Q4

During the process of making my short film I had to use a lot of technical facilities. Right from the beginning to the end there is nothing that I could have done for my project that actually didn’t involve using technology, everything I did needed to be recorded in the blog online, the actual product itself was made with new video recording and photography technology, the research into making the products in the first place needed to be researched through the internet, the post production was very much reliant on Adobe programs and even this evaluation has been made using technology. It was clear that without these new technologies the entire Media Studies course would be impossible to take! Let me take you through how these new technologies have helped or hindered my coursework and how we are becoming more reliant on such technologies in the modern world.

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

Advantages:

+ Different type of media technology than presenting it on paper.+ Easily communicate with the public and my target audience .+ Keep my project safe+ Easier to show different range of media’s + Could access my work anywhere as long as I’m online+ I Could link my Blogger to my Flickr which enabled me and the public to have access to my photos.

Dis-Advantages:

+ Always had to be online to do work.+ Some planning research would have been easier to do on paper.+ Time consuming when it came to upload images, video’s and etc.

Skills Analysis

Learnt how to put links on my blog roll, making categories to organise my work,

Customized and produced my own header and layout using Photoshop.

Found out how to use direct hyperlinks on my blog to Flickr images and

useful websites.

Found out how to apply useful widgets to my blog such as calendar to

track how much work I'm doing during the week, Links, Pages, Blog stats and flickr

Learnt how to upload files (PowerPoint, music, videos) onto Blogger to be accessed via a link for download of the file.

Post-production (Construction Stage)

Keyboard: The editing software adapted short cuts

to the keyboard to use editing tools such as the slicing tool

this enabled me to edit quickly and efficiently.

Speakers: I could listen to external sound

which was important when it came to

editing background noise, adding sound effects, sound tracks

and syncing the narration with certain

scenes.

USB: I used the USB for storing the original clips and

transferring files between computers, and as a safety

measure to protect files securely.

Windows computer: Computer was running editing software which I

found easy to use.

Mouse: The mouse was important when using the software to drag and drop clips,

split clips, add effects, sounds and transitions.

Adobe Premiere elements 3.0

Video editing technologies have influenced my project in various ways, and if the technologies were not so advanced as Adobe Premiere elements 3.0 I would not have been able to create the short film in the amount of time and to the quality I did.

More complicated software like Sony Vegas +DVD Video editing would have been time consuming to learn and produce the short film. Without Adobe Premiere elements 3.0 and using software like windows movie maker my short film would have being restricted in terms of the effects, edits and transitions.

Skills Analysis

Learnt how to set up for editing and use a range editing tools on Adobe Premiere elements 3.0 .

DV Sony camera

I Recorded my short film at a good quality.

HD camera would have been better due to higher quality .

Portable and easy to use unlike the complicated cameras used in the industry today.

Tri-pod

Essential piece of equipment to produce still shots enabling it to look professional.

At times I decided not to use it to give an raw footage effect

Digital camera

I used a digital camera to take location shots, we had to use it especially while creating our ancillary tasks. I used a Samsung (cyber-shot) digital camerawhich featured a 14 megapixel CCD sensor which help us create beautiful picture quality imagesI think the pictures taken were good however I would have benefited from a professional photographers camera because I wanted the glossy/ photo-shoot pictures.

Slidesharewww.SlideShare.net

SlideShare is a website where you can sign up and upload Powerpoint presentations amd word documents onto the internet. It’s particularly useful for business corporations when promoting or pitching an idea.

Googlewww.Google.com

Google is a search engine. It’s was simple to use, you just type what you are looking for in the search bar and it will list websites/ photos/ videos that match your key words.I also used Google maps to find locations of were I was going to film outdoors and I used it to locate shops of were I could buy my props locally. It played a very important role during my research and planning process to find out needed information and search into theories and concepts. I also used it to search for images to place on a montage for my initial ideas, helping me determine a house style for my project.

Whilst presenting my evaluation I used slide share (http://www.slideshare.net/) to upload my presentations and convert them to a format that I would be able to post on the blogThe website helped me find another medium and an easier way to present diagrams and illustrations

www.wikipedia.com - This site aided me in researching production techniques, history f short films, and information on films and genre. I found it very useful, however I knew the information was not always reliable it was great for what I needed it for and enabled me to explore successful short films and posters.

www.Hotmail.co.uk

Hotmail is alike to Microsoft Outlook, the program you use to send and receive emails. It’s free to use and supplies you with quite a lot of memory space, certainly enough for over 10,000 emails in your inbox. I could contact my cast efficiently and email owners of videos on YouTube if I could have permission to use their soundtrack. With Hotmail it’s really simple to contact anyone and everyone, and I found that it was more reliable than MySpace messaging because it’s more direct. The problems I had was the limited size of documents I could send to my cast .

