How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Research Stage:
In the research stage we mainly used the internet to create an understanding of short, independent thrillers within our group. I generally used Google to research into genre, short films, radio trailers, credits, posters and everything else we needed to know to help us in the production process. In particular, I looked at Prezis and SlideShares that previous people had made on the same subject which was very helpful as all the information I needed was in one place, whereas when I did go on other websites, such as Wikipedia, I could be looking through a lot of unnecessary information before I actually get to the part that I need to know. However, since other people had made these Prezis and Slideshares, some of the information may have not been 100% accurate and so I had double check that the information did seem accurate. Google, however, was extremely useful as it provided a large range of information and there was information on every area that I had to research and so when it came to the production process, there were very few unanswered questions we had on what we needed to do, and when there were, we were able to get the answers quickly. For example, when we changed our film slightly and added voice-overs (diary entries) into our film, we had to research how this should be done and found that it should be quite loud so that the audience feels as though its being spoke directly to them. This was really quick and easy for us to research and so Google was very beneficial for us. Therefore Google was very beneficial in our research stage, allowing us to create the story line idea that we now have.Some disadvantages I found of using Google was that sometimes it went really slow which can be quite frustrating when you want to find out a fact really quickly. Another disadvantage was that some websites on Google are made by anyone and so it is hard to know how reliable the information actually is.
I also used Google to get onto the BBFC website which allowed me to research into age ratings of films and what is appropriate for each age rating. This allowed us to come up with an appropriate age rating for our film.
I also uploaded some of my research and documents onto Google Docs which gave us easy access as it was all in one place. Therefore it was easy for us to find important documents quickly. We used this as blogger wasn't always easy to upload certain formats, for example when we had too many pictures, sometimes blogger could be difficult to lay it out. Also, when pictures are added to blogger, it can make the text go central and sometimes it doesn't let you change it back. For example, I uploaded my title sequence analysis onto Google Docs (with there being a lot of pictures) and the shot list as we are unable to copy and paste, or create tables, tables onto Blogger. However, one disadvantage of Google Docs was that I was unable to embed videos in it, so for my title sequence analysis I wasn't able to have the video with the text and so had to put it on a blog post, with the link for the analysis.
We also used a Canon LEGRIA HF G25 camera during research to do some tests shots and see how we can use these techniques in our film, and what techniques would be best to use in our film. Another reason we did this was to practice our filming and editing techniques for basic continuity. For editing we used a programme called "Adobe Premier Pro CC" which allowed us to research into editing techniques and give us hands on practise before we started editing our actual film. The camera was extremely good for us to do this as it was small and light, and therefore easy for us to carry it around the college (up and down stairs) to film. It was also a simple camera which wasn't too difficult for us to use, therefore it was the perfect camera for us, inexperienced filmmakers, to use for practise. Premier Pro was also good for us as although it does appear quite complex, it was in fact easy for us to use due to its simplicity and layers for putting shots and audio together for practising our continuity skills.
After we had completed a full continuity edit, we decided to practise our elliptical editing skills, again using Premier Pro. This allowed us to practise editing techniques, that we were sure to use when filming our actual film, and become even more familiar with the programme we would use to edit our film. Therefore, a valuable part of our research.
We uploaded these videos onto YouTube as it gave us easy viewing access which in turn allowed us to look back at these videos to see what we did and what we needed to improve on.
We uploaded all of our research onto Blogger which was very useful as it meant that all of our research was in one place and so it was easy to access. Also, it meant that all of our group was able to access all the information and each others research. However, as I previously mentioned, there were format issues on Blogger which sometimes made it quite difficult and frustrating to use.
I often used Prezi to put my research onto which I then embedded it onto blogger. Prezi was extremely useful as it was a change of format and made our blog look more interesting went embedded onto it. It was also easy to use and read from. However, one problem of Prezi is that it is an American website and therefore spell check wanted to change my spelling to American English which was quite frustrating as I kept thinking I had misspelled words, such as "emphasise".
In the research stage, we created various questionnaires, using various digital technology, to find out if our story line made sense and was good enough to create an effective thriller film. Firstly, we creates a written questionnaire on Microsoft Word which was really simple to use. However, putting some symbols on was sometimes a little bit difficult and the layout often did not go how we wanted. We also used the Canon LEGRIA HF G25 camera to create a video questionnaire which we edited on Adobe Premier Pro CC. Again, both the camera and Premier Pro were easy to use, allowing us to put together our video questionnaire quickly and easily. We also used Google Forms to create an online pre-production questionnaire. This was particularly useful as we were able to create an unlimited amount of questions with different forms of answers (check boxes, multiple choice, short paragraph and long paragraph) allowing use to get a wide range of feedback between qualitative and quantitative data. We were also able to see individual response as well as an overall view of all the responses which were put into different types of graphs for us. This meant that we did not have to create the graphs ourselves. However for the written and video questionnaires, we had to use Microsoft Excel to create each graph. This was easy to use, however it did take quite a while to do and so Google Forms was a lot more beneficial for us. Also, due to it being online we were able to share it on our social media accounts easily. However one problem of Google Forms for our questionnaires that sometimes the graphs created were not suitable for the question, such as when we asked what occupation. There were often just one bar with one response for student as it was spelt wrong or had a part time job with it.
We made various social media accounts to keep our audience updated on the research stage of our film. This also allowed us to get feedback from the very start as we were able to share questionnaires, and story line ideas onto this. However, one disadvantage of this was that we did not have a large following and so did not reach many people at this stage.
