How did you use media Technologies in the

construction and research, planning and evaluation

stages?

The Blog

One of the most successful forms of technology that I have used for my advanced portfolio is creating a blog on the website blogger http://www.blogger.com . My A2 blog was where I was able to present the process for my creation of my trailer, a way to store my research, planning and evaluation stages of my production. Each process stage was presented in a chronological order, it is a simplistic way to get the creative process across accessing all my different databases from different locations. It is easy to update the information as well as edit all the different pages, I found that uploading different links as well as importing different viral videos from a range of different websites was very easy in achieving a visual affect. These different visual affects come from such websites like YOUTUBE, SLIDESHARE and POWERPOINT. We organised our blogs through 4 different pages, separating different ideas as well as directing others to various aspects to a blog.

How did it impact on our research of our characters?

• There are various way we went about researching into our characters, I would say one of the most successful ways and influential to us would be through second hand research. We were able to use such websites like YOUTUBE and look how they perceived and characterised different characters throughout their trailers, we specially focused on Bullet Boy a British made social realism film which focuses on characters from different ethnic backgrounds. As we knew we would also have our main character with a different ethnicity we found it very useful to look at how they are mediated through film. Incorporating there representations of different ethnicities into our own work, Ill Manors was also a really important key study as it also included different races throughout however although Ill Manors definitely portrays the stereotypical norms in society and meets audiences expectations and visual pleasures it also subverts them. Creating characters that are breaking through the self fulfilling prophecy and negative labels placed on them which we felt would be majorly important and beneficial to also present characters in a different light challenging the views.

• Another research method we found extremely useful would be social media networking, such as FACEBOOK and TWITTER different websites that allow a wide range of individuals connecting with one another, a way to help them identify themselves, and share their daily lives online. We felt if we were going to create clear strong characterisation, creating characters that people feel they can connect to and relate to we would have to have a look at the young public ourselves. We went across FACEBOOK and TWITTER looking at what was interesting to young people, how they spent their times and in what ways they were identifying themselves. Weather that be through the latest fashion trends or through their friendship and life experiences. This had to one of the most productive ways to gain insight to young people it was thoroughly enjoyable and helped us shape the ways young people living in British society really behave like.

We know that the hybrid genre of social realism really focuses on portraying the true reality of those

living on the British Streets, knowing this we knew we would have to go on different news websites

and have at what issues were circling the British Streets. We found that one of the major issues

hitting Britain today is this idea of gang culture, young lads are getting involved in deviant behaviour

in large groups. This most definitely made us want to portray the “gang culture” in our work, as we

know that is it such a hard hitting contemporary issue.

We also know that it is important to hit on issues that may not be portrayed world wide but are

Issues that surround adolescents, idea of the break down of a relationship, which is something that

majority of young people and adults a like have experienced, as welll the strong bond of friendship

Were all different issues that we felt would be really good to include in our film trailer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19462265

How to target the audience?• It was really difficult to distinguish how we were going to target

the audience however we knew it was important to attract the widest type of audience possible. We didn’t want to reveal to much of our narrative or give anything away so instead we created a questionnaire asking young people what they want to see from a film and what various aspects makes them want to go watch one. This was very important cause we really need to reach out to the target audience to get the viewing, we also asked numerous people over FACEBOOK asking fellow friends and those who use the network a lot what they think a good social realism film should contain and what codes and conventions we must upheld. We also put the trailer on YOUTUBE this was a productive method in getting wide audiences to view our film, hopefully generating people to comment on what they thought was the positives and the negatives to our trailer. The preview of our film at the electric cinema was also really vital in doing this they used a wide projection which fitted a basic cinema screen, seeing the film on such a large canvas was really beneficial as we were able to spot any mistakes that perhaps we were unable to notice before hand, as well we could see first hand peoples reactions to the different use of shots, editing and how they felt towards the character.

What did we film with?• When it came to filming the production we used a hand held camera and a tripod to

film all of our shots, the fact that we didn’t use the most professional camera work actually worked in our favourite because the cameras really helped show a realistic portrayal. As the camera was hand held it was really easy to carry about, as well it wasn’t heavy so doing hand held shots was really easy and accessible. I found that using this camera was a huge success when it came down to importing the shots on a computer drive or on a USB we were able to do it no time and it was safe and secure. The tri pod played a massive part too, for the whole filming to look professional we knew that when filming it needed to be really steady so the tri-pod enabled us to do that and provided versatility to the different shots. However me and my partner did find that we did struggle with sound and as many of our shots were filmed outside the wind really intervened with the dialogue, stopping the characters dialogue being clear to those who watch it. Due to the sound problem we decided to use a micro phone and get the actors to speak over an external microphone so then when it came to editing we could sync their voices on top of the shot, although this definitely delayed time having to re-do the dialogue it was very much worth it.

Editing software

• The editing software we used throughout the production of our film trailer was power director 10 this was a really good software site easy to understand and use. It has plenty of different editing techniques that we used throughout our own production in both AS and A2. The editing software provided us with various affects for example throughout our trailer we were able to put between shots different transitions this was really success in making the continuity of the trailer the different fades helped the move from one shot to another, providing interest. We used fade the most over the slow romantic parts of our trailer this was because the fades create this idea of time passing which we wanted to portray to people that the characters were falling for each other over a period of time. Power director is quick and easy to splitting and trimming the shots is really vital in perfecting the editing on your trailer making it look professional splitting and trimming shot was really easy and quick to do without any problems. As well powedirector provides a tool bar which offers a range of different options you can apply to your shot, power tools being one of them this enabled us to stabilise a shot, enhance the quality or the speed shot. We were even able to change the contrast and colour tone, so for shots that we wanted to create a darker mood to we were able to lower the lighting which provided the tense atmosphere and mood.