1. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research planning
and evaluation stages? Emily Capon
Producing any film either main stream or short comes with a very long process
which acquires varied use of technology both traditional and modern, however
as the film industry has grown so has the technology that comes with it. Within
this essay I will be discussing the technologies that I have personally used within
the production of ‘PROMISE’, which entailed a large variety; from complex
filming equipment and an array of editing software, without these technologies,
the outcome of PROMISE would not have been as successful as it is.
Postproduction was crucial, so that Kayyah and I planned thoroughly what our
genre was going to be as well as the basics of understanding a short film and the
conventions that are carried with it. During postproduction the Internet search
engine Google was vital as we used this to gather information on previous short
films and feature film, allowing us to understand length, the typical look, realism
and cinematic elements used within the production stages. The BBC website was
great for this along with short film festivals. Furthermore another popular sie
during our planning was IMDB which is a film site where you can get all the
latest information about a film, see the cast, running time, production company,
poster and premiere first looks etc., which helped us understand more about the
production we were watching especially when deconstructing similar films such
as THE FAULT IN OUR STARS which was a huge influence on our film.
YouTube entailed us to upload our target audience feedback, interviews as well
as other short clips including casting, camera angles and Photoshop evidence in
which I filmed and produced myself.
YouTube is a modern source of social media where you can watch any genre of
videos, whether it’s for music, entertainment or film purposes. During
Postproduction I used this site to watch other short films both professional and
student films therefore I could be introduced into the type of shorts that had
already been created, when searching on YouTube I changed the layout to most
popular so I could identify why it was so popular and compare both professional
and student high standard shorts as well as professional and student low
standard and less successful shorts allowing me to avoid key factors such as bad
noise and lighting. When creating my film poster, YouTube was great for
watching tutorials on Photoshop helping me advance my editing skills from my
foundation portfolio work which resulted in my work looking more professional,
after the success of these tutorials I often watched tutorials based on Eduis 7 to
help understand the basics of colour correction. By using social media I was able
to advertise our production online across YouTube but also promote our
premiere of PROMISE. I simply used various social networking sites such as
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and stated the venue and time, which was a
quick, easy and effective way to notify our target audience.
Wordpress was the blogging website I used throughout the entire process of
producing PROMISE, most importantly post and during to help me with my
overall end product and Wordpress was a beneficial source, as it allowed me to
showcase my work in one place and return to certain posts if needed, blogging is
great way to share thoughts across the internet especially at A level as students
can build ideas from each other as well as theories that may be harder to find
2. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research planning
and evaluation stages? Emily Capon
upon the internet.
My blog is my primary source of presenting my A Level Media work therefore I
used a variety of methods to upload to my blog. Slide share was most used in
professional and neat manner to upload both Word Documents and Power
points. Slide Share was a great source for acquiring information on particular
subjects I was unsure of.
Microsoft Word is a computer software that allows you to create word
documents and power points to address certain topics, as well as create
personalised questionnaires during our research stages that were given both
during the initial planning stages and after the finished production was uploaded
online that allowed us both to adapt our film further to our target audience. After
our qualitative data was recorded I turned this into quantitative, which allowed
us to identify more clearly what our audience preferred in terms of film. I used
pie charts for this, as it was easier to consolidate questionnaires from a large
number of individuals.
Equipment such as cameras in which I used across the year besides filming our
production, was a vital tool that allowed us to document and provide research
into our target audience by interviewing them across different periods of our
production such as the initial ideas. I then processed this video onto YouTube,
which I was then able to embed this into my blog to look back on later when
Kayyah and I were discussing ways to approach our audience within PROMISE.
Along with audience theories and research we also filmed the casting process in
which we able to choose our actors when we re-watched the footage and state
why we chose Ellie and Jacob to take on the role of Ellie and Sam. I also managed
to film a short clip of camera angles to understand the basics of filming more
creatively, which gave me more confidence when using the camera during the
shoots. The camera we used to shoot our short was the Sony HXRMX30E, which
has the ability to change focus manually in which improved the standard of our
production. The camera also held a variety of modes including, indoor, outdoor
and one push which we used when our lighting wasn’t strong enough or was too
strong when filming outside .We were also able to adjust the colour balance to be
either in grey scale , black and white and in colour. However we stuck with
colour due to the nature of our production and also kept it looking professional.
Storyboarding was key for postproduction, although I drew these in hand, it was
essential that we both uploaded this onto our blogs so we had access to them
when filming so we had a basic outline from what vantage point we wanted to
shoot from. Therefore we used a scanner to transfer the documents onto the
computer allowing me to turn the document into a PDF file, which I was able to
then post them upon my blog.
The editing software we used to bring all the footage into one consecutive film
was Edius 7. Edius holds various colour grading and correcting methods, along
with different styles of transitions, speed and has the ability to add music over
the clips to make the footage more entertaining and to a professional standard
adding to the overall representation of PROMISE. On Edius we were able to
manipulate our artificial lighting we had used during the shoot to create different
moods to certain scenes such as the prom scene and the argument scene in the
3. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research planning
and evaluation stages? Emily Capon
kitchen. Additionally I used IMovie to edit the camera angles and movement
video on my MacBook, which has the same principle as Edius 7 but in a simpler
form. Photoshop and InDesign was sued primarily for the ancillary tasks , in
which I took the role on of the film poster and Kayyah was In charge of the film
review, these software’s had the ability to edit only still image work. We were
able to edit fonts, photos, size, and colours using layering methods.
The final type of technology that was used during the process was our mobile
phones. Kayyah and I both have IPhones so it was easier to discuss certain issues
over Face Time, as well as getting in contact with each other and our actors. It
also permitted us to add to our blogs at any location due to us using the
Wordpress application on our mobiles, which was great for recording down
ideas as well as in the notes section.
