Joseph Hill A2 Media

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

Blogger – blogger is where I have uploaded all my progress throughout the process. This started from the very beginning of research all the way up to the final draft of my short film. Blogger was rather simplistic to use, mainly due to the fact that it is a google app making it photos and videos easily transferable from YouTube and the Google Drive. Furthermore I used blogger last year when documenting my AS Media project, making it all the more easier to use due to my familiarity with the programme.

Research

Google Slides – this was my first point of research between me and my partner. We did a textual analysis on the short film Deep It and looked to present it to our class. To be able to edit the same document and access it at the same time Google Slides was the perfect platform to do so. It allowed us to finish the project in quick steed and easily share it with our teacher for us to present our peers. The presentation once completed was simple to embed into Blogger, and even allows for feedback to be submitted by peers. I found on a whole that it was easy to access, share and edit making the process all the more efficient.

Google Forms - Google Forms allows for the creation of questionnaires and surveys which I saw as essential in gaining the views of our consumers. I first used it on our short film project when doing a questionnaire on consumers general tastes when it came to the genre of film, ending and ages of the consumers. This allowed me and my partner to build up a psychographic and demographic for our prime target audience when producing and releasing our media products. I also used it for some feedback on the film posters which I created – allowing me to get a feel for what our target audience would find most aesthetically pleasing when they looked for any form of advertisement.

Social Media Sites – here I transferred questionnaires which I had produced on Google Forms to my social media pages on Facebook and Twitter. This allowed me to reach out for more feedback from consumers as well as get our short film recognised. This was extremely positive and the use of social media is definitely something that benefited our product by giving us more of an insight into what our consumers wanted in the film. Without this we would have struggled for feedback and would’ve struggled to positively progress our short film.

PowToon – PowToon allows you to put your work into an animated presentation and then share that onto whichever platform you require – for example Blogger. As good as the animations are I believe this app is extremely tedious when having to manoeuvre your work into place. This looked to occupy a lot of my time which could have been spent on other things however once it is finished it allows for a high quality presentation which I did for some of my research to jazz it up a bit.

Adobe Photoshop – before delving into making a film poster and film review straight away I thought it would be best to test out the platform I would be creating them on and each of the tools available. For example I used the magic wand to get rid of the previous background on the original batman photo to make it look like he is a part of my new background. The new background came from setting its colour to black and importing and cropping a photo of a door on fire into the background for dramatic effect. Then came the title which gave me a grip of how I could change colours of the letters as well as bevel and emboss the word. Practising this proved pivotal in helping me to create a film poster for my own short film of a high standard.

Planning

Storyboard That – when it came to planning out our short film we wanted to get a feel of what shots we would be using as well as the sound and dialogue we would look to incorporate. In order to do this we decided to create an animatic which is a collection of example still shots which would be similar to the live shots we would have in our actual short film. Dialogue and sound effects would then be added on top of the animations to boost its quality. In order to produce the animations we used Storyboard That which is new to me. I have to say it was extremely easy to use as you could tailor the attributes to your desires as well as include key props and backgrounds. Once this was completed we screenshotted the animations before the next process.

Paint – Paint was also new to me but was extremely easy to use thanks to a quick tutorial from a peer. On Paint I could crop each of the animations to the sizes needed and then save those as a jpg to be used for the animation.

WeVideo – this was the platform which I used to put all of the sound and animations together. I used WeVideo last year for other editing and it was just as easy this time and allowed for us to finish the animatic quickly yet with high quality which was reflected with gratification from classmates.

Canon EOS 500D – this is my personal camera so I was extremely familiar with using it. We set it up to take example shots which we would look to use in our short film as well as film some feedback from consumers.

Production

GoPro HERO 4 – this was my personal GoPro so I was used to filming with it. I chose to use this camera as I believe it comes with better quality then any of the other cameras and also allows for a wide angle almost fish eye shot. This was beneficial for shots that were meant to look like recording or CCTV footage.

GoPro App (iPhone 6) – I downloaded the GoPro App to my phone which made the process of filming and editing all the more efficient. The app allows for a preview of the shot from the GoPro meaning we could get a real idea of what each shot would look like on a decent sized screen. The videos could then be saved to my phone within a matter of seconds allowing easy transfer for editing.

iMovie – this is an application which I am used to for editing rugby games and previous media pieces. Videos could be easily uploaded from my camera roll and then editing was simple to do with the ability to add music from my own library as well as text. If I was to do it again I would however look to use a more advanced editing software as I believe iMovie is a bit limited in what it can do however made sense to use with my project for efficiency.

YouTube – this was a simple tool for publishing our final draft as well as our animatic. I also occasionally used YouTube in my research into similar products.

Evaluation

Popplet – this application was new to me however I really enjoyed using it for the first time. It was so simple to use for evaluation question 2 and I think it displays all of my work so well. It is also very easy to embed any photos as well as videos from YouTube. This is definitely something which I would look to use again as it is so quick and easy to use.

WeVideo – I used this in order to form my evaluation question 3 and it all came together really well with the credits, music and footage all meeting my expectations. Such an easy tool to use.

SoundCloud – This is an audio and music website and was perfect for evaluation questions 1 and 4. I could upload the recordings of my script with extreme ease.