Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation

stages?

By Molly Smith

Introduction

Throughout my media production work I used new media in the construction and research, panning and evaluation stages when creating my short film, film poster and film review. New media technologies have had a huge impact on the outcome of my media products. For instance, we used Panasonic Flip cameras with SD cards to store our footage when making the film. If technology wasn’t advancing, we would have had to use old version video cameras that need film reels and we would have had to physically cut the footage which was captured on film; therefore it would have taken us a lot longer to edit our final film and the quality wouldn’t have been as good.

Web.2.0 and 3.0 “Web 2.0 is the term given to describe a second generation of theWorld Wide Web that is focused on the ability for people tocollaborate and share information online”. Web 2.0 refers to theconnection between a computer and people; for instance, it canrefer to websites like Wikipedia and social media such as YouTube,Twitter and Facebook and it involved one-to-one contactingchanging to many-to-many in 2.0. in other words Web 1.0 was whenpeople only read websites, not interacted with them until Web 2.0made that happen.Web 3.0 isn’t here yet but people believe it will be soon and it will bea more advanced version of Web 3.0. It is described that Web 3.0 willbe able to generate raw data on there own. People believe Web 3.0will be able to make devices exchange data between each others andeven produce new information such as a music player anticipatingwhat music the user may enjoy based on their previous songselections. In addition to this, the internet will be able to do tasksfaster and more efficiently as well.When completing our production work, we used Web 2.0, especiallyfor tasks such as communicating with my group in order to meet upand film our short film, to communicate about tasks such as theplanning and research of our film and to research other films that wecould take inspiration from.

Digital TechnologyDigital technology refers to the use of digital resources to complete tasks. It refers to finding, creating, communicating and use the information in a digital context. This includes the use of different tools such as Web 2.0, digital media tools, programming tools and software applications. Digital technology is constantly improving and nowadays we do so much more with devices such as phones than what we could, say 10 years ago. For example, we can call people, text people, use the internet, play games, use voice recognition to communicate with your phone (most people call him SIRI), you can check the weather from your phone and take pics or videos and even edit them plus adding effects.

When my group and I were filming our short film, we used small Panasonic cameras with large memory and HD (High Definition) quality. If we were filming our film around 50 years ago my group and I wouldn’t have had digital cameras, the camera would be a large, heavily device that would sit on our shoulder, would have bad film quality compared to today and it would take us forever to edit our film, plus we wouldn’t have been able to add fancy effects to it in order to make some of the scenes more vibrant in colour or use transitions to make the change of scenes more effective.

Using Technology in the Research and Planning StagesIn the research and planning stages of my production work, I used many different types of digital technology to complete the research and planning stages. I used the internet to access free information like looking for information

that would help understand and plan the short film more.- I also used the internet to search for other short films and films

relating to my short film in order to gain knowledge on what short films are, the conventions of them and ideas for my own short film.

- I used a blog (WordPress) to display the research and planning I completed and had done. I used text, images and videos to display my short film research and planning.

- In addition to this, I used the internet to gain access to social networking sites so that I could communicate with my group members to discuss the story of our short film, any research that could help increase the film idea and any ideas that would help make our short film more interesting such as ideas from other films.

- My group also used Amazon (an online shopping website) to search for and buy props for our film such as the Red Riding Hood costume. I also used a scanner to scan in documents such as research notes and

sheets on to my blog.

Using Technology in the Production StageFor the making of the short film stage of the production work, we used many different technologies to make the most out of our short film. Examples are listed below:

We used a Panasonic HD camera to record footage for our film. The camera we used was really worthy compared to the past when cameras didn’t have a large storage space, poor quality, bad sound when playing footage back and lighting was a big issue. The cameras we used had a decent size storage space (we never had to delete anything in order to record more footage) and the film footage quality was really clear and looked quite professional. However, there were a few problems with the cameras that caused a few problems in the production stage such as the battery life – it battery life didn’t particularly last that long and it caused a problem because we could have been in the middle of filming in the forest and the battery would just die. Another problem we had with the cameras was the lighting. When the weather got quite dark the footage became quite fuzzy and didn’t really look good or professional.

We also used Final Cut Pro to edit our film. This piece of software was fantastic because there were so many things you can do on there such as adding effects, changing the lighting of a scene, using certain transitions in order to make the scene flow better and even zoom in shots to make them look like close ups instead of long shots or mid shots. The main problem I had with the software was that last year I struggled with the software because there are so many options on what to do, but even though this year I felt more confident with the software as I was more used to it, it still took me a long time to understand more options on there. For instance, last year I managed to learn the basics of Final Cut Pro such as the transitions and effect and how to cut a piece of footage, but this year I found out more such as how to make a scene look like it is set at night time and that you can alter the effects you add like making a scene look even more vibrant than with the effect on it.

Using Technologies in the Evaluation Stage

For my evaluations, I used many different ways to display my findings. For example, I used Prezi which enables you to add movement, images, videos and music to the presentations, I used SlideShare after creating a presentation on Microsoft PowerPoint which enabled me to add pictures and text and I also used YouTube to display a video I made for an evaluation.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, I feel that technology has helped me a lot in my production work because without technology, my production work would have been just text which would have been boring and I would have had many problems creating a short film, film poster and film review without it.