EVALUATION OF USE OF

NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGY

How can we define

‘New Media Technology’?

• Because it’s digital, it is therefore both interactive and

collaborative, particularly because of the internet.

• It’s global - it can reach audiences worldwide whilst

also creating a new shared media culture.

• It changes restrictions on time and space - you can

view/use it any time, any place.

• It’s controversial - W.Russell Neuman suggests that

whilst new media may have the ability to push us in one

direction, socio-economic to pull us in back in the other

direction. In other words, new media may make us

think of technology in one way, but money and habit

can make us think in a different way.

Research and Planning using

New Media Technology

Allows easy access to view, share and

store work

The blog allows for anyone to

view and comment on work.

This enables us to share and

ideas among ourselves but also

with a potentially global public.

Blogging is global and

interactive in nature and is

therefore a good example of

a use of new media

technology.

Format of Blog

Multimedia format meaning we can

use text images video

presentations, PowerPoints etc.

Can display our work in many

ways making it more interesting to

research from then solely text.

Range of formats and

interactivity are also classic new

media ideas.

Use of Search Engines

Advantages of using Search Engines;

● Ease of access to information.

● There’s a huge volume of information, which can be

controlled through filter searches.

● You can come across something that you weren’t

looking for originally that can be a better idea/inspiration

than what you already had.

● All the information is free.

The internet is the basis

of new media ways of

thinking and working.

Advantages of Internet

• Sites like YouTube allowed us to access hundreds of

psychological thriller trailers to conduct our research on.

• We were also able to find trailers of films within our genre

but we hadn’t heard about/seen before through YouTube’s

recommendation function.

Advantages of Internet

• Google’s comparison function allowed us to type in

general terms like ‘psychological thriller’ and get lists

of many films listed under that genre, with links to

alternate websites available.

Access to Information

• Search boxes on sites like Google and more specific

film sites like IMBd allowed us to gather/find specific

information that we needed for our research very

easily.

New media

technology makes

the work of

billions available

to all.

Opening up Unexpected

Avenues of Research

• Using search engines increases the chances of finding

something you weren’t looking for.

When looking through

psychological thriller

posters we found a

link to the poster for

the film ‘Carrie’, which

we then ended up

using as inspiration.

• Because of the volume of disorganised information we

often came across useless information we then had to

sift through to get to what we really wanted e.g. random

pictures of celebrities.

Disadvantages of Internet Research

There is no clear

hierarchy of

responsibility for

new media –

everything is

reliant on

goodwill, co-

operation and

trust.

Disadvantages of Internet Research

● Lots of user generated content, e.g. fan trailers, fan

images/posters, fan written articles, so some of the

content may not be from reliable sources

● Hard to know if the source is reliable as the content

isn’t really regulated.

● We used freeplay music to

find a song to use, as many

of the songs we wanted to

use were subject to

copyright.

● All the songs were free

● There was a really wide

selection of songs in each

sub group

● Was easy to use and could

search for different types of

music, eg. pop, rock etc.

● However there was a

seemingly unending amount

of music and so we didn’t

know when to stop looking.

Finding Music on the Internet

Again, there can be too much

content available in new media in a

disorganised format.

Storyboarding

We created an animatic because we felt it is a useful tool for getting a good visual

representation of the way our coursework was likely to look. We created it by photographing

our storyboard shots and editing them together using Final Cut Express.

Had all the post-

its available

allowing us to

experiment with

the possible

order of the

scenes.

Here we made a

voiceover for the

scenes to try and

guage how long the

scenes will be.

Also added music

tracks.

New media allows for convincing

replicas before making the real

thing.

Able to add effects and transitions

That could work well for the real scenes.

Problems with Animatic

• Could take up a lot of time drawing each camera

angle as there was so many shots

• Sometimes our drawings were not very clear and

led to some confusion when arranging them in

Final Cut Express

• Is still only a plan. We came to find that we

changed a few scenes after when we came to

filming because we realized they realistically

wouldn’t work.

New media cannot solve all problems or prevent you

from simply changing your mind.

Planned Use of Social Media

While planning we

planned a lot more than

we needed, this was

especially the case while

researching and planning

our overall promotional

campaign

Most of our planned

campaign needed the

use of social

networking sites.

This is a key aspect

of new media

technology which

really shows how

collaborative and

audience-involving

media now needs to

be.

Social Media for Promotion

Promotional Campaign - Twitter

Twitter is a

good way

of

promoting

a film.

On Twitter you are able to see what other

people tweet including feedback on films,

trailers, magazines etc.

By trending a film by hash tagging you

can let people from around the world

see it.

