Evaluation Question 4

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

-RESEARCH/PLANNING

Blogger was an essential tool when researching for our films production. We were able to create our own media page on Blogger in which Blogger acted as a medium we could all collectively share ideas through and monitor each others work.  From researching and constructing our own story lines to posting our final film, Blogger did not only have the tools that allowed us to write analytical essays, but and the function to post images through. I feel it was the way Blogger acted as an online storage file for all our work that made the process of making our film a lot more successful than if we were not using it. 

Celtx was fundamental when creating our own individual storyline, free downloaded from the internets allows a professional document to be created with set action segments, and shots all provided to help illustrate the kind of environment we wish our script and film to be created in. This was very helpful for our research to be put into action. 

Facebook serving as the most popular social networking site was also helpful when researching and distributing material for our film. We created multiple online questionnaires mainly concerning the storyline of our film in which we were able to post on our individual facebook profiles for our friends to fill out. This proved to be very successful as the feedback we received helped us improve the storyline drastically. 

IMDb proved to be, in my opinion the most effective tool when researching different films. The multimillion film database covers a wide range of films from different genres. This allowed us to view recent and older psychological horror films and use similar cinematographic within our own film.  

YouTube played a similar role to IMDb when researching psychological horror movies for our film. The significant difference between YouTube and IMDb was the films on YouTube were a mixture of professional and unprofessional. This allowed us to observe the differences between conglomerate media productions compared to low budgeted student films.

-PRODUCTION

We used Adobe Photoshop for our subsidiary media production: our poster advertising our film. Photoshop gave us the ability to take the photo we had taken on our professional camera (rented from the media department) and edit into an industry standard poster that would describe a synopsis of our film. The additional effects Photoshop allowed us to create included the black fading around the central image of Kyle, as well as the the 5 star review icons.

This voice recorder was the piece of equipment we recorded our second subsidiary media product on. The radio trailer was clear and easy to hear due to the recording of me and Kyle recorded without any harsh sounding tones in our voice and usual flaws founds in camera phones such as wind and 'bumps' in speech. These were easily removed in editing and when the device did pick them up it removed them from the original audio file.  

When filming in multiple different places, we all carried round our mobile cell phone in order to take visual evidence of the production completed in that day. We chose specifically not to rent out more professional cameras due to the photo having less importance than the poster. Additionally mobile phones are easier to  manoeuvre that large cameras. They were also almost always at hand due to needing them for purposes outside of filming. I used my phone (Samsung Galaxy s2) on shoots in which I was excluded in terms of acting. In shoots in which I was acting (the majority) Annie used her phone. (Samsung Galaxy S3). Both phones provided us with clear photographs. 

The Sony HD 2000 Camera Corder was the technology in which we created our final media production. The HD quality footage it provided us with allowed us to create a high quality film with additional audio collected through the inbuilt microphone. 

Final Cut was the video editing software we edited our finish film through. I felt happy that barnsley college's media department had funded us with the latest equipment in terms of editing footage. The use of cutting and fading and split clipping with many additional extra features allowed us to create an industry standard film we could all be proud of. 

When we created online questionnaires for audience feed back of our story lines and final films, we collected the data and analysed it the Microsoft Excel. I found Microsoft Excel useful as it allowed us to have a visual representation of the data in the form of graphs, columns and pie charts. This collectively highlighted potential flaws within our story line/film and so we could create alternative shots in order to correct the situation. 

EVALUATION-

When evaluating my third question, I felt that Microsoft Powerpoint would be an appropriate programme to present on. After I had completed my evaluation, I had to share it on blogger, I did this through SlideShare. SlideShare is an online programme in which users can upload their presentations for other people to see and use. SlideShare comes with a embedded code system, in which I could insert into blogger. 

When evaluating my second question, I felt that Prezi would be an appropriate programme to present on. After I had completed my evaluation, I had to share it on blogger, I did this through Prezi. Prezi is an online programme in which users can upload their advanced presentations for other people to see and use. Prezi also comes with a embedded code system, in which I could insert into blogger. Additional features such as tracking and motion is also included within Prezi. 

After our films completion, we, as a group created a facebook page dedicated to our film. This facebook page was called 'The Employer'. On this page we kept fans updated with out latest trailers and posters and radio trailers in the hope that the page would work similarly to the ones used within the industry.