Planning Stage:
During this stage we used Microsoft Word to create our shot list. We found this extremely useful for this purpose as we were able to keep going back to it and updating it when we created changes on our film. However, when we deleted shots it meant we had to go back and change every single number of ever shot, whereas if we had used Microsoft Excel we may have not had this problem.
We also used Celtx to create our script. This meant that our script look professional, in a simple layout and easy to understand and read. Therefore our actors and actresses wouldn't have any problems reading it. There were no problems for us when using Celtx.
We also used our phones to take photos of the locations and characters. For example, I used an iPhone 6s to take some of the location photos. This was good as we basically had a portable camera that was easy to carry around and so it was easy for us to take the photos. However, one problem of this was that when I uploaded some of them onto the computer, they went blurry and so some of the photos on our blog were not to the best of quality and so we had to retake the photos.
At this stage, we again used Blogger a lot which meant that all of our planning was in one place, again allowing all members in our group to have easy access to everything. However, there was still the problem that it was hard to put photos onto it and have a tidy and appealing looking format.
Construction Stage:
One of the main digital technologies we used for this stage was the camera Canon LEGRIA HF G25. This was extremely beneficial for us as it was easy to travel with it to the filming locations, especially the grave yard, as it was small and very light. Another positive of this was that it has LED screen which allowed us to play back our filming. This was especially important for when filming our film as if a shot went wrong it would mean reshooting it which could sometimes be frustrating. This camera also had a large memory and so we were able to film a large amount of shots without worrying about running out of memory. However, the LED screen was quite small and so it was hard to get the full effect of the shot and to have a good view of it to see if it went well. This meant that when we did get to editing, some shots such as the graveyard (walking under the arc) shot still needed reshooting and so we had to re-film again. Also, the battery life of the camera was limited and so when we went to film a large amount, sometimes the camera would die on us. For example, when we filmed some scenes at Chloe's house and the graveyard on the same day. This meant that we had to carry around a back-up battery to ensure filming could be continued and would not be disrupted.
Another one of the main digital technologies we used during construction was Adobe Premier Pro CC. We used this to edit our film together and most of the time it was extremely beneficial to us. This is because a lot of the editing on there was quite simple and although it seemed quite complex at first, it was quick to learn the most used features. However, some shots were slightly more difficult to edit together due to the complicity of the programme in some areas. For example, when editing a mask on Amy (walking past the toilets). This was quite difficult as this is not a common technique to do and so it took a while to figure out what effects we should put on it and how to actually do it. With this said, we were able to edit our film in a professional way with us being able to change colours in some shots (e.g. on Amy in the graveyard scene), add effects on some shots (such as the echo effect on Chloe in graveyard scene) and have multiple layers of sound which allowed us to have a voice over for out diary entry. However, there were some complicity with sound as there were different things we could change and it was hard to know which did what but overall, Premier Pro was extremely useful.
We also used a Zoom H1 Recorder to record our voice overs for our diary entries and the radio trailer. This was really good as it allowed us to record a voice with no muffled sounds.
At this stage, we also used YouTube to upload our rough cuts and radio trailers to. This was good as we were able to get more feedback from a much larger audience as well as allowing easy access to view our film and see what we needed to improve on. However, one disadvantage of YouTube was when we were uploading our film and radio trailer, it often took a while to upload which could be a little annoying to wait.
We did in fact receive a comment on our YouTube page.
We also used Photoshop to create our poster. This was really good as there was a wide range of tools to use. For example, we were able to change the colour of the original photo we used. However, Photoshop was extremely complicated to use as there were such a wide variety of tools and we were unsure what a lot of them did.
We also used social media at this stage to share teasers and keep our audience engaged in our film. This was beneficial to use as we were also able to share our questionnaires onto it, as well as sharing teasers and poster ideas to keep our audience engaged. However a disadvantage of it was that for social media to be really effective, you need a big following and so for us, an independent short film, the effectiveness was limited.
Amazon was also beneficial to us during this stage as we ordered a ski mask of our burglar to wear. This was really easy to do this purchase, however it did meant that we had to wait almost a week for it to arrive which put us behind on filming a little bit.
Evaluation Stage:
During this stage, one of the main digital technologies I used was Prezi. As I have previously mentioned, this is very useful in creating appealing Prezis to put onto my blog. However, one problem with it was that it often did not provide enough slides on the Prezi templates and so I had to add them myself which was often quite annoying. Also, as previously mentioned, the spelling was American English and so it tried correcting my work to their spelling rather than to English spelling.
I also used Blogger during my evaluation stage. During this stage, Blogger was overall quite frustrating as a post, such as this one, for the evaluation was quite large which meant I had to keep coming back to the draft. While in drafts, Blogger can often glitch and so some pictures would not insert, it kept deleting some of my text, and when pictures did upload, they went in a funny format. However, Blogger was good for the purpose that my work was in one place so I didn't have to save it on a memory stick or email it to myself so I could do it on a different computer.
I also used Microsoft Word to type up some of my evaluations. One of the reasons for this being that Blogger kept on having glitches and so it was easier to use Microsoft Word. Word was very useful as it is a simple format, allowing me to type while also providing spell check for when I miss spell. Word also allows you to insert pictures so overall it was very useful. However, one disadvantage of word is that sometimes when you insert pictures, they can suddenly disappear or cause or text and pictures to go funny and therefore it can sometimes be frustrating and time consuming, and the layout of it can look messy.
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