By Vishoswastik Ravindran

Question 4: How did you use

Media Technologies in The

Construction And Research,

Planning And Evaluation

stages?

What is New Media

Technology?New media technology is to demand access to content on

a digital device, like internet, video games, computer

multimedia, websites, DVDs and CD's, so its basically

anything that transfers information through digital

technologies. It was established in the 20th century so it is

very current and relevant. From the computer, came the

web, then came social networks and web pages e.g.

Facebook and blogspot. Obviously "New" media

technology is media that is current like DVDs, smart

phones, MP3 players which are all media of today.

During the pre production phase of our course I used the

video viewing and uploading site, YouTube to analyse two

short films relating to the genre of our short film.

YouTube was also used in the during the production of the

film as I watched several short films for new inspiration for

my own production whilst looking out for codes and

conventions.

What New Media Technologies did I use

throughout the course of this project?

YouTube- Post Production

I used YouTube in the post production stage of the course

as we had to upload our finished film onto YouTube, as

well as annotating a copy of the video for the evaluation

stage. YouTube was also very useful for tutorials and such

on things like Cinematography, editing for both the film

and ancillary tasks. Through these tutorials my skills on

software's such as Photoshop were improved.

Twitter and Facebook

Using Twitter and Facebook during our production was

another way we gained a greater audience and better

publicity for our film. These social networks helped us

promote and get feedback for our film from our target

audience.

These social networks were also used as a form of

communication over the holiday period where we didn't

see much of each other as there was no school, so we

would directly message them on these two platforms.

Blogger

Blogger was used throughout the entire production of our

coursework as had two blogger accounts, one was for the

group and one was an individual blog.

Our group blog was designed for everyone to upload their

work that they had completed according to the production

schedule so we could keep up with what we had and

hadn't done. All members had access to the group blog so

view and upload documents whenever they wished to.

Our personal blog was used to present our ancillary tasks,

analysis of short films and our evaluation.

Bubbl.us

This was used in our pre-production stage of the film, it

was used to brainstorm our initial ideas on the creation of

the film. Using Bubbl.us helped present our ideas a lot

more clearly and made it very presentable as well as

creative on our actual blog.

HD Video Camera

This camera enabled us to shoot our entire production,

we chose the video camera due to their high quality which

adds to the chic touch of the finished film and shows

professionalism and used to put the footage onto the

computer.

DSLR Camera

The DSLR was used to take pictures for recce pictures

and also for ancillary tasks and location and costume

notes. Using the DSLR meant that our images would be

of high quality which again adds to the overall classy look.

We also chose this camera as it was lightweight and

easily portable when we had to go to far locations to film.

Mac Book Pro

This laptop was used throughout the course. The Mac

Book was used to order all work and saving work,

meaning back up for files etc. With experience with Mac

Books it was easy to use the laptops alongside the good

battery life, workload seemed lessened. We were able to

do work on the laptops for long durations of time, meaning

no work was lost due to battery life.

Sound Cloud

Sound Cloud was used to find music for our production

e.g. sound effects like tyres screeching. It was also used

for presenting our music and sound in our production.

Sound was easy to embed from Sound Cloud and put

onto the blog. Sounds were easy to find using the search

bar and the overall website was easy to use which meant

uploads were down faster.

Final Cut Pro

Final Cut was used by the editor in the editing process of

the production, it was used to showcase our raw footage

and review the footage before juxtaposing them in order

to make the short film. Final Cut has things such as colour

correction in order to change the colour of footage and

adding credits, sounds and titles to the film. Also logging

and capturing the footage was done using this software

as well as rendering footage.

USB

The fact that we all had USBs meant that we could easily

save all our work onto a portable device that we could

take anywhere and use it at home over the holidays.

Saving the work on the USB meant we had back up for

our work so it was less likely to get lost or deleted if a

computer or our blog crashed.

Photoshop CS5

This software was used in the Ancillary stage of our

course, to make our poster and film review. Even though it

was my first time using the software, I found it very easy

to manoeuvre after about 3 turns which was very fast and

easy. Tutorials on sites like YouTube helped and also

others who have used Photoshop before offered advice.

Once I was comfortable with Photoshop, I could feel

everything come together in my Ancillary tasks and ended

with a professional finish at the end in my opinion.

Slide Share/Slide Rocket

Slide Share was used to upload PowerPoint files. This

helped with the creativity of the PowerPoints and

ultimately making them more presentable.

Slide Rocket is very similar to Slide Share however

presentations could be made straight from the site itself

and then embedded and then put onto the blog.

Scribd

Scribd was used to present our word documents, it was

also used as a form of uploading our word documents

onto our blog. There were problems such as Scribd being

blocked at school due to maintenance issues however it

was up and running again in no time, however it was very

easy to use.

Photobucket

Photobucket was used to present the recce pictures,

using this software meant that my pictures were all

presented better and clearer. Even though this was the

first time I used the site, I found it very easy to use and

embed onto the blog.

Microsoft Word

Word was used throughout the course for worded

documents. In using word, we would upload files onto

Scribd and then embed it onto the blog making it more

presentable. On Word, we could change many things

about the document, like, font, colour, size, images,

tables, graphs.

Microsoft PowerPoint

This was used to present slide shows rather than just

using word documents, which added to the presentation.

Using PowerPoint meant we uploaded via Slide Share or

Slide Rocket and then onto our blog. It also allowed us to

add images, animations and transitions to the

presentation.

Prezi

Prezi was very useful in creating creative presentations as

it formats work in a very ambiguous way. It allows you to

customise presentations by adding pictures, text, links,

videos and more. Prezi is quite confusing to use however

the finished product is worth the hassle.

iPhone 4S

We used the iPhone to record voice overs for the dialogue

in the film. This was easy to do as we know how to

function the iPhone as we all had one. It was also very

simple to upload the sound file onto the computer by

using the USB cable.

Sound Recorder

We used the sound recorder to record atmospheric sound

that surrounded the area in which we filmed in. This was

done to produce a more eerie mood to the film. The

recorder was very confusing at first and hard to set up.

However after using it once, it got easier each time and it

was simple to upload onto the computer by using a simple

USB cable for the recorder.