Twitter

probably

represents

the

ultimate

sharing

capacity of

new media

technology

Promotional Campaign- Facebook

On Facebook

you are able to

make pages for

you film were

people can

share and like

all over the

world

By

speaking about

your film on

Facebook this

creates interest

The value of new media as a promotional tool is undoubtedly

huge, it has a strong commercial element which will not

appeal to all users/ critics who believe in the purity of art /

culture.

Promotional Campaign- YouTube

You are able to download your own

trailers for people to see and

therefore promote your film

You are also able

to receive

comments with

feedback

It is free to

watch so

therefore you

are receive

feedback from

any kind of

person

Use of New Media Technology

in Construction

Photoshop

Layering Images

We added

layer to the

image to add

a bright green

effect to the

eye.

We added a

layer of

smoke to our

magazine so

that it looked

like it was

coming from

her eyes

Manipulating Images

We

extracted

the hand

and

resized it

from a

different

photo.

We resized

and

repositioned

the main

image as it

was too big

Using Photoshop

These tools

are used to

achieve

different

effects

For example this

tool is used for

cropping

Manovitch associates

new media with a

“creativity of selection”

– it is creative to

choose the right tool to

use.

Disadvantages

If you do not know how to use this

programme this can make doing you work

very time consuming

It is hard to know what tool is which

For some of the tools you will need a very

steady hand to use them well

Disadvantages

We found it very hard and time

consuming finding what font

we would like as there are so

many to chose from

We also

found it hard

to find the

right colour

We ended up working longer than we thought

due to theses limitations and therefore other

work had to suffer

New media

technology is not

always quicker or

more convenient!

Advantages of using

Final Cut Express

• We were able to cut and move our clips as we wished,

without risking losing any of our footage if we didn’t like

what we’d tried out as all the changes were reversible.

• This made us more experimental with changing around

the order of shots etc as we knew everything could be

returned to its original state at the click of a button.

One of the key advantages of

new media technology is that

it allows for reversibility –

changes made are not

permanent and this helps to

encourage creativity.

Manipulation of Images

• Being able to layer clips and audio

allowed us to see parts of the piece as

the final product i.e having the music

matched with the clips made it easier

to see how the final product would

look.

New media is experimental – you can

play around with material and use pre-

packaged effects to create ideas you

could not generate entirely by yourself.

Manipulation of Images

• The layering tool also allowed

us to put effects on images that

we used to make them look like

surveillance pictures.

• The effects also allowed us to

let the audience know that

certain scenes were

visions/hallucinations that

hadn’t yet happened.

Manipulation of Sound

• We were able to change the volume of our diegetic sound so the

character’s dialogue was louder than our background non diegetic

sound. This would have been a problem otherwise as some scenes

where the camera was far away it was hard to hear the sound.

• We were also able to increase the volume of the non diegetic

sound at different intervals to build up the suspense and then

abruptly cut it off at the end.

Evaluation of New Media

Technology for Evaluation

Blogger for Evaluation

● Blogger made it very easy to get

feedback on our work from different

sources by allowing views to make

comments on posts we had made.

● Anyone can comment and give you

feedback

● However the feedback was all from

media students so we missed out on the

ideas of the general public as they did

not leave comments.

New media has great interactive

potential; this potential isn’t

always realised in fact.

Filters

● You can see anyone

else’s work and use it

for inspiration or give

them feedback

● You can see anyone’s

work by clicking on

their name.

● You’re able to reply to

any comments

immediately/wherever

you are.

Constant Feedback Throughout

• We were able to constantly

update our blog with new

improvements we’d made

on our work and this

meant that we were getting

feedback at every stage

rather than just the end

when it may have been too

late to change things.

Constant feedback is a

vital aspect of new media

technology.

Choice of Format - SlideShow

● It was easy to create

collaboratively as a

group, we were able

to split up the work

load and then merge

everything together

into one slideshow.

● We were able to

share this slideshow

by uploading it to

SlideShare and

uploading the links

to our blog. Using a slideshow we were also able to

provide a lot of visual information so the

whole piece wasn’t solely-text based.

Choice of Format –

Audience Feedback

• We recorded a group

discussion evaluating the

usefulness and effects that

our audience feedback had on

our work. We then edited it in

Final Cut Express, adding in

images of what we were

talking about e.g. films etc.

• We felt that this was a good

format to chose for our

evaluation as we were able to

add extra necessary visual

pieces of information into the

recording to provide a better

idea of what we were talking

about.

Choice of Format – Contact Sheet

This way of

presenting work was

good for allowing us

to work collaboratively

(creating the contact

sheets on Photoshop)

and individually

(writing our own posts

about these sheets).

Choice of Format – YouTube Tutorial

This way of

presenting work was

good because it is an

established way of

giving and receiving

advice online and is

used by many

thousands every day.