop, cut and paste images onto a clean A4 spread, the software

enables me to add the realistic factor; the aim was to use a real magazine film review to publish my own film spread-i feel i managed to this because my audience feed back said ‘it looks so realistic, the way i added pictures alongside texts and reviews’.