How did you use new media technologies in the construction

and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Group 1: Shekarie James (6088)

Documentary Tools:

Blogger Youtube Prezi Mindmeister Survey Monkey Storyboard That

How did we use the in Pre-production and Post-production? We learnt about new documenting tools for example Youtube,

Slideshare, Prezi and Powtoons. This enabled our work to be both informative as well as interesting.

We were able to document our research and planning that we did in the pre production stage , but also in multiple different formats.

We also learnt how to tag and use labels in our posts this made our work more organised especially when looking through our posts and finding out what to do as well as the progress made.

Blogger

Strengsh Easy to use when sharing

picture and videos. Personal source of sharing your

work. Its free Theme is easy to change Easy to embed power points,

prezis and slide share.

Weaknesses Blog ownership remains with

blogger Blogs can crash deleting all of

the work which is scaring if you work is not backed up we went through this twice.

YouTube

Strengths It is a free Easy to share your videos on

other sites(embedding) It allow you to give our opinion

in the comment section It allows you to get feedback

from people who watch your videos

You can personally brand yourself

Weaknesses Videos take a long time to

upload depending on the quantity.

Limited editing control There are limits for new

accounts YouTube severs can crash and

leave some videos inaccessible.

Prezi

Strengths A free unique way of presenting

information. Prezi allows creators to link text

and images to movement. It saves backup online and can be

embedded anywhere It allows you to zoom in and out of

the information which is unique. Prezi is a very easy program to use

and you learn fast how to use it.

Weaknesses Prezi can be time consuming Limited printing options Web based so the can be lost if its not saved

properly before it crashes. Can cause dizziness and audio

is hard to upload.

Mindmeister

Strengths Easy to embed and share

everywhere. It’s a online website so its

accessible Engaging and flexible Its available in the app store-

so you can create mind maps on the go.

Weaknesses Web based so error can occur

with the connection taking up time instead of getting work done.

Formatting Editing can be dangerous as

you can shift everything when trying to edit your mi map.

What we learned about documenting technologies: We learned a variety of new way to document our research and

planning on different platforms. We learned how to edit and improve our blogs by learning to label our posts and tags our selves making our blogs more efficient. Furthermore we learned how to edit the time and date of our posts so that we can have all our posts organised and looking presentable.

We learned different way to present our work for example prezi, slide share and YouTube. And these enabled us to uniquely make our work different but also interesting.

Technologies/Equipment used in production: Microphone Cannon DSLR 65OD Camera lens Lighting (key fill and back)

Microphone

Strengths The microphone helped to

enhance the quality of the sound and blocked out most of the ambient sound.

Overall the microphone made our better for example in dialogue between the main characters which was clear because the microphone got rid of the ambient sound.

Weaknesses The microphone could not

block out all sound so we had to get rid of the sounds that the microphone was not able to block out the post production stage by editing the sound out.

We had to make sure that the micro phone was attached.

Cannon DSLR 65OD

Strengths The size and weight of the camera was

convenient so it enabled us to change locations easily.

On the camera we were able to manually set the focus as a result of this we were able to acquire a better quality. We were also able to adjust the white balance and exposure to adhere to out thriller opening.

The camera was very straight forward and easy to us which made it easier for us to adjust the setting so we could get a better quality overall with less work.

Weaknesses The battery life of this camera

restricted our filming as the battery life only lasts 2-3 hours. So we had to work around this time frame, this added pressure for us to make sure that certain scenes are shot before the camera dies.

Camera lens

Strengths The camera lens made its

easier to have a sharp focus on certain shots for example the montage were there was multiple close ups which are clearly seem because of the sharp focus.

The lens is a compact and a lightweight.

Weaknesses However, for some scenes

despite continuously trying to focus the lens some of the shots were still a bit blurry.

Lighting (key, fill and back) Strengths Through the use of key lighting

we were able to make the subject and our actors to stand out.

The lighting also emphasised our antagonist as the use of the key lighting created shadow that made our antagonist look more mysterious and dangerous.

The smaller light were used for the back light because they were not too bright but were just right to separate the subject from the background.

Weaknesses A room gets very hot due to

the lamp used as the key lighting.

Because the lighting bought out the shadows its made the editing process challenging.

Challenges faced in the production process and how we overcame these problems:

We faced a number of challenges one of which is; The key lighting was really bright so in the post production process

we had to dim the light so that the characters could be seen and so that the shadow looked more faint.

Another problem we faced is that because the camera on the tripod prevented us to get and extreme close up. Therefore we had to use a hand help camera to get the close up shot we needed.

