Qustion 6 draft
- 1. Question 6 Draft What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
- 2. The use of recording the process of my coursework electronically on my blog I used a range of websites to upload my work from powerpoints (a) and word documents (b) into Prezis, Issuus, Slideshare, Youtube videos and Scibds. Within these documents I involved screenshots from my thriller and other case studies (c) and imported video clips into them for example in my Prezi’s. I did this because they made clear, strengthened and supported the points and evaluations on specific moments I wanted to make, and made analysis more precise and detailed. Additionally I also scanned storyboards to upload them for my thriller and preliminary planning (d) onto my blog, I did this because it made quicker and easier access to them as all my other planning was on my blog. So when it came to filming I had one location where everything was in which I could easily reference and check that everything was precise as we wanted it to be, whereas if it was on paper copies it would have made it less organised.
- 3. a b c d
- 4. Blogger When using Blogger (e), which I had never used before, I learnt how to first of all set up the layout which I customized (f) to be colourful therefore more appealing to the viewer. I could embed videos we made ourselves or from case studies off of Youtube using the HTML tab (g) when doing a new post, this is something I struggled with at first but then soon figured out therefore developing and revolutionising my knowledge of this website. Adding labels (h) and gadgets on our blog to make it more sophisticated and organised was also something I learned how to do. Blogger is what we all used and uploaded our work onto, it was good because it meant we could get consistent feedback from the teacher through comments (i) without delay on how to improve our work, and if we needed inspiration or ideas we could look at fellow class mates or previous students (j) work, that fit the grade we were aiming for. Whereas if this were paper copies we wouldn’t have been able to do this as easily and teachers could give feedback that we could see not only during school time but outside of it also, so we always had work to do. We also may have lost it more easily and our planning and research may have been disorganised, due to the label feature on our blogs this wasn’t an issue.
- 5. e f g i j
- 6. Prezis Prezis (k) was one of my favourite ways of uploading my work onto my blog. This was because they have many pre-set formats you could work with or make your own from scratch. When your work was finished you could make it go into a linear timeline of the order you wanted it in going from one subject to the next, and you can easily and tightly zoom in on features like the screenshots so they can be easily analysed, or zoom out to look at the bigger picture (l). Which is something I found more difficult doing using other uploading websites like Issuu. Additionally unlike Issuu you can embed videos within the presentation making it more animating and impressive. These made it a more interesting and inventive way of uploading my work therefore the viewer has a better experience seeing it, and gave me the opportunity to enhance what they were seeing.
- 7. k l
- 8. Video Responses This was a more intriguing way of presenting my work, because it gave a more stimulating and lively experience to the viewer, as I was speaking directly to them (m), and added a bit of a change of reading words of the screen like the other methods I used. This was the first time I had ever done a video diary and It took me a few attempts in mastering it so it revolutionised my knowledge of one way to present my work. Moreover I uploaded it onto Youtube (n) which I then embedded into Blogger using the HTML tab when composing a new post which is also something I learned.
- 9. m n
- 10. Research and Planning Without the internet research into other thriller films would have been very difficult. For example many websites like http://www.amazon.co.uk/ recommend other similar films if you look at one you already know (o), this was helpful because it helped me study and broaden my knowledge and conventions of the genre by watching these similar films. When doing case studies on thriller films Youtube (p) always had the clip I wanted to analyse, this was helpful because it meant I could easily press the screenshot button on the moment I wanted so I could examine and identify conventions of the genre without owning the film. The International Movie Data Base (IMDb) http://www.imdb.com/?ref_=nv_home ,(q) was also incredibly helpful because it had many aspects that were of use to me, for example that similar to Amazons of suggesting similar films. It also gave demographics (r) which I have found very useful more recently when doing my research and planning for appealing to target audiences and backing this up with screenshots from this website. For example IMDb offers you the ability to find out the age and gender of the target audience of a certain film, so this helped us choose which films to inter textually reference which our specific target audience will notice and understand as we would choose a thriller with a similar target audience, like The Killing, which target audience was similar to ours. This website also contained immense detail of a specific film like the actors, director, awards it won pictures, the time it came out etc. at a convenient place, therefore this website sped up the process of case studies, planning and evaluating as I didn’t have to waste time individually finding this information elsewhere on the internet, and I think without the internet this sort of information would have been near impossible especially the demographics.
