Question 4 – How did you use new media technologies in the

construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

During the construction of our production, we were able to use a wide range of new media technologies in order to create our media product to the highest possible standards. With the internet being the largest source to collect information from, we were able to use this media technology and used several websites when conducting our research. These websites included Google in order to view information on films, genres, film posters, etc and YouTube to watch clips of previous similar films and listen to previous radio trailers. We also found the website IMDB extremely useful as we were able to look in to the online database of information related to films and we found it was very easy to research similar films that all share the genre of romantic drama. By using the internet, we were able to broaden our knowledge of films and audience and use aspects of our research in order to construct some of our initial ideas.

In order for us to create our production, we had to use the knowledge we had gained from using the internet and use other media technologies in order to be well organised and keep on track with the tasks set. We decided to create a short video questionnaire and ask members of the public questions on short films, which we did so by using a HD1080i camera and edited the footage together on Final Cut Express, which gave us practice for when we came to edit our final production. We also used the software Celtx in order to create a professional looking film script.

We also created a film storyboard (see on next slide) of all of the different shots and camera angles we had decided to use in our production. We did this by taking photographs of the main characters in action using a professional Canon camera and also created this media product on Final Cut Express, again giving us more practice at using this piece of media technology. We also used the software Adobe Photoshop to create our final film poster, where we were able to create a realistic looking film poster by changing the effects on the original image and adding professional film poster font. We also used Adobe Photoshop to create our film production logo.

With the use of digital technology, to film our production we used a HD1080i camera. We uploaded the shots on to Final Cut Express, after having much practice with this during the planning of our production, and edited our film together. We found that we were able to cut different amounts of a particular shot that we didn’t need and add different transitional effects such as a fade in and fade out. We also used the software iTunes in order to listen to different soundtracks when picking suitable music for our film. We also used Final Cut Express once again when creating our radio trailer, where we firstly used a zoom recorder to record the voice over and other pieces of dialogue and uploaded it on to Final Cut Express. (See next slide for our final production).

See next slide for our radio trailer

In the evaluation stage, we used technology such as Google documents to create a fill in questionnaire on our film, which we then posted on to social networking sites such as Facebook for people to fill it out. We were also able to use Google documents to view our audience feedback from the questionnaire and see what others had to say about our film.

During every stage in creating our media product, we continuously used Google blogger in order to show our research which we carried out and how we planned our production by uploading images, videos, links, scripts, posters etc and finally our final version of our film. I feel that there was no particular examples of technology which obstructed or prevented our creativity when creating our film as we mainly had access to every piece of media technology we needed in order to successfully research, plan, construct and evaluate our production.