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

The Research and planning of our media products was very much aided by the internet, the internet allowed us to research into the background of existing products ranging from film different film posters to film magazine reviews ect. 

With the help of sites such as YouTube we were given the opportunity to access a wide range of short films in order to analyses as well as gain some ideas to follow up on our own products. 

Furthermore with all the information that we had collected, with the addition of blogger, we were able to create blog posts and begin to document our planning and research of our products. 

Regarding the production of our short film at A2 we had been upgraded from the DV cameras we used at AS level to SD cameras. The DV cameras that we had previously used produced low quality and grainy footage and were often very unreliable and we experienced a series of frustrating problems with these cameras. 

The introduction of the SD cameras were very beneficial indeed, there were no technical difficulties that we had to go through therefore our shooting session ran very smoothly and the footage was produced at a very better quality, which was another positive aspect.

Furthermore we were also benefited from having mobile phones on scene, due to the growing technological convergence of phones we were fortunate enough to capture images of our filming sessions which we included into our production of the posters as well as magazine. The huge benefit of having a mobile phone is that it is always in our possessions, therefore we had instant access to our phones, they were always available to use at any point in time.

Furthermore, for the post production of our products, we were introduced to some new as well as upgraded versions of software that we may have previously used at AS. Firstly iMovie 11 was a software which we were introduced, as appose to iMovie HD6 we had used at AS.

Despite the fact that iMovie HD6 was basic and extremely user friendly as well as easier to use, we believed that the step forward to iMovie 11 was necessary, this version of the software allowed us to incorporate things such as new:

-Titles

-Effects 

Photoshop was one of the new software’s that we were introduced to in order to produce a film poster, allowing us to edit and manipulate images. Photoshop was however very complicated to use as a beginner, a lot of patience and training was required to produce our final outcome and due to difficulties there were restrictions as to what we could and could not do. 

Pages was one of the more basic software’s that we used to create our magazine, however some training was required but this unlike Photoshop was a lot easier to pick up and understand so therefore creating and producing our film magazine was a process that ran smoothly. Finally once again with the aid of the internet we were able to source copyright free music, to add to our short film, in addition the internet allowed us to get some stock footage, to incorporate into our film poster as well as magazine.

Without a doubt the technology that we had used had an effect on certain decisions that we had made which in turn, affected the final outcome of our products. Photoshop for example gave us the ability to layer different images as well as manipulate certain images, despite these advantages we were very much so limited with the amount of things that we could do as we didn’t have as much training required to produce professional looking posters, however in contrast we were relatively confident with iMovie as we had previously familiarised ourselves with it at AS level, this gave us the opportunity to have a more confident approach whilst planning our film as we knew what we could and couldn’t do as we knew our strengths as well as weakness, this very much contributed to the successes of our film. 

In addition the fact that iMovie was a nonlinear editing software was very useful, as we were able to experiment with different footage and change things around, this also gave us the opportunity to tweak footages to our preferences, which links in well to the audience feedback as we could easily use the advice given by audiences to change things around. 

The technology however seemed to lack in certain areas such as the camera’s, firstly having dialogue in our film would have been a problem as the SD cameras that we were using made it difficult to pick up sound, as the microphones were simply not decent enough, due to this default we opted to create a film without dialogue, we hoped to create a film which described the narrative with the use of scores and cinematography which worked successfully. 
Also the camera gave a really grainy effect:

To some extent this could be useful for a more serious film, as it creates a sense of depth and realism, however our film was a much light hearted one, therefore the flat grainy effect didn’t really do us any favors.  

Finally it is without a doubt that the internet has changed our project in terms of research, post production, evaluation and the distribution. The social network sites which are easily accessible, allowed us to reach a wide range of different audiences, especially sites such as facebook, Youtube ect.

Which attracts audiences from different corners of the world, in turn allowing them to view our film, this was extremely useful because without the internet we would have a limited range of audience, only the peers amongst us would be able to view the film. Finally the benefits of the internet and social network sites is that they a free, affordable and easy to get hold of, in addition with the grace of technological convergence, social network sites and various websites can easily be accessed from mobile phones, which is a great advantage as it allows audiences to access the products, any where and everywhere

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Our short film on the mobile version of Youtube.