Evaluate your use and understanding of technologies

Technologies for Research

Use of the Internet

Search enginesAdvantageso A lot of information in an instant from any location and easily sharedo Information is free – important on a student budgeto You can stumble across things you may need latero Filters to make what you find more relevant to your specific needso Good quality info

Type in a key word and a lot of material appears relating to your search

Search engines

As you can see from the text box above, some search engines also provide related searches for other useful information linked to your search.

Access to information• By using YouTube we were able to find different idents to help us find out

what our ident should look like• We were also able to find some trailers to other thriller opening

sequences which we could relate to our work• However it did take a while to find relevant videos and there is a lot of

videos on YouTube making it quite time consuming

By using YouTube you could find relevant information to what you needed, in this search we could see some of the best thriller films

Access to information• By using Wikipedia we could find out statistics and names of different

distribution/production companies that we researched• Wikipedia offers other links to similar information which helped us a lot in

researching for our genre and other companies

Hyperlinks are shown in blue, and if you click on them it leads to more information. A lot of material could be accessed easily without difficulty.

Access to information

• However not all information on the web is accurate especially in wiki style sites where the public are the writers.

• Also the information is not always in a format that is useful or easy for you to use.

• We also found that research on the internet was time-consuming because we had to skim a lot of irrelevant sites and also were side-tracked from time-to-time.

Cross checking informationTo make sure the information we were using on Wikipedia was correct we had to cross check using other websites

By using different search engines we made sure vital facts were correct so that our information was reliable and true

Finding unexpected information

• Sometimes whilst conducting our research we would stumble across something that would help us in our coursework/filming

Quote helped us decide on the atmosphere for our piece.

Other helpful sitesIMDB• IMDB helped us a lot whilst doing our research as we could see films of

our genre and how much they had generated, how they were distributed and more

• It helped us to get an idea of what we would do with our film after we had made it

You can easily see films that are in the box office and how much they have generated whilst being released. You can also see the increasing popularity of new films.

Other helpful sitesArt of the Title• Art of the title helped us a lot with our title sequence analysis and

understanding• It also helped us to decide where we would put our titles in our sequence

You could easily find films and it would provide you with screen shots throughout the opening sequence so you didn’t have to do them yourself.

However…

• Art of the Title only had a limited amount of films – no one site exactly relates to your research needs.

• We could not refine your search to genres, so most information want relevant

• Unknown films were used that we had no knowledge of, making it hard to select appropriate films

• It took a while to find the films that you were going to use as there were a lot and many different varieties

• A good example of the potential difficulties of internet research!

Music• Free play music was the website we looked at first to try and find our

music• We really didn’t like the website as the information was hard to find.• We couldn’t find any sounds that we liked as most of them were bad

quality• We ended up making our own music for our sequence and we found the

website didn’t have our music of choiceCan be compatible with iTunes so you can upload it to a phone. The music we did find was very over-produced and eventually we decided to make our own.

Planning

The use of Cameras (Nikon)

• When planning our animatic, we used Nikon camera to photograph each sticky label.

• This helped us visualize what our film would look like by putting all the images together.

• The camera were easy to use, however we did have problems with the focus until we learned how to use them properly.

Final Cut Express – Animatic

• We used the Final Cut Express to create an animatic with our story board, this was to help us get a sense of what our film was going to look like.

• This was easy to navigate once we got started as we learnt the basic techniques, however we were unsure of the tools at first.

• The story board jumped from one to another very quickly, therefore we had to work out how to make it flow and allowing each post it note to last longer by extending the clip on the timeline.

Blogger was really useful to post our research and our planning in progress. We are also using it for our evaluations.

Everything we discussed or ideas we formed individually or as a group were posted on the blog to give an idea of where we were coming from or heading.

Each piece of research we made went onto the Blog to maintain our ideas and plans. It was useful to look back and forth during our coursework. Blogger had no major disadvantages, apart from sometimes not having the right software to upload pictures etc. But apart from that there was no real disadvantage.

Sharing work across the groups

It makes it possible for us to compare progress with the other groups, as well as seeing their different ideas and plans.

It’s a good way of giving and taking comments back from each group. With the comments we are able to work and produce more successful pieces of work.

Logical order and available from anywhere

It’s clear to view the progress we’re making whenever we want.

Once we got the hang of how to work the blogger it was easy to upload things from school, home or even on our phones.

Its easy to use and gives you many options to load whatever type of media onto the blog, eg: images, videos, links.

Use of images

Photos put on the blog with bullet points and comments.

Allowed us as well as the people looking on our blog to see what we got up too and the steps we took.

We were able to keep track of the whole group and see our work progressing in an ordered way.

Use of label filter

The label filters make it able to see who’s done what work.