My smart phone was used to contact my friends with the idea and ask them if they would be my cast. I also used my phone to access other technologies in my evaluation on the move for example Facebook, Hotmail and YouTube.

I used my phone to contact costume shops to find out if they stocked the props.

The only disadvantage with my phone is that the websites were simplified versions so I was limited on what I could do.

Facebook

Facebook was a useful programme to display my work to the public.

I used Facebook in the research stage to distribute my questions.

sent them through the inbox system on the social networking site but only to people who where my target audience.

I used Facebook to promote my short film by posting links to my Facebook friends to my YouTube video, and gain feedback from my target audience. It was the easiest way of communicating with people, rather than having to organize meeting people, which is time consuming, and people would be less inclined to give me feedback. With Facebook, I could just send them a message and they could reply instantly.

www.Facebook.com

Facebook is a social network service and website launched in February 2004 it has more than 500 million active users, Users can create a personal profile, add other users as friends and exchange messages.

Flickr is a key media technology online photo and storage website which I used to store all my photos I tookI stored my photos in sets

Other stuff Posters and Magazine reviews Photoshoot Pre-filming paper work

Advantages

store my photos in a safe place and have access to it anywhere on-line. feedback from the public annotate my screen shots, CD covers and websites.

Dis-advantages

100mb limit problem : Reasonable storage for a students Professional level : would have had to pay for extra space or use photo bucket

Flickr

Reelclever is a suite of productivity and promotional tools, built for film and production industries. I used this website format the planning of my project. I will also be using it for the evaluation stage to get audience feedback.

Reelclever was good as it gave me a basic format to plan my work however I didn’t use the online storyboarding as I found it easy and more practical to draw it by hand on paper and upload it to my blog . The big advantage from use Reelclever is I could show all the stages it took to produce my final products and share it with other amateurs and professional film makers, I also used it to get audience feedback but didn’t get much as it was not there long enough.

YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos.

Easy to use with no major issues apart from the tedious waiting times to upload videos however this was due to the fact the file was large.

Videos are shown at a good quality with a range of options i.e. 360p, 480p 720p. Audio sounds were compressed without moving the sound or visual footage.

Videos can easily be embedded in Blogger, my space etc. Could have used other video sharing sites such as Vimeo, however it only

has 20mb weekly storage which is too limiting for the high quality videos.

But unlike YouTube it lacks in publicity which is key when it comes to publicising your work. also

I used YouTube to watch short films from various genres and listen to music for my soundtrack for the short film.

Aided me in seeing what conventional camera shots, angles and effects is used in dramatic short films, which I embedded this knowledge into my story-boards.

I could easily Upload short films from YouTube to my blog.

Videos had to be converted into windows media video (WMV) or quick time.

Excellent way to receive feed-back from the public, however I could not find out if they were my targeted audience.

Adobe InDesign is a software application produced by Adobe Systems. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers and books. Designers and graphics production artists are the principal users, creating and laying out periodical publications, posters, and print media. I used in design to plan the layout for my film poster and magazine review, the software allowed me to easily move text and images around.

InDesign was helpful with spell-check, find/replace, text-flow, and style sheets InDesign was user-friendly/intuitive InDesign is had the ability to recover documents if the software crashed

The dis advantages was it would be costly to buy this software if my college did not have it.

Windows Movie Maker is a video creating/editing software. I used movie maker to compose any rough cuts as the software is simple and has basic editing tools. I will

also used it to create my bloopers and for evaluation questions. 

Adobe Premiere Elements

Video editing technologies have influenced my project in various ways, and if technologies were not so advanced as Final Cut pro I would not have been able to create the music video in the amount of time and to the quality I did.

More complicated software like Sony Vegas+ DVD Video Editing would have been time consuming to learn and produce the music videos. In reality strict schedules would have to be met

Without Final Cut Pro and windows movie maker my music video would be restricted in terms of the effects, edits and transitions final cut pro provided.

Adobe Premiere Elements is a video editing software application for non-linear video editing. I used Premiere to edit the final cut of my short film I also used other editing software as I didn't have the software at home as long as there is not compatibility issues I should be fine.

without editing software I would have had to record the music video in chronological order with no mistakes.

