Question 4:

how did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation

stages?

by Harry Donnelly

Introduction

Hassan and I used a number of different types of new technologies during all stages of the

course. The applications, software or hardware were all specific for the particular task. whether that was the research, filming, distributing,creating a poster or writing and

uploading a review. In this presentation, I will discuss these

technologies in detail and talk about how they helped us achieve the final products.

web 2.0 & 3.0

•Web 2.0 is the second generation of the internet. This means that users can share information online. This generation allow makes communication between web users possible.•Web 3.0 is the third generation of the internet. This allows the internet to be more efficient and remember the user when searching through the web using previous searches and needs.

The internet

The internet played a huge role in all aspects of this course. The research and planning, distribution, film poster, film review and evaluation.The internet was extremely vital especially in the research and planning stages as I needed to research short films, codes and conventions, film posters and film reviews etc. Google, Wikipedia, YouTube and IMDB were amongst the main websites I used to find out particular information about the media texts we were studying.

I used the internet the day before a filming session to check up on the weather forecast. Unfortunately, you can never depend to heavily on these as we proved on one particular day when we got to the skatepark and it rained.

Youtube & vimeoYouTube and Vimeo are probably the most well known video sharing websites on the internet. These websites had a huge effect on the research and planning side to the course as well as the final short film and evaluation.We used these sites to research into short films by searching similar short film ideas to ours and gaining inspiration by the content, editing or cinematography. These websites were also key when conducting our textual analysis on short films as we needed somewhere to watch and replay them, and maybe grab screenshots.

iphoneMy iPhone played a big role in the research and planning stages for a number of different reasons. The first, main reason was that it acted like a small point and shoot camera. this meant I could document everything I was doing by taking a picture and uploading it to my blog. I captured researching, filming, editing and drafts. This helped give an insight of what I was doing most days. It also made m blog a lot more dynamic as they were a ton of pictures on it, without the paragraph upon paragraph of worthless waffling. I also downloaded the wordpress app which allowed me to post on my blog on the go which made my work flow a lot more efficient.

nikon d7000The Nikon D7000 was the camera Hassan and I used to film our short film. We also used this to take the pictures used in both our film posters and our review.This is my own personal DSLR camera which I use for photography in my spare time. I brought it in to school to use as I felt the HD filming capability would make a much more appealing short film. Another thing we had to consider were the frame rates per second (f/ps). As we were filming fast action skateboarding, we needed a camera that would pick up all of the movement so that the footage was smooth and crisp.The two lenses we used were the Nikkor 50mm & 18-105mm (pictured on the right). They were both used for different shots, one is for wide angled shots whereas the other lens was predominately used for close ups and extreme close-ups.

wordpressThis was arguably the most important of them all.

This was the website in which my blog can be found on. Wordpress is a website which allows you to

create a blog and follow other peoples blog. All of my Advanced Level work is present on my blog and displays everything I have don't, from the research and planning, to the filming, to the editing and to the creation of the film poster and film review. It

displays the steps in which I took to get where I am now.

Powerpoint & Slideshare•Powerpoint was vital in creating a dynamic blog. When we started our blogs, we were told not to just type everything out into a word document but to show our ICT skills by uploading pictures, videos and presentations etc. •Slideshare is a website which allows you to upload powerpoint presentations onto the internet which will then let you embed them on the website of your choice. This was extremely helpful as I was able to embed my presentations onto my wordpress blog.

Photoshop & In-Design•I used photoshop when creating a film poster for my short film. The reason I used this application was because of the variety of different tools available. The limitless options in which you can edit photographs, layout and text meant that my final product looked presentable and professional.•InDesign is another adobe application which I used to create my film review. I firstly typed it up into word processor and copied it into InDesign. This software allowed me to create columns and insert pictures similar to the layout of a typical Little White Lies review.

Final cut pro x During the editing stages of our short film and

evaluation we were able to use Final Cut Pro X on the iMacs. This allowed us to edit out products like the professionals would. Final Cut was vital as we

stitched every clip together using it and added special effects to create particular atmospheres in

our short film.We also used Final Cut in the evaluation section of our Advanced Level for question one and three by

creating a video and a directors cut.

garagebandI used garageband for question 1 in the evaluation.Garageband was helpful as it allowed me to record my mine and Hassan’s voice and stitch them together to create a directors cut type podcast which we layered onto our short film. I done this by exporting the file onto a usb stick and importing it onto our final cut project. The one problem I had was that my voice was louder than Hassans when we were recording so I overcame this by increasing the volume of his voice in post production using this software.