HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH AND PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

Question 4

Overview

Blog Research Filming Editing Ancillary Products: Poster and

Review Feedback

I have been able to use technology across the whole of the process and these areas were the most important parts of the process which I have used to research, construct, plan and evaluate my work:

Blog

1. Using the Blog itself has been pushing the boundaries with the amount technology which could be used. ‘Blogger’ is a very good for creating and displaying the work which has been done and has been useful for the trying to use as much variety which could be used to create the work.

Also with the creation of the Blog the idea of having a variety and not lots of essays and Web applications such as ‘Prezi’, ‘slideshare’ and ‘issuu’. They all offer very different ways of presenting the work with ‘prezi’ as you can see, a zooming presentation and ‘issuu’ an interactive magazine allowing a lot of variety to the creation of the Blog.

Youtube also allows for this, as it is linked straight to Blogger, the tools such as annotating of the video has been good in allowing to analyse and evaluate the videos which have been used and researched.

These all have been beneficial to making the best products and how I got to them.

Research

Google is very good for the research process as it has allowed me to find existing short films, reviews and posters. Google at the click of a button has opened the research process into finding the latest short films and whether they have any posters or reviews.

Youtube is good for this as well because there are a number of professionally made short films but also a number amateur directors this is good for the research to gain an understanding of the conventions of short films.

Wikipedia has also been useful for the information on the genre and the many techniques which can be used to create films. It was also very useful to find information on the short films if they have been featured in any awards.

Filming

I used a Sony Handycam DCR-SX33 this is a light and compact camera which is easy to use and the filming was very easy because of the easy of use the camera offers. The zoom buttons are easy to use and the whole of the camera is easy to use for any filming. The camera itself offers an easy upload solution onto the Computer or Mac.

The technology which allows for easy filming which can be in formats which can be used and changed depending on the filming which needs to be done.

Editing

To edit my short film I used Sony Vegas Pro 10, the program gives a number of powerful tools to edit the work and I have been to create a film which uses the editing really well. I have been able to cut the clips which I got from the filming and I have used the simple layout which gives a set of help windows to use the filters and transitions.

Sony Vegas is very good the Interface is easy to use and has allowed the work to really shine in the way allow the work to easily be split, cut and edited.

Ancillary products: Poster

To create my poster I used Adobe Photoshop and a Canon EOS 1000D DSLR.

Adobe Photoshop is a very powerful tool which can manipulate photographs really well and this has allowed me to create a realistic poster to market the short film . Adobe Photoshop allowed me to layer multiple images into one canvas and using photographs which I took when filming and type that is of the same style of which is used for the real film poster I have been able to make a realistic poster

With the DSLR I was b able to use photographs which are of high quality and ones which give the poster a professional look.

Ancillary products: Review

To create my review I used ‘Adobe InDesign’ which is a digital publishing suite which is really good for using as a technology with similar buttons and components in used in ‘Adobe Photoshop’, the program is easy to use and I was bale to create a convincing Double page spread for a magazine

I chose to present the pages on ‘issuu’ a web app which allow s user to upload magazines and show them online, this is a good web app which allow the same experience as a real magazine with page turning. When using this I had to insure that the format of the final product was a PDF (interactive) which also allowed turning of pages.

Feedback

To get my feedback in have used a number of different ways. I used Facebook to get initial feedback on the film itself when I

had uploaded it also I was able to upload the two poster designs and I had an online survey of which one was more effective. Facebook is very good for feedback from people who are usually willing to use the

I also used Google Docs to create a form/survey and used this ask about short films in general and also what people thought about my short film itself this is very helpful because of the information regarding the good parts and what could be improved. The service also offers a graph of result which is very helpful to see what people felt about the work.

Youtube itself also allows the video to have comments, likes and dislike on it this is help for seeing whether the short film is liked.

Problems with technology

I didn’t have many problems with technology but one of them was that when rendering the final short film there were problems and it stopped within a few seconds of starting but this was easily fixed by removing some temporary files.

Conclusion

I have found that technology has really helped with the research, construction, planning and evaluation of my media products. There are many applications and programs which I have used to develop and make my media products and these have all been of help to improving the pleasure of the audience when looking at the products.

Overall technology has really help me to create my products.