Question 4.

Question 4.

• 1.
  RESEARCH Media technologies havebeen used greatly throughout the researching process of this project. The internet, especially Google, have enabled us to find the correct codes and conventions for the romantic drama genre that we had in mind, in addition to finding resources, ideas and influences for the type of short film which we wanted to create. Youtube has also proved to be a fantastic way of helping me learn about codes and conventions of short films, posters, visual and radio trailers. This website not only allows us to gain access to official movie trailers but it contains official interviews with the cast of real films, which then help us as filmmakers to grasp the concept of these particular genres that we are working with. With this in order, I have expanded my knowledge and so put this into practise in Like, Share, Follow. 4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
• 2.
  PLANNING The internet wasalso used for the planning process and once we discovered our final idea we could begin to act on it. For this, we carried out a video questionnaire which involved using a Sony HDV 1000 camera and a Sony HDV 1000 tripod in order to steady the camera. The footage that we shot was then imported onto Final Cut and edited together to create a short video. Blogger was used throughout the whole production, to post our thoughts and ideas so that the group can see each other’s views and so that we can keep track of our progression. I used my phone camera to take some pictures of props and locations which we were planning to use, which I then put into a documentation so that we were organised and knew exactly what we were going to use on certain days and certain locations.
• 3.
  CONSTRUCTION Firstly we hadto create our script which was done using scripting software CeltX. One very minor obstruction with this software is that you cannot upload a file onto blogger and so I had to take a screen shot which doesn’t look as professional. All of the footage for our short film was shot on a Sony HDV 1000 camera steadied with the matching tripod. One obstruction of the camera is that at one moment of filming it would not focus. The explanation as to why is unknown and it eventually focused, but not on the shot we wanted it to. As a result, we had little footage of this particular scene and so had to improvise with another shot. An example clip is below. The footage was then captured on an Apple Mac computer and edited by using Final Cut Express. Here are just two examples of my work on Final Cut, however there are more on the blog. I developed my creativity during this project by learning and using different effects such as Bad TV, Add Noise, Colour Corrector, Viewfinder. Final Cut was not only used for our film, but also to create the outtakes and to create our radio trailer.
• 4.
  …CONSTRUCTION SoundCloud is wherewe discovered Matt Wills’ (the unsigned artist) music. When we decided it was great for our project, we listened to more of his music on YouTube and then messaged him on Twitter asking if we could use his music. For our voiceover’s in the film and for our radio trailer, we used a Zoom Recorder. This was the first time I had used one and I found it relatively easy. I found that to get the best sound you need to record as many as you can so that you have a better selection as some of the recordings were very quiet. We used Photoshop to create our film poster which proved to be difficult as none of us knew anything about this software. However, after much research and time spent on the programme we finally figured out enough to produce our Like, Share, Follow film poster. EVALUATION Once our film was finally finished, we uploaded it to YouTube and we made a questionnaire on GoogleDocs and posted the link on Facebook for our friends to fill out. This is being used as our audience feedback.
• 5.
  OVERALL Digital technology hasenabled me to develop creatively in such a huge way. I am a very kinesthetic learner and so in every part of this project I have grown as a filmmaker, whether it be through making a mistake and learning how to correct it or from using my knowledge that I collected last year. From setting up our blog, to filming the scenes, to uploading the final edit onto YouTube – I have taken different approaches and used different styles of editing to create the best possible image.