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

Video Camera – We used this for all our filming

Tape – All of our footage got recorded onto this tape.

Small video camera – we used this to exchange our footage from the tape to the computer.

Fire wire – used to plug into the small video camera and into the computer to transfer the footage.

Computer – we did all of our editing and creating electronically.

Head phones – we plugged these into the computer; this stopped us from disturbing other people with our music.

YouTube – I used this website for our research, I looked up short films and then widened the search to black and white films. This is where I thought about using Schindler’s List as a reference point, I also found clips of Titanic that helped to distinguish classes.

The Search Bar – By typing in words to help find what you are looking for.

Results – When you have clicked search, results related to the words will appear.

Keyboard – used for inserting text onto documents.

Tripod – We used this a lot, it helped to keep our camera still so our shots were not shaky.

Memory stick – we used this for exporting documents from different computers.

Incompetech – This is a website I found where you can use peoples music in your own productions for free with permission.

There are many different genres of music to choose, from the list here. I chose to look at the genre of ‘Silent Film Scores’ here I found music for all of our scenes.

The results appear down the left-hand side.

Photoshop – I used this program to create the placards for the film as they were still shots.

A basic frame was used and together we edited it by enhancing the colours and deleting mess around the frame, using the eraser tool.

Then the text was inserted and the colour was sampled to match the colour of the frame.

The sample tool.

Adobe, Premiere Pro – This program was used to edit all of our footage. We used many different tools in order to get the effects we wanted.

Black and White – By clicking on the Video Effects tab and scroll down to find the black and white effect.

To change the Rose into colour, it involved using a colour pass. Found again when clicking on the Video Effects tab and down to the colour options, to choose colour pass, then slide the bar along to the correct percentage, in our case it was about 48% so as not to get other colours that are similar to red in our shots.

We inserted another layer that allowed us to have a grainy effect on our film.

As well as this we used this program to introduce typical sounds from silent films, such as the crackling of the film that was so common in the past productions. We had to put it onto a different bar so as not to cut into our music from Incompetech.

Another thing that was cool was the ability to speed-up or slow down footage, in most cases of our film we sped up the footage so that it looked jumpy like the original old films, but at one point we felt that we should slow down the footage as it helped to emphasise the atmosphere, where Rose kisses William for the first time.

As this was my first real experience with Premiere Pro there were a lot of things to learn, and cutting the footage to such precision wad really difficult to begin with but it got easier as I used it more.

I also found this with learning to fade bits of music into one another, but by using this tool here it is actually very easy. Fading was very important to us because most of the music we used did not run into each other, fading it helped it to sound more natural in sequence.

The best thing I learnt has to be how to single out one colour, using the colour pass or even having the ability to import images that are still from Photoshop or even normal documents. The range of things that can be done on this program and Photoshop are great and I still have many other techniques that I could learn if I were to try and make other products.

Programs such as Microsoft Powerpoint (left) and Microsoft Publisher (below and left) were great for all the stages, especially planning and advertising.

Powerpoint – We used this program for most of our presentations, and research that involved breaking down a lot of information. By putting it into a slideshow it is easier for people to take in and including pictures is a lot more successful. As can be seen here in the image, this is the pitch that we presented in order to show how we hoped our film would look and the story line. This would not have looked as good as a word

document or as a leaflet. By adding effects to the slideshows it can help in making it look more professional so that the text moves and appears, or the slides change in a different way, e.g dissolving or fading in and out.

Microsoft Publisher – we didn’t use this program as much as others but it was very helpful when creating the drafts of our magazine and poster. It allowed us to build up shapes, images and text into the basic layout of how we wanted them to look. Here in the example i have used images from the internet as an example of how our magazine would look. We have used similar quotes and fonts to how we have seen similar magazines, we decided to use the similar layout to the film magazine ‘Empire’ and then change all of the text, by doing it this way we got to try and make all of the elements that are on the magazine, there were intricate shapes that took some time to replicate, but it was good experience as I ended up using tools that I don’t normally get a chance to use.

Slideshare – This website was used to upload all of our files ready to post onto our blog.

By clicking on the upload tab, you then get an option to upload a single file or multiple files, then you choose the files from your computer documents or USB stick.

When the files have been uploaded you click on the correct URL link and copy it onto the ‘new post’ section of the blog.

This site was a bit difficult to use to begin with but after using it a couple of times I found it was really simple and very helpful.

Wordpress – This is the site we used to create our blogs. This, like Slideshare was quite difficult to use to start with but eventually I found it easy to upload posts and comment on them.

I personalised it at the top with a title bar, this took a bit of work on Photoshop but it makes my blog look really professional.

Overall I think that a blog is a brilliant way of showing the processes of our production and it allows me to show people my work, so people can comment on it.