You can see everybody’s work or just your own.

Its also in chronological order which makes it so much easier to see the our work up to date.

Work in Progress for Feedback

The posts on our blog show our progress.

The blog contains our past ideas/work as our present, so its easy to find or go back to refresh what we did.

Means that the evaluation process is able to take place throughout the course, not only at end, so its easier for us to adjust the things we may need to improve on as we go along.

Construction

Video Camera – Cannon • An important part of preparation and planning was familiarising ourselves with

the camera.• For example, in order to prepare ourselves for our final filming day, we filmed the

letter dropping on the floor scene as we were not sure how to go about it. • This helped us get a sense of how the camera works and how we could best use

it on the day.• Through this experience we learnt that the camera films wider screen than what

is seen on the screen, and we were able to take account of that. We were also able to practise the zoom movement.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Final Cut Express.

One of the main disadvantages of software such as ‘Final Cut Express’ is that there is a huge learning curve which requires a lot of time and experimentation to overcome. Although there is this disadvantage, the pros definitely outweigh the cons.

Advantages

As you can see here, Final Cut Express has a very clear lay out and shows you very helpful information such as what clip you are on (highlighted) and also it has all of your clips loaded and ready to view or use in the top left hand corner.

Advantages

It also allows you to view the clips you want from the selection in the top left corner, before having to put them into your sequence. This allows you to select the correct clip that you and makes for much more efficient editing as you don't have to drag the clips down to actually view them.

The screen on the right however is separate to the left screen. This is used to view your overall sequence as you are making it. It is always there and you can re watch clips over and over to make sure there are no mistakes in your sequence.

Advantages

You have the complete freedom to alter almost everything you need for example the sound levels on the clips you desire. You can also add in video and audio transitions to make the sequence seem more smooth and well rounded.

Advantages

As you can see there is a clear difference between the presentation on the right and the one on the left. The main difference is that on the one on the left, there are more than one audio or visual tracks over the same clip. This makes it very easy to put music in your sequence without affecting anything else. This is also very helpful because you can change the levels of both audio or visual tracks separately to achieve what you are looking for.

Advantages

Another key difference is the length of each clip. The one on the left has had its time scale adjusted so that clips remain the same length in time, but are stretched out so it is easier to find where about your sound errors are or maybe even visual errors. This makes it very easy to precisely locate what the problem is and fix it accordingly.

Live Type

Live Type is another piece of software we used for our sequence. We used this software to incorporate our titles and credits into our film. It is a great tool as it can give you very classy looking text and animations but the only downfall, like Final Cut Express, is that the learning curve is very big.

Advantages

We have the freedom to change and control many different aspects of our text whether is the colour, the size, the shadow, the timing and effects, it is all there in the control box on the right hand side.

Advantages

Very much like Final Cut Express, Live Type uses the same style of showing what tracks you have and where the track is (purple boxes) This helps the user to get their timings right and give them

the freedom to move things where they want.

Advantages

This screen here allows you to view what you have made so far so you can visually see what you have done or what is going wrong.

Evaluation

Anyone can view your blog and give feedback when they want to share what they think and what might need improving.

Not only can you get comments anytime you can get comments from anyone, getting feedback from people our age helped as they were doing media studies as well.

However because our work is on the internet there is a possibility people could comment things that were rude or unneeded.

Blog Availability to Others

Ability to use different formats

For this evaluation task, we have chosen to use slideshow technology because:

- it’s easy- We can divide work between us- We can check and add to each

other’s slides- We need to add a lot of images to

illustrate our points – PowerPoint is very visual

- The pictures speak for themselves and don’t need too much explanation

- It can be uploaded to Slideshare and linked to the blog

Ability to use different formats

We chose to use a combination of text and image for the tasks on representation and genre because:- They needed more

detailed explanation- They were the most

theoretical tasks- They required the most

written analysis to be clear- We needed to make

points clearer using images.

Ability to use different formats

We chose to present the evaluation on distribution as a filmed presentation with annotations and images because:- We felt the ideas needed to be

debated- We had similar ideas and

wanted to avoid repetition- We felt the bullet point captions

would help a listener skim through the presentation

- The images also act as kind of ‘landmarks’ for a quick skim

Ability to use different formatsWe chose to present the evaluation of target audience as a main image annotated with text boxes because:

- We had a variety of points to make about who our target audience was

- We wanted them all to relate to the pictures we had chosen of our audience

- We were able to add other smaller images if we wanted to illustrate the points we made.

Ability to use different formats

We chose to present our evaluation of attracting our target audience by annotating our final piece.

This was a task it made sense to share as we knew we had the same things to say, and this was an easy way to present a task that we could all contribute to.

Having comments appear above the action also makes it easy to see which moments we are talking about.