How did you use new technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
In this evaluation I will be going into detail about what technologies I used during the construction, research and planning stages of my A2 Media portfolio. I will evaluate every stage with advantages and disadvantages to the technologies in association with the creation of my media project.
Research and planning
Technologies used in the research and planning stage of our media include;
The Internet
YouTube
In the first stages of our A2 Media portfolio YouTube was used to find and watch other short movie products ranging from low/no budget home made shorts to high budget shorts created by Pixar and Disney this was mainly for inspiration and to see for ourselves the conventions of a Short film. This was a big advantage in the research and planning as we could embed videos we had found to give examples in our work and evaluate them. YouTube was also helpful in watching tutorials about how to use the new Cannon DSLR 600D cameras for different qualities of film; my team and I researched a few of these tutorials in preparation for filming our product to familarise ourselves more with the camera and techniques.
The Drawbacks although of YouTube is having to sift through hundreds of videos trying to find the right one that would be helpful to us particularly and consequently a lot of time was spent on YouTube trying to find the right videos. YouTube is still a helpful place to get visual tutorials and is still a new ever expanding site, that wasn't a given advantage years ago.
The Drawbacks although of YouTube is having to sift through hundreds of videos trying to find the right one that would be helpful to us particularly and consequently a lot of time was spent on YouTube trying to find the right videos. YouTube is still a helpful place to get visual tutorials and is still a new ever expanding site, that wasn't a given advantage years ago.
Google was used extensively as a search engine for all our queries, ideas and needs; Google not only supports our programme blogger (which we blog with ) but brings up lots of results for a variety of information we may or may not need to know. Google was used to find movies, magazine reviews and film posters with similarities to our ideas this was so we could deconstruct, study and implement certain aspects of these existing products or theories into our own short film products.Google was used in the research and planning mostly as we were meant to plan out everything before constructing but for our ancillary tasks further research was needed.
Just like with YouTube the drawback of Google is finding what you're looking for. Because what we were looking for was very specific it took us sometime to find movie products that matched and had posters and a magazine review for us to deconstruct and study as well. This therefore took up a healthy part of everyone's time and energy and it was definitely not easy finding movies that resembled ours.IMDB
Imdb was also used for finding a movie similar in genre and plot, a lot of hours were loged trying to find one similar to ours in a way this was good because it meant that our movie idea was unique but for comparison, guidance and deconstructions it was not helpful, but after hours of searching we did eventually find a couple similar to ours.
Scribd
Scribd was used to upload our script, storyboard and other documents that we needed to put on to blogger, this was advantageous as it was the best way to put hand dawn documents or signed documents online and they were of eligible quality unlike a picture of the documents would be. Once the documents were converted to PDF format it was easy to upload the file to scribd and then embed the document from scribd to Blogger aswell.
Blogger
Blogger is the main technology we used through out the whole of our A2 Media Portfolio uploading our research, plans, construction process, evidence, evaluations and products, blogger is a perfect place to upload and show case our work for our peers and teacher to see and evaluate.
Construction Stage
Firstly we had to create our short film, this required a lot of different technologies through out the process, the first stage we required technologies such as;
A camera;- Canon 600D DSLR
Exterior sound Recording kit.
A camera;- Canon 600D DSLR
This camera was new to us this year, for our AS year we had learnt to use a different camera a Sony MX 2000D, so handling this new camera was foreign for the first few times. We created a short documentary first about litter to help get used to the camera and having to do more than one thing on it like our old cameras this broadened our minds and gave us access to different styles of filming. This camera also came with changeable lenses for different depths of field which allowed us to be able to do focus pulls and other cool things which we couldn't on our old cameras this was advantageous to us as our Media product for this year was a 5 minute long movie instead of a 2 minute one, this time allowed for a variety of shots.
The biggest advantage would have to be the size and weight of it last year filming shots took a lot of energy alone with just holding the camera and carrying it around as it was not light and as easily portable, this year the smaller, lighter and enhanced camera allowed us to film for hours on end without arm ache or such shakey shots from exertion. The light weight of the camera also allowed us to tilt is sideways, trap it round around neck and place it on surfaces the bigger camera would not have fit on to get the shot we wanted.
The drawback of using this camera is the focus is very sensitive and can be off easily and is easily missed on the small display screen at the back of the camera, an external monitor wasn't able to be hooked up to it either so the focus of some shots we had filmed were off marginally and were only spotted when put on a mac screen. This mean times was then spent refilming shots instead of pushing forward, but after sometime and use with the camera focusing became easier slightly.
Exterior sound Recording kit.
