During the construction of a short film, the student used various media technologies including Celtx for screenwriting, YouTube for sharing work and receiving feedback, Prezi for presentations, Slideshare and Scribd for organizing documents, Photoshop for editing images, Final Cut Pro for video editing, Soundtrack Pro for audio editing, IMDb for audience research, and Flickr for receiving feedback on ancillary products. Books were also referenced for traditional filmmaking knowledge. These technologies supported the research, planning, production, and evaluation stages of the project.

1. EVALUATION
QUESTION
How did you use media
technologies in the construction
and research planning and
evaluation stages ?

2. INTRODUCTION
During the construction of my short film I have
used a wide range of media technologies to
enable me to create different products, present
my work in different mediums and has
developed my knowledge and understanding.

3. CELTX
Celtx is a free programme that offers script and screenplay
structures that gives a much more professional look than using
word. I used word to write the foundations of the screenplay and as
it developed I transferred it to a Celtx document. Using different
commands I found it easy to use and gave and overall professional
look

4. CELTX EVALUATION
Celtx was a great programme to use to create
the screenplay. Once learning all of the
commands it soon became quick and efficient to
use. For a free programme I would recommend
this to anyone planning on writing a document
for a film either screenplay or script writing. It
helped my pre production stages by creating a
screenplay that the cast and crew could read
and follow easily.

5. YOUTUBE
YouTube is a great place to showcase my rough cuts, final product
and behind the scenes video. I uploaded my videos by converting
the files from Final Cut Pro 7. When exporting these versions I have
decided not to do it in the highest quality format because of the size
of the files. I used Quicktime Conversation to export it as a
Quicktime movie file then I changed the setting accordingly to make
sure its still at a high quality that YouTube could upload at an
reasonable amount of time.

6. YOUTUBE EVALUATION
I found YouTube very helpful for my Extreme Rough Cut and Rough
Cut because the feedback received. I could change what was
pointed out which enhanced the outcome of the short film. YouTube
also helped my research stages in terms of looking at existing
products and extracting the appropriate information to help both
inspire me and have a bases for my own project. YouTube has been
a key factor that has helped thought the different stages of
production.

7. PREZI
Prezi is a website I have used a few times. Prezi allows you to
create fancy spider diagrams. I found this very limited and overall
very pointless. The website doesn’t offer a lot of personalization and
is very tedious to use. Although it looks very nice and slick I do not
enjoy using it and have only used it to demonstrate my ability of
using different technologies and having variation on how my work is
showcased on my blog.

8. PREZI EVALUATION
Prezi has only offered my work variation. It is,
what it is. Out of all the technologies I have used
it has been good for adding a different angle to
my research. I will be using it as a way to
answer my evaluation questions.

9. SLIDESHARE & SCRIBD
Very simple yet very effective. Slideshare allows PowerPoint's to be
uploaded to be embedded. By making PowerPoint's and embedding
it into my blog it keeps a lot of information compacted into one
PowerPoint giving my blog breathing space so that it isn't just one
long essay. Slideshare helps to break up my blog and allows me to
write a lot of information in one place. Scribd is similar except
instead of power points its used for PDFs and word documents.
Again it’s a good way to keep all of my work in one tidy location.
Both are very simple first I create a document or PowerPoint then
upload it to the correct site. Then using an embed code transfer it to
the html when creating a new post and publishing it.

10. EVALUATION OF SLIDESHARE &
SCRIBD
I found both of these sites extremely helpful in showcasing my work
and keeping my blog organised. This piece of technology has been
the most helpful in terms of presentation of my blog posts.

11. PHOTOSHOP
Photoshop is a brilliant photo editing software and is one of the
technologies I use a lot. Photoshop offers the user everything they
will need to edit from dodging and burning, layer masks, filters,
gamma control, blurs, cropping, brightness and contrast changers,
transformation, text, levels and so much more. It is a great tool that
allows the experienced Photoshopper to create endless possibilities.
I used Photoshop in making my two ancillary products. The majority
of my skills came through on my poster. I created the magazine on
Photoshop using the images I have edited and the layout of the