Evaluation Question 4

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


RESEARCH & PLANNING
We used media technologies during the whole process of our coursework, varying on the task we were completing.

We used YouTube frequently to enable us to not only carry out our research into genre, which really helped towards inspiration, but also when posting our final teaser trailer to gain our own feedback and compare our trailer to what we had previously been inspired by. This enabled us to see whether or not we were challenging or conforming to the codes and conventions of our genre.

Survey Monkey played a huge role when we needed to find out what the audience would want from the type of film trailer we wanted to create. We were able to discover the thoughts from the audience we were looking for to help with our ideas for our trailer.

When planning our teaser trailer, we had many thoughts and ideas about where our location for shots such as the swing shot could be, we therefore often used GoogleMaps to decide on the best location. It would be decided on factors such as whether it was easily accessible, whether one of us lived near by or whether the swing actually looked effective after we had put it on a tree.

When researching for typography for our trailer and ancillary tasks, we used the website 'DaFont'. This was so we could pick a font that would suit our genre. We eventually went for a simple typewriter font. This was because it gives the impression of a news case, or missing child case which was ideal for our ideas.

CONSTRUCTION

When filming our teaser trailer, we used the camera Nikon D5000. Not only was this beneficial for us because we were able to shoot in a high quality that would look effective, but we were also able to use it to take our photographs for our blog, webpage and our poster.

Not only did we use a good camera, we also used a iPhone. This was so that we could create a 'homevideo' effect, making sure the shots werent staged and looked as realistic as possible.

EDITING AND POST-PRODUCTION

Whilst editing, we used many programmes to carry out our tasks, with the most important being iMovie. iMovie played a massive role when conducting our teaser trailer. We were able to add many effects, such as text on shots to make them seem even more home video, and even better than doing it from a real video camera as we could pick specific dates which were beneficial to us.

We were then able to also use blank screens to show the progress of time or even having flashbacks. Accompanying much of this was TV noise which made the home video shots more realistic.

To use our typewriter effect, we used Microsoft PowerPoint to do so. We added the typewriter effect to our text, then used the screen recording on Quicktime to then put it onto iMovie for our trailer. This was the quickest, easiest and most successful way of getting our text to appear like it is being typed.

When getting videos of things such as our idents or even bits of music, we used many YouTube converters. This meant that our trailer could seem more realistic as we were able to research into idents used in films for the same, or similar genres.

We downloaded music off youtube and other sites such as Soundcloud. We had to overlap and delete or add sections to the pieces, we did this on Garageband. This was so that the sound would specifically fit our trailer and build tension when necessary. We also used Garageband to increase or decrease the tempo.

POSTER

when creating our poster, we used the camera to take the shots, and later uploaded them to iPhoto. This then enabled us to work our way through the many photographs we took to find the best ones that would work well as a poster for our film.

We initially used Photoshop to work on our layering of photographs when designing and thinking of our ideas.

We later began to use online editing programmes such as Picnik. This was due to the range of effects available to us. Not only were there so many, they were also very simple to use. we tried out a variety of edits to pick the best photograph.
We tried effects on the photograph of the young boy to make him looked possessed, which we really struggled with. Eventually we came up with the idea of putting red rings round his iris. this happened to be successful, later leading to us using one of the eyes as the letter 'o' in the title of The Unforgiven.

We returned to Photoshop to do the professional looking editing to the poster, such as the credits at the bottom and making sure the brightness and contrast were correct.

WEBPAGE

During the process of creating our webpage, we used the website 'Wix'. This enabled us to start from a blank design to make it however we wanted.

Originally, we would have liked to have a simple website with a moving swing in the background by using a gif image. This ended up being unsuccessful and bad quality. So we resorted to using an opening to our webpage which would then lead to a simple page, showing our trailer and having buttons linking to popular social networking sites.

The opening of our webpage was created using iMovie.

EVALUATION

once completing our teaser trailer and ancillary tasks, our job was to get our pieces to our chosen audience. As social networking sites are so popular, it was the best place for us to start. We opened Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube accounts to get our work out.

Having all these accounts has enabled us to get feedback on our work, allowing us to then develop not only our ideas but our work further.

We use Twitter to keep our followers up to date on what we are doing next, We use Facebook to promote our work, letting them like what they see, and Flickr gave us the opportunity to post photographs of our filming and our poster ideas etc.