EVALUATION OF USESOF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY

Use of Digital Technology for Research

Search engines are websites that have indexed millions of web pages together into one place. There are many popular search engines used, these include: Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Search Engines

Search engines were one of the main tools that helped us during our planning and researching stage. Search engines make it super easy to find the information your looking for by simply searching the key words related to what your looking for.

What are the benefits of search engines?

Search Engines

Offers a wide variety and quantity of information which can be very useful when researching a specific topic.

Search engines help to keep the internet organized and recognizable to the viewer.

Search engines provide more precise results compared to searching on the world wide web (WWW).

There are many websites that were particularly resourceful when it came down to research and planning for our opening sequence. This is because they gather a great deal of information about the same topic in one place. Some websites that we found very helpful include:

Web Pages

What is YouTube?YouTube is a video sharing website that allows users to upload, share and comment on videos.

Was YouTube helpful?In my opinion, YouTube was one of the best websites to use during are researching process. We were able use YouTube to view specific scenes from certain films. One scene which we used from YouTube as part of our research was the ‘Harry Brown Interrogation Scene’. By watching this scene multiple times, we realized what camera angles and shots to use in our piece and which would look the most effective.

What is IMDB?IMDB is an online database which holds database from various movies, T.V shows and games worldwide.

Shows actors, director, genre and rating.

Has over 2 million movies.

Pros:• Easy to identify our genre

movies.• Has a wide range of movies

to pick from.• Easy to use.

Cons: • Anyone can sign in

and edit page.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and this has a lot of information about films and the movie industry on it.

We could easily search for our genre in search bar.

Shortcut links so quick and easy to use.

Anyone can log in and edit the page, this is both an advantage (lots of collaborative sharing) and a drawback (info might not be accurate) to this website.

We could easily identify what we wanted and gave us good information.

A main part of our research was watching opening sequences from DVDs.

Watched various DVDs to get different ideas.

Put our research into Blogger.We were able to take screenshots to illustrate our ideas about camera angles etc.

DVD

Was quite time-consuming and awkward to find the different DVDs and stop and start them – not the most convenient digital technology compared with inline hosting sites.

Summary – Research andDigital Technology

• Blogger was a useful site for hosting our research – it meant we had easy access to it at all times.

• Being able to use the internet to carry out research was massively useful – it would be so difficult and expensive to soure the number of film openig s we watched in any other way.

Uses of Digital Technology forPlanning

One of the main tools we used during our planning stages was the website Blogger. Blogger allowed us all to upload our plans to one site where everyone in our group could see it. It is one of our most important uses of digital technology.

Blogger

One example of a plan we uploaded to blogger was our storyboard. This was a collection of post-its that arranged the shots/techniques that we were going to use in order. This was very helpful when it came to filming our piece as we could access Blogger on our phones and check over our plans.

Blogger

Planned what location to use for interrogation scene and church scene.

Planned layout of news report scene.

Planned credits and title.

Planned what various of shot we could use in different locations.

Blogger

The massive advantage of this kind of digital hosting site is being able to access the planning of the whole group anywhere at any time.

Research Sheet

We planned our opening sequence on sheet.

This included: • Story line• Sounds• Camera angles• Editing• Mise-en-scene

This is a good example of how digital technology makes ‘old’ activities like filling in a form more relevant as we were able to keep looking at these ideas on our phones.

Research Sheet

Presentations

Put our story board plan into a video via YouTube so then we could show our planned ideas.

Then we were filmed presenting our plans to the class and played a video of a movie we research, “Harry Brown”

Then we added this to the blog so we could get feedback and progress with our planning what to change – we were able to comment on our own performances.

Presentations

Final Cut Express

Final Cut Express was a very helpful software to use when it came to planning. We used it in our prelim task to get used to using it as an editing tool.We also created an animatic which enabled us to see how the timings of our storyboard worked.

Summary – Planning andDigital Technology

• Digital Technology certainly helped us organise our planning and the blog gave us a good location to keep mall our work and to be able to access work across the group easily.

• We did find that we still tended to do a lot of planning on paper as this is how we felt most comfortable and worked most efficiently

Final Cut Express LiveType

Adobe Photoshop

Use of Digital Technology forConstruction

The main camera we used for recording our piece was a Cannon camera. This camera was very basic and easy to use, this made it helpful when it came to recording our sequence.

Filming Equipment

A tripod was also used for filming our sequence. In my opinion this was one of the most important piece of equipment that we used as it allowed us to make sure that the camera was steady when we were filming. However, it is not digital – this shows that not everything that worked well for us is a product of digital technology.

Final Cut Express

Final Cut Express is a digital editing package and was the most important tool we used in the construction of our opening sequence as it allows for the manipulation and editing of our footage in professional ways.