The problems I had with the software was when it went to offline mode because it could not locate my clips I filmed. Also the software crashed numerous times I was working with a lot of memory but the AutoSaving feature kept my work safe.

Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated. I used photo shop CS3 to manipulate my images for my logo for the introduction and images for the poster and review. Adobe Photoshop was obviously a massive contribution to my final print work, if I didn’t have it I wouldn’t have been able to refine my photographs (getting rid of blemishes on the face, changing colours and backgrounds etc.), place text on the images and merge/ fade photographs together on a background. The technology encourages creativity in all aspects.. It also makes it possible for anyone to be “professional”, just like I have done in my project.

The main advantage was that I was familiar with using Photoshop due to me experimenting at home with photos. It's very easy to save your work at anytime you want and come

back to it when it needs to be changed. Unlike pen and paper you can easily undo any thing you don't

like about it. Where as you would usually have to throw the page away or tip-ex out any mistakes, making your work look pretty messy.

The finished document can look very professional when completed

There also usually tends to be a lot more control over the text arrangement and how it looks.

Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems.

I used the software to design any text I was going to use in any three of the products. The software was easy to use as I had previous experience how ever I felt I did not push it to its full capabilities which I later found out after watching some tutorials, on how to create certain fonts and styles of text.

The main advantage which I found with all the adobe products was they were all compatible with each of which meant I could easily import the text I had designed in to Photoshop or InDesign.

I was able to manipulate images using multiple effects such from the ”FILTERS” tab - the clay, title effect.

I used Photoshop to piece together the different elements that made my poster and magazine review

General advantages of technologies I used.

It is more organised Quickened the process of producing and creating our

media package Helped make the music video more authentic and classy Some software and websites were easy to use and user

friendly The filming facilities helped us capture good footage and

good quality images The technology was advanced It helped me create products that were better that could

have imagined the technology helped make impossible things possible

General disadvantages of technologies I used. Tedious Time consuming The editing software was at points difficult to use The tutorials on offer were difficult to follow The software had some limitations Most of the work I had to do had to be on a computer so

I was not always able to have access to one. Some of the technology was expensive and was always

accessible on all computers

If I had different and or better technologies at my disposal my production work may have been slightly different. Lighting was a key factor having studio lighting would have helped with the quality of my images and footage, however as I was working by myself so moving the kit would have been a huge inconvenience, and setting up the lighting properly would be difficult.

If me and all my cast had a blackberry, it would have been easier contacting them through Blackberry Chat. ( A free service from Blackberry to Blackberry users). This way my cast could have spoken to me easier and planning could have been more convenient. This interactivity and communication with my characters was still good due to Facebook, emails and calls. Another benefit of this technology is as it is at its peak in terms of popularity it would have been a good way to broadcast the poster, magazine review and a short film t the public and especially my target audience.

The quality and effects of the original footage could been of a higher quality if I used HD camera this would have reduced some of the grainy clips, Also the new camera have much more effective image stabilisation which could have reduced the shaky clips. One of the effects that I tried to achieve is having the background out of focus and the foreground image in focus . I couldn’t achieve this with the camera I was using and had to get a similar but not as effective effect by using editing software.

For editing my pictures I believe Adobe products was the best at this level producing my work and some would argue to advanced . I couldn’t think of other photo editing software products that would have been better but there are alternatives that are easier and much basic but don't produce the final professional quality product

How would my production be better if I had other technologies.

Media 2.0

Media 2.0 is the concept that by using new technologies the audience can actually interact with the media text, allowing them to have their own opinion voiced online, improving their work, thus closing the gap between “amateur” and “professional”. A good example of this is Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia of almost anything you could ever think of. The twist is that anyone is able to edit, add pictures and reference the articles. Another example is YouTube. YouTube enables ordinary people to upload their work and promote themselves to the wider population, in some cases this makes them “famous” in the YouTube world. There are many famous “YouTube's” like Shane Dawson (ShaneDawsonTV) and Ryan Higa (NigaHiga), who have each gained over 2,000,000 subscribers to their private channels each. This fame on YouTube can also lead onto being spread to different forms of media. A popular television program on channel 4 called “Rudetube” is a showcase of funny/bizarre/interesting videos from YouTube with the highest hits.

In conclusion the technology I used had advantages and dis advantages but I am happy with how they all aided me in producing the poster, magazine review and short film, to

the professional quality.