Evaluation Question 4

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Jouvan's response:


Media technologies played a vital role in the construction of my group’s coursework, a variety of media technologies were used at each stage of our work to ensure that it was completed at a high standard. Media technologies were used at the development and pre-production stage for our planning and research, production/filming stage for our teaser trailer, print production/advertising stage for our movie poster and magazine front cover and finally at our post production stage for the evaluation. 

Planning and Research (Development and Pre Production)     

Blogger is a publishing service where our groups work was presented. This  website technology stored all of   our posted images, links, videos and our movie products. Blogger was an easy to use software which I found relatively easy to present my work on, i was familiar with Blogger as i used it to  store my AS media coursework. The below screenprint shows the Blogger dashboard and the posting page.

 

I used a blackberry curve 8520 to take pictures during the  beginning of my coursework, I took pictures of test film shots where our group member Harry was acting in, these pictures were posted on Blogger by using a blackberry usb which allowed me to transfer the images I took to Blogger http://ctkmed1.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/preliminary-filming-images.html . Other website technology we used to present our work was through social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to reach a large audience and update our progression. 

I used a variety of media technology software during my coursework, Microsoft Excel was one which I used mainly for audience research results to create graphs as a way of presenting my work. Below is an example of how I used  Microsoft Excel as a media technology software to present my work. 

  
Below is a video I recorded which shows how I used the internet to research example film posters, magazines and teaser trailers by using internet technologies such as YouTube and Google search engines. 

YouTube was very effective and useful in my groups planning and research work because it allowed us to upload test shots which could then be posted onto Blogger. Our group also found YouTube useful when researching teaser trailers because YouTube has a large variety of teaser trailers to watch from. The video below shows a video which my group uploaded to Blogger from Youtube.

Another media technology which my group used were scanners, my group used scanners during our planning and research work in order to transfer sketches to Blogger, the following link is an example of a sketch we scanned and uploaded to Blogger.  http://ctkmed1.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/magazine-drafts.html .

Elizabeth's response:

Movie Teaser Trailer (Production/Filming)

Initially, we came up with an idea of a teaser and went to film some shots ourselves at our group member Jouvan’s house. However, in these shots the lighting was quite poor so we had no choice but to re-film so we could get the best marks we could. The second time we went to film we actually went into a studio which was quite a good experience in general. Below is the teaser trailer we constructed initially:

Before we could film anything we had to construct a storyboard and shooting script of which gave us a guideline to follow when filming. As a group we had already allocated Adeola and Jouvan as the actors. Over time individually and collectively we all ‘messed around’ with various cameras including our phones to get to grips with actually filming so that when we finally filmed it wouldn’t be as difficult. These are some examples of the shots we filmed.

Various test shots were filmed from tilt shots, to zooming in and out shots and close up shots etc. We found it critical to focus on mastering these shots as we would be using a lot of them in our teaser trailer and the photos used for our film poster and magazine cover. Another thing we got better over time was getting the camera, in this case the CANON …into focus always. The image below on the left is of our group member Adeola which is of a poor quality and it is not in focus, a few months later the image on the right was taken. This new image is in focus however, it is very dark but it does show the improvement now that we have all become more familiarised with the camera.

Image is not in focus

Image is in focus but it is very dark

Also to save time on the day of filming we decided it was best to practice setting up equipment for example the stand for the LIGHT BOX (get name for lights) and the tripods and everything. At first it was hard to remember how to set up everything but what we did in the end was assign each group member to master how to set up an equipment so I and Adeola focused on how to set up the lighting and Jouvan how to set up the tripod with Harry. The following is a video of Jouvan setting up a tripod:

At times we were held back in being able to progress with filming, taking pictures and sometimes even editing etc because of reasons like limitations on the number of Macs for instance. However, we did find ways round it for example by working outside college.

Personally, learning about cameras was really confusing especially learning about white balance, ISO, depth of field and aperture these were some of the  perplexing terminology we had to get to grips with. After some time I did I learn that depth of field (DOP) is the distance between the farthest and nearest items in a scene that appear reasonably sharp in an image. This image is an image taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field illustrating what depth of field is.

When filming, it was important to count in and out as this enabled us to have pre and post roll footage meaning that when we edited and cut our shots it would be easier to do. At first when we filmed and we wanted to create a low-key footage switched off all the lights in the room, drew the curtains and dimmed the lightboxes and this gave us a dark lit effect. This was important when taking the image used for our film poster, we made sure Jouvan was standing well behind Adeola and lit around her facing the lights away from Jouvan.

Image taken from film poster

When we were taking pictures for our magazine front cover, poster and teaser trailer it was strenuous as getting the lighting right could make or break a media product. As well as the big lights we also made use of the small portable LSD lights when necessary. Filming in the studio in the morning meant the natural light gave a good casting as we went on a fairly bright day. As we filmed in the studio we still had to make use of one of the big lights. Setting up the lighting was not difficult at first but when we looked over what we filmed at the scene sometimes we had to make adjustments to where the light was placed. 

Movie Poster & Movie Magazine Front Cover (Print Production/Advertising) 

Harry's response:

I split this question into three different videos, each dealing with a different part of the question. This I felt helped understand the question easier and made it easier for viewers to choose which part of the question they want to watch, on how it is answered.

So below we have the three videos;

Planning & Research (Development + Pre Production)

Production/Filming of the movie teaser trailer

Movie Poster & Movie Magazine Front Cover (Print production/Advertisting)

Evaluation (post-production)