Editing on Final Cut Express

This was the main editing package we used and the most important use of digital technology in our piece in many ways. We were able to store our clips in the browser and manipulate them as we wanted on the timeline. Any changes we did not like could easily be undone and the clips used again without any permanent changes having been made to the original footage.

Sound and Image

Here you can see how we put sound and image together. The video clips have been trimmed and ordered into the correct sequence at the correct times. You can see a grey box that indicates a transition into this part of the sequence – a cross fade. The volume of each audio cli has also been adjusted and audio effects added were ambient sound changes to minimise the audio differences this can cause.

Building Sequence

The whole sequence was built on the principle of layering – we used a series of layers on both video and audio timelines to create the whole piece. This was time-consuming and required a lot of precision and readjustment. We had to constantly replay at the starts of lessons to remember where we had got up to and what needed to be done.

Final Cut Express

Use of Final Cut for the IdentWe exported our manipulated sky and our extracted fish into Final Cut and then used the motion path tool to move the fish across the sky. We then added text using LiveType and placed a copyright free jingle beneath to compete the ident.

Advantages of using Final Cut Express

• Lots of tools for editing

• Easy to learn and use

Disadvantages of using Final Cut Express

• Had to work on separate computers to get all of the work done then merge it

• Time consuming, a lot of editing requires time and patience

Editing on Final Cut Express

Photoshop for Ident

We used Photoshop to extract various fish from their backgrounds. We eventually chose this one to be the main ‘character’ for the ident.

We also manipulated some photos of the sky in Photoshop as none of the ones we had taken were perfect for what we wanted. We were able to use Photoshop to layer them until we had achieved the right effect.

We used Adobe Photoshop to make our ident

Constructing our ident was a tricky process we had to be precise in order to make our fish fit into the background, and avoid leaning any white from the original copy

We used the magnetic lasso tool, which meant our fish were accurately cut out

We had to use layers in our ident, in order to have the correct animations, as well as fitting the fish onto our background

Photoshop for Ident

LiveType was the software we used to create our title and credits. LiveType allowed us to put transitions on our credits which made them look a lot better in our sequence. Once we created the credits we could easily transfer them to Final Cut Express.

LiveType

Had to get font, font colour and size right and also timings of the length of the credits and the effects with which they appeared / disappeared..

Not all digital technology is easy to use – one of the disadvantages is that it is time consuming to learn.

It was a good software to use because it offered different fonts and animations.

We used LiveType in order to make our credits

Using LiveType offered us the chance to see our credits before they were on the opening sequence

LiveType as a software was simple to use, the most effective part was using the animations and seeing how they would effect our piece

LiveType

Summary – Construction andDigital Technology

• It is hard to imagine constructing this project without the benefit of digital technology. We do not have the skills to use cameras that are not digital, and although the editing packages may have taken some time to learn, it is certainly easier to edit this way than in the old style with film. Probably the main benefit has been being able to work on different versions of the same work and being able to constantly undo and start again if needed.

Use of Digital Technology forEvaluation

Blogger

Blogger allowed us to present our evaluation work in a variety of formats and to keep it all together in one accessible place.

Blogger helped us to organise our evaluations - posts listed by title – organized and appear in chronological order

View and comments system – useful for ideas and improvements

Blogger

Linking Research and Evaluation

Link to research post

Blogger helped us to link our research with our evaluation. For example, we did a substantial amount of research into target audiences early on. When we came to evaluate this concept, we were able to link the two posts together as shown above so that the two could be read together and the work could be seen as a whole.

Comments and Feedback

One of the greatest advantages of digital technology like Blogger is that we can share our work with others very easily and there is easy interaction. We received feedback on a rough cut from a school in Bath which proved very useful.

Variety of Format

We were able to vary the presentation of our work as Blogger alloes us to post work in almost any media. This meant we could chose appropriate formats for each task. For example, We used a collage of images (contact sheet) to prompt a discussion on use of genre conventions because the montage showed our common themes and ideas.

And here a mind map was used to evaluate atrget audience as it helped structure the comments.

Advantages of using Blogger:

• Can view the work of others to get ideas

• Easily organize work

• Comments give possible improvements

Disadvantages of using Blogger

• Lack of editing tools compared to the interface of programs such as ‘Word’

• Accidental unsaved work, loss of internet

Blogger

Summary – Evaluation and Digital Technology

• Overall, digital technology was extremely helpful for us with our evaluation. In fact, this was the only stage of the course where we did not find ourselves turning to old media from time to time, but used digital media virtually throughout. It has helped us share our ideas and produce a series of evaluations that are linked.