What we learnt about the technologies when filming: When filming we leaned many things about media technologies. One of these is the

camera and how advanced it is when shooting but mostly the setting in the camera for example when shooting we wanted to get the main character in the centre. And we then had to go into the camera settings and set the grids on so we could centre the characters face and it would be right in the middle. This added more professionalism to our full product and highlighted the character more.

Another setting on the camera that we were able to utilise is the lighting in order to enhance the natural colours of our scene we had to set the white balance manually to improve our quality which also enhanced the quality our full product.

The microphone is another technology that really made a difference to or full product we learnt that it can make a huge difference in terms of the sound quality and clarity. Furthermore, the fact the it can block out some ambient sound.

We also learned the way to zoom in and get extreme close ups through the camera lens when adjusting the lens by twisting it we learnt you could zoom and focus to get a more detailed shot.

Equipment and technologies used: Editing

iMac Final Cut Pro Firework Dream Maker

How did we use them in production?

The tools came in handy more at the post production stage when we were constructing and editing our final media texts for example the synergistic link and our website.

We used the iMacs to run the applications for example Final Cut Pro, Fireworks and Photoshop. Final Cut Pro enabled us to edit and create a narrative.

Fireworks and Photoshop allowed us to produce the synergistic link between our products.

iMac

Strengths The iMac software is easy to use

and this allowed us to produce work on time.

IMacs have auto save therefore when our computer crashed all our work was not lost we were still able to access the work when we restarted the computer.

The iMac has multiple programmes and software's allowing us to edit our opening and access the internet , YouTube plus our blogs.

Weaknesses The iMacs would often crash

which meant that we were at a risk of all our work being lost.

How we used Photoshop to create the link?

We had to sketch the outline once this was done we tried the replicate the tongue as best we could. After we completed what we wanted the image to look like we had to go over the pencil in a darker substance for example the black marker. Then we scanned the image using a scanner. When we scanned we moved the image to Photoshop where we altered the brightness and the contrast as well as other element to make the drawn image look digitally rendered.

Form this digitally rendered image, we began to add colour according to the original image.

Lastly we then had to export our final image.

Final Cut Pro

Strengths It allowed us to easily to adjust

an fix the challenges we faced with the colour and lighting so the brightness and saturation can be changed.

It offers a variety of transitions like fades and dissolves between each cut this made our thriller opening flow better. For example, the transition of the title for our opening which fades.

Weaknesses Final Cut Pro has a lot of editing

features in comparison to iMovie. However, this made it more difficult for the us to use as it was a bit to complex at first.

Final Cut Pro at one point corrupted our file and crashed which then lead to all of our work becoming frozen and malfunctioning. And to save our work, we had to save our file every 5 minutes, just to make sure that our work didn’t get corrupt again.

Photoshop and Firework

Strengths Fireworks has pages and states instead of just

layers. This is great for creating multi-page or multi-state designs and walking through the design w/o having to turn layers on and off to demo.

The software allowed us to construct our own image for the Logo

The software was relatively easy to use yet produce professional work.

Images could be resized without creating a loss of quality, therefore allowing us to both design a small logo for our music video and then resize it for our website and our magazine advert.

Weaknesses Fireworks doesn't work well for

printing your designs. Since the dpi is natively lower (you can change it, but most people don't), the images come out a little bitmapped.

How we overcame editing challenges Our first opening sequence came from Final Cut Pro which we edited

and made ours through adjusting the saturation and the pace. However it was a found image so we could not use it so, we had to create a new one using Fire work and Dreamweaver the challenge of this is that we had to use another editing source to create our opening now. We had to learn how to use Firework properly.

When filming some of our shots they were unstable which meant that we had to stabilise certain shots on Final Cut Pro.

We ensured that our work was backed up so in case anything was to happen we wouldn’t have to start from the top luckily, because this came in handy when our iMac deleted some of our footage we used the back up to regain the footage.

We edited out all ambient sounds through Final Cut Pro

What we learnt about editing: We learned that the editing process is where you can fix any

problems which have gone wrong in the production stage. For instance the ambient sound which can be edited out. We also noticed that the post- production stage is one of the most vital stages because we were able to turn raw footage into the product it is now. Without the editing process the opening would just be plain and unshaped. This process also taught us the affect of certain audios and or soundtrack and the influence this can have on a shot. In terms of the atmosphere which this creates mystery , tension , build up and climax especially if the audio matches the action going on in the opening.