Types of Technology used

By Sam Wadsted

Full list of all technologies used

O BloggerO Youtube

O SoundcloudO SlideshareO PixtonO ScribdO PreziO Vimeo

O Microsoft WordO Microsoft PowerpointO WhatsappO SnapchatO iMovieO Final Cut pro

O ComputerO iPhoneO CameraO Microphone

I used a number of popular websites.

The course requires us to create a blog outlining research and evaluation of our film, I chose the website blogger. When it first came out it was ahead of its time and is very easy to use. It creates a very fluent and professional product but however it has some minor faults to get around, like it was originally very difficult to order the posts and occasionally some pictures within posts do not load.

YouTube is a big part of every day life and I felt it was an invaluable piece of technology that I had to use. It was very easy to upload and maintain videos and it works perfectly with blogger. It had an integrated share button straight to blogger which made linking visitors of my blog to my final videos and planning videos (etc.) very easy. The ability to upload in 1080p format was also greatly appreciated as it ultimately increased the quality and feeling of the films that we uploaded, particularly in the case of the final movie.

To aid in presentation:

Soundcloud is a very good way of putting a point across in a different form to word documents or PowerPoints.

Vimeo is very similar to youtube but involves a much easier process of uploading video from phone to website using their app.

Pixton was a very helpful software. It allows the user to create cartoon storyboards (comics) of their choice. It changed our boring written storyboards to a much more interesting colour and animated version. The only problem with pixton was it was very time consuming and at the start was very hard to understand and use but once you knew the basics it was very easy.

Scribd allows you to upload pieces of information, typically word documents, onto a different format to be viewed. This was perfect for me as it meant I could still upload posts if their format didn’t work on blogger. Like how most pictures don’t load up when viewed after publishing.

Prezi is a wonderful piece of software, for presentations, which allowed us to present our ideas in a fun and interesting way, adapting the usual boring information into a more appealing manner. I used it for the Main Task Pitch and my evaluation question.

Slideshare is very similar to Scibd in the way it allows you to upload pieces of information onto a different format to be viewed. The only really difference is it uploads powerpoints not word documents. This was a very valuable piece of software as it meant I could present work in a different format to blogger of word documents.

Software & AppsDue to word’s easy use and variations in fonts it became our first choice for our scripts. As word is such a worldwide known software it meant we could email each other the scripts to check for errors and check as we went along through scripts if it followed the correct path we envisioned for our piece.

PowerPoint was brilliant for creating slideshows which I felt was a better alternative to solid blocks of text on blogger. It also allowed an easier integration of pictures and easy sorting of information. Similar to word it allowed us to send each other information to be worked on easily.

iMovie was a very good software to create a preliminary task with as all parts of it were easy to use creating a semi-professional final product. Then later on the production process as a group we went back to iMovie to create our movie production company logos with short stop-motion animation on the clip-board

Final Cut Pro was used to edit our final piece and when compared to iMovie is a much better editing software. It has many different features that we used a group to perfect our final piece.

Snapchat was a very interesting piece of software to use. It is a very popular app and I felt it fitted perfectly into finishing my evaluation question 5 on How to Attract an Audience? I used snapchat story, the most popular feature, to describe how I could use it to attract an audience.

As a group we used whatsapp to organize when we would film and what we needed to bring. It was essential as we needed a way to contact each other while being able to send each other messages and send pictures without being charged on our phone bill.

HardwareThe IMac computers that we used were perfect as they came with programmes such as Imovie and Final Cut software that helped our editing process. Thankfully the mac's were also equipped with Microsoft office suite which gave the macs word and powerpoint.

I used my Iphone to organise and plan the filming with the group. I used apps to confirm shooting schedules with group members and. The eBay and amazon apps were also used to buy some of the props we used. Furthermore I used the camera feature to take some shots of filming to use for my blog.

We used a professional camera for our final film. This meant we had a really good quality final  product due to the fact it recorded in full HD. We discovered that the in-built microphone couldn't handle the harshness of the wind and decided to use a microphone with a wind shield so that all footage could be used and the sound quality matched the picture quality. Producing an overall high quality finish.