1. 4. How did you use new media
technologies in the construction and
research, planning and evaluation
stages?
2. Preproduction
During the research stage we used internet resources to
look at existing media texts. Web used sites such as Vimeo,
YouTube and Facebook to watch a wide range of short
films made by professionals, fellow students and people
who make films purely for their own enjoyment. We also
used IMDB as it allowed us to view an extremely wide
number of films from almost any genre. It meant that we
could read reviews from both professional critics and
everyday viewers. We used this information to identify what
our audience would expect and enjoy in a psychological
drama and what people saw as clichés. It also features
posters and trailers for the films, which was helpful for us
when researching and designing our ancillary texts. This
website also suggests similar films to what you're looking at
so we were shown films that we had never considered
looking at before that actually turned out to be very similar
to what we were trying to achieve.
3. Production
After we had completed the majority of our research we
compiled it all on to blogger, which meant that our ideas
were in one easily accessible place that would help us to
keep organised throughout the process. Because we
could all see each other's posts, we could help each
other by leaving comments or adding to what they had
already put. This was especially important when we had
assigned each other independent tasks. Also, in the early
stages of the project, we created a Facebook Messenger
chat, which allowed us to communicate from both
computers and mobile devises as a group to help and
give guidance to one another as well as sharing ideas
outside of college. Once we had finalised our idea, we
used Celtx to write the script. We used Google Docs to
create audience questionnaires so that we could receive
the feedback that was essential to improving and
developing our film. We formatted this feedback on
Microsoft Excel so that it was clearly presented and our
analysis of the results were put onto Microsoft PowerPoint.
4. Filming and Editing
We recorded the shots on a Sony HD 200 camera. We were already
familiar with how to use this camera as to how to use this camera as we
used them in our first year production. However, we still thought it would
be a good idea to do practice shots and multiple versions of each shot
in case something was wrong with the camera set up of the shot wasn’t
framed correctly.
We uploaded our footage on to Final Cut Express, which we had also
used the year before to edit our first project. We had to advance our
knowledge of the program as we needed to include sound bridges and
colour corrections to give our film a professional finish.
I also had to create the glitches on Adobe After Effects, which is a
program that I had never used before. I watched tutorials online to get
and idea of how it works and how to create realistic looking glitches.
When I became more comfortable with it I was able to experiment more
and try to figure things out on my own, which meant that I could create
unique effects that were most suitable for our film.
5. Post Production
After we had uploaded the rough cut and final film we used Google
Docs to as our audience for feedback. We posted the two versions of
the on YouTube as it is one of the most popular video watching sites so it
reaches a larger number of people. We shared the film on Facebook
along with a feedback form so that we could get feedback from an
even wider audience. I announced the release of the film on my
Snapchat story.