Evaluation - Question 4

During the research, construction and evaluation of our short film, film poster, and magazine review different technologies aided us to make them of the best quality we could which would not have been decades before when these new technologies were to available or as easily accessible to students.

Firstly, research and planning of the three products used three different technologies. The Internet to begin with was used to collect research on aspect such as genres, conventions of short film, film poster and magazine articles. With the Internet this was able to be done within the school premises as well as our homes making it much more accessible and used on a wider basis. . Before the Internet was introduced to society, or even students, the only way to collect research would have been to go to a library and find a book which is time consuming, limited with information and opening and closing times of the library. Also, the Internet allowed us to take images from the Internet and embed them into our blog posts in order to give examples of the research found or add a visual aspect to the blog making it more aesthetically pleasing.

Another new technology that aided the research and planning of our products is YouTube. Through the use of YouTube we were able to find, watch and analyse existing short films such as "Virus" and "Gravity", in order to note short film conventions and be able to have ideas for our own short film. Before the introduction of YouTube these short films would probably seize to exist or if they did would only be accessible via film festivals or independent cinemas.

Finally, the blog itself is a new technology which was used for the research and planning pieces for the three products without the chance of accidentally misplacing or losing them. By having the blog we were able to keep all content in one place, and even edit it and update information posted regularly.

The production of the short film, film poster, and magazine review used two types of new technology one of which being SD cameras compared to the DV cameras previously used for AS. These SD cameras were much more reliable to use as when using the DV cameras sometimes footage over ran one another or the tape used would make the footage more grainy at some parts than others. With the SD cameras all footage was stored safely on a card that hard a large memory capacity. Also the footage filmed, though not the highest quality was better quality than the DV cameras.
(put footage of both cameras)

Yet this did not affect our group since the grainy footage added to the serious, hard hitting genre we had which follows the conventions of British films as they are usually quite dark and grainy to convey realism.

(footage from our short film)

orange hue created by using
flash on a digital camera

the use of photoshop CS5
to take away the orange hue
and make it look more professional

Next, digital cameras were used for the photography for our film poster which helped as the photos came out with a fairly glossy look making them look much more professional. 

However, one problem that arose what that the flash would have been helpful to use in order to have brighter, clearer images, but they added an orange hue to the photos which would have been difficult to edit therefore the flash could not be used limiting the amount of photos we had to choose from (trial and error). Nevertheless, these were later edited by the photo manipulating software 'Photoshop' in order to create the desired look.

Imovie 11

Imovie HD6

Moving onto the post-production process, a variety of new technology was used by our group in order to edit and create our final products. To begin with, I-movie 11 was used for A2 compared to I-movie HD6 which was used for AS. When using this non-linear editing software, it gave us more freedom to begin editing when we did not have all the footage which saved us time, to move certain footage around and change where they were placed, make changes to all footage without the original being destroyed in case we wanted to make more changes or go back to the original footage which was done on numerous occasions. Also, compared to I-movie HD6, there were more text effects and transitions which gave us more variety in choosing the desire look for our short film. 

However, a problem that we found was that certain effects that could have enhanced our short film were no longer available on the newer version of I-movie such as 'ghosting'.

Next, for the film poster, we used Photoshop CS5. This was extremely effective as it allowed us to use diverse effects and colour changes to develop the photography used and make the poster look professional as if it was from the industry itself. The use of Photoshop CS5 had successful effects as it gave us the chance to create an aesthetically pleasing poster, using colours which immediately portrayed the themes and mood of the film as well as gave us the tools to make it look rather dark without affecting the image which conveyed the realistic, dark conventions of British film. 

For the magazine review, the software used was pages. Though fairly complicated to use, after practice, we were able to design and create our own layout for the magazine review in an accurate manner as it aided to create the layout with precision to make it look more professional.

A problem we found was trying to fill the white spaces in order to follow the conventions of magazine film reviews but the software made it easy to change font sizes, add breakout boxes and images to fill the space. 

Finally, the internet was used for the post-production of the short film as it provided our film with copy-right free music. When the internet was not available, any production of film had to record the scores and sound effects themselves and manually add them to the film which would waste time and be costly.

Furthermore, new technologies were used by our group for the evaluation of all three products. The internet was used once more used for this process of the work. It gave us the opportunity to get images to make our blog posts and podcasts come to life as well as to blog the evaluation to the blog site making it easy to store and upload from any location.

YouTube was also used again however this time rather than using it for existing short films, it was used to upload our own short film to distribute it to our target audience for free but also to collect audience feedback in order to improve our short film to make it even more suited for the audience. For individual producers such as ourselves, the internet was beneficial for distribution. We do not have the funds to play our film at independent cinemas or to allow people to view them on major sites as the BBC. Also, the internet allows us to distribute our short film to a larger amount of our audience, even those who were not initially our target audience. Many independent producers use the internet for cheap distribution in the hope to be recognised by mainstream directors. 

Finally, I-movie 11 was used to create the podcasts to evaluate all products in a unique and interesting manner rather than merely having text to read however was a time consuming process.

Over all, without the new technologies available to us our short film, film poster and magazine review would not have been completed with such freedom, easy access to information and allowed us to enhance them with new equipment and soft wares. Also, without the internet distribution for our film would have been problematic rather than the free distribution we were able to use due to the internet.