- 11. o p q r
- 12. Research and Planning http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ (s) is a good reviewing website which I would go to if I hadn’t seen a thriller film but wanted an insight to the plot and whether it was good or not, as it offers critic reviews, and user reviews, so a mix of opinions that I can see to help me decide whether or not the film would be useful to me. Even little factors like weather on the day of our shoot, we used the internet for. Overall the internet has incredibly enhanced , sped up and transformed the process of research, planning and evaluating, as it gave me access to these websites needed for me to creatively present my work, in which before I had little knowledge of previously. Before truly investigating locations we used https://www.google.co.uk/maps and street view to explore specific initial locations (t) we had in mind for our shoot. This meant we didn’t have to waste time and effort going to each location and seeing if it was right and conventional for our thriller, this way made it easier, quicker and convenient. Once we found the location we liked the look of we used a digital camera to take photos to upload into our planning. We also used this digital camera to take photos of evidence of us shooting, props and objects, costume, lighting (s) etc. We did this because first of all it strengthened our planning, and secondly it helped take stills of what the lighting would look like on a screen, as it may have been different to what we saw and wanted it to turn out and we could play around with it.
- 13. s t u
- 14. Collaborating/Social Media Social media has revolutionised how modern society keeps in contact with each other, and this is how my group collaborated, through social media, we created a group chat in Facebook (u) which we used to contact each other about the schedule of our shoot. Also we used it to go over details with each other and ask questions if we were unsure about something specific to our production and we couldn't contact the teacher immediately. It made us working together more efficient because of the easy availability we had with each other (v). We could send things like links, screenshots, pictures we took etc. very easily to one another. We also kept in contact through our mobile phones around the time of the shoot, so we could ring each other up and ask about availability, especially useful if nobody replied in the group chat.
- 15. u v
- 16. The Shoot The digital camera we used to record our thriller, a Panasonic HDC-TM55 (w), had a long battery life so we were able to record multiple versions of one shot and for a long time without having to recharge it; this was particularly useful for our shoot as we were in a forest far away from any of our houses so if we ran out of charge it would have been very inconvenient to have to go back and recharge it then go back to the forest. Moreover our digital camera allowed for easy and immediate playback from scenes we just recorded, so we could re-watch them immediately to see if we liked the footage or if we needed to do it again. For example when we did the shot of Billy putting away the mug and the mug covers the camera, in some of the takes the mug doesn’t fully block the lens therefore the shot was wrong, and we could see this and immediately re-do it (x). The memory card we used, a Transcend 16GB SDHC Class 6, had a lot of space so allowed for all this spare footage to be stored without us having to worry about space, which may have made us cautious on what we film if we were, this could have restricted our creativity, as we wouldn’t have been as explorative in our filming (y) so we had a lot of discarded footage. To make our production more visually appealing we used a ContuorROAM 2 digital camera (z) which had capabilities of being waterproof, so we filmed a shot underwater, making our production more exciting and have variety. All these advanced features of our cameras meant we were more efficient in filming speeding up the process, and eliminating issues that would have come up later in editing and that we may not have been able to fix, such as playback meant we could hear diegetic background noise, which would have been difficult for us to take out post production as we kept all our diegetic sound in.
- 17. w x y z
- 18. The Shoot Digital cameras have only truly been around in the past 50 years, however availability for media students like me to use them use them has only been available in the past 10/15 years. This is because 20+ years ago digital cameras were too expensive for the majority of schools and students to get their hands on, like in 1995 they mostly cost around £1000 like the Ricoh’s RDC-1. Where as digital cameras today and in the last 10/15 years have become cheaper so students like me can easily get their hands on one and film projects like our thriller opening. This is because they are cheaper; are more portable; have higher quality; and have more features to them. This has meant I and many others am able to shooter better quality and more creative shots for the audience to view.
- 19. Editing To edit our opening we used Adobe Premier Pro (1), editing a video is something I had never done before starting media studies, so doing this really revolutionised my knowledge of this technology. I learned how to add transitions like fade to black (2) or cross dissolves (3) from one clip to the next, which was especially important for our production because of its narrative and themes of visions and reality, the transitions helped for the audience understanding of what is going on. Moreover we were able to upload soundtracks from http://freemusicarchive.org/ and synchronise it with characters and key moments within our production, therefore this enhanced the viewers experience by adding intensity and building tension. We also added colour alterations like black and white (4) filters and altered the brightness to make it more visible on a scene that before would have been too dark (5). This is because black and white is incredibly conventional of thrillers like in The Third Man therefore we wanted to establish genre, and without the colour alteration on a certain scene it would have been too dark for the audience to see, therefore this was simply making sure their experience watching our opening was as best as it could have been. We got many fonts off of http://www.dafont.com/ (6) this website had thousands of fonts to chose from, and were able to import many initial fonts into our thrillers titles to see which one worked best before we chose our final one. We edited our titles to fade out each letter individually, this made it look more professional and showed off the new skills I had learned (7).
- 20. 1 2 4 3 5 6