The sound recording kit was used in the filming stage and after it for filler Foley sounds.This was the same technology that we used last year so we were familiar with this piece of equipment.This was especially advantageous as the new camera didn't have a high quality mic to pic up the actors clearly like our old cameras used to. background sounds such as a door closing or footsteps giving background life to the film without the hassle of having to find generated sounds on the computer to fill small sounds that aren't usually picked up.
The advantage to using this piece of technology would be that it is lightweight and portable and only has to be manned by one crew member, another advantage would be that once the sound is recorded it is easily connected to the imac and the sound files are then exported off the recording kit. This is a big step in technology to be able to record clearly and with ease actors or background sounds AND be able to walk around with the technology. An annoyance about the recorder is that when you go to export the files off of it, it's time consuming as the kit is a shared device and therefore contains other peoples recordings which you have to go through in order to find your own.
The advantage to using this piece of technology would be that it is lightweight and portable and only has to be manned by one crew member, another advantage would be that once the sound is recorded it is easily connected to the imac and the sound files are then exported off the recording kit. This is a big step in technology to be able to record clearly and with ease actors or background sounds AND be able to walk around with the technology. An annoyance about the recorder is that when you go to export the files off of it, it's time consuming as the kit is a shared device and therefore contains other peoples recordings which you have to go through in order to find your own.
Post-Production Phase
Final Cut Pro X;-
Once the filming of our product was finished we had to then edit it using a software technology called Final Cut Pro X this is new to what we used last year this version allows you to edit the sound as well as the movie in the same place, we used this to our advantage as we were slightly behind on our work flow but by being able to edit sound and the clips in the same place it brought us up to speed quickly.
Final Cut Pro X is a neater more technical software to last years, it includes new features like effects, sound editing, a more sophisticated filing arrangement and colour grading. This is all helpful in making a high spec movie but the draw back is the time it would take learning how to use all these new features, time we did not have the pleasure to do. We did however use the special effects on our product to resemble a flash back, this would contrast nicely with the 'present' scenes in which they would stand out in high quality.
Free SFX:
Free SFX and Audio network offer a range of soundtracks and sounds a lot of which were styled well to match the Thriller genre, we used this last year in AS for our 2 minute movie opening and it has been handy this year for our short movie.
An advantage of this website would have to be that it's free of charge to download soundtracks and foley effects, the sounds are not copyrighted either so the use of them is completely allowed without consequence. This website saved us a lot of time with Foley effect sounds and creating a soundtrack, if this website was not about it would have meant we would have had to create these from scratch which is valuable time lost.
A drawback of these free sounds would be that the quality of some of them isn't up to par with the tracks you'd buy off other sites, but these are the prices you pay when using free audio sites. If you do include some poor quality soundtracks in your work though it could affect the overall grade of your work so you have to be careful when picking tracks to include in your film.
Film Poster
A white back drop isn't specifically a new technology but it was a new technique we used to photograph our actors for our movie poster, this was something new we hadn't used before but it helped get the perfect crisp shots without loud backgrounds that we wanted.
An advantage of the white back drop was that when the pictures were put into Photoshop the background was all one colour making it easier to remove the background from what we wanted to keep. Another advantage of the backdrop is that it looks more professional and nothing else if catching the viewers eye if we wanted to keep the white background in.
The drawback of such a white background would be that if the lighting isn't right it casts shadows on the back and the dark patches are harder to edit out in Photoshop, it also detracts from the professional feel as the shadows contrast exceedingly.
3 Key lights
The key lights were used to light our actors up correctly so they weren't shadowed unless we wanted them to be. We did however want our actors to be shadowed contrastingly so we used the lights to cast shadows across their faces while keeping the backdrop still shadow free.
An advantage to these lights is that we could manipulate the light on our actors faces for the perfect effect we were looking for and eliminate unwanted shadows. These lights are perfect for lighting up big sets too and if we were filming a different genre these lights would have been useful to us. The only draw back with these lights however is that they are heavy and not easy to transport, they blind your actors and they become very hot after little use and therefore can't be left on too long and can't be left unattended.
Technologies used to communicate
Mobiles
Our most used mode of contact was mobile phones, all of my group had one and therefore it was easy to call or send texts to get in touch with each other this was an advantage when we didn't see each other over the weekend or in school and needed to arrange filming days or editing days with each other.
The only drawback to this method is not all of us are on contracts so one or two members wouldn't be able to contact the group as they would have not credit.
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when one or more members of our group didn't have credit to text or call, email was our second mode of contact between each other, this was also a good way to transfer documents to one another that we all needed to have a copy of. An advantage to this is that it's a free way to contact each other easily and transfer work and it saves print outs of documents that could be easily lost.
The drawback however is not every one checks their email regularly so instant contact and response isn't always achieved.