Q:4 New tecnologies in reseacrch, construction and planning stages

Q4:

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

We had to use new technologies at all stages when creating our film. For example we had easy access to technologies such as the internet. While researching our genre we used search engines such as Google and Youtube. This worked out easy for us as we gained knowledge and research on our genre and character profiles by simply typing in keywords into the search engines such as the lottery, chavs and comedy. For example we typed chavs into Google and definitions came up of what chavs are which gave us a better understanding of how to create our character profiles. Also images came up and gave us ideas for our characters costumes. This also helped my research on cinematography. For example we were able to access images from the film Amelie in order to analyse the way the director and cinematographer gave the film a sense of realism. We also used youtube to watch other media text similar to our narrative and genre. For example on youtube we found clips from Charlie Chaplin film which gave us ideas on how to use codes and conventions of a comedy.

We also had to use the internet to create our own blog to post all our work which then enabled us to receive audience feedback online. We used the blog as a digital folder which adapted us to using new technologies in media. However during the construction of our film it was vital that our production group kept good communication with each other. We did this by using Facebook and Hotmail as a free and easy way to communicate, share our ideas and responsibilities in a digital written form. Then we soon realised that a much easier form of communicating would be to use Skype as a free video and audio chat to eliminate the process of writing to each other. This helped us to communicate after school hours to spend more time planning and perfecting our film.

While contrasting our film during production we had to use the Canon XH-A1 camera to film it. While doing this a learnt a lot about the camera and how to use it. For example at AS we needed to create a blurry effect in one of our scenes so we added it to our film when editing the shots, however at A2 when using the camera I built confidence using it. For example I felt more comfortable using the camera hand held to get the low angles we wanted for example in the shot where our characters throw the newspaper in a ball towards the camera. I achieved this by placing the camera on my thighs to get the right angle we wanted for that shot.

We also had to adapt to using editing software’s for example Adobe premium pro. When editing our film we wanted to create a split screen effect so we had to change the positioning and time re-mapping of our shots the make the shots smaller next to each other and make the actions in time with each other. This was difficult as we had to cut and trim shots on the timeline that were too long or not at the right tempo as the rest of the sequence. This affected both of the soundtracks that we placed on audio 1 as they did not match the tempo of the shots we placed on the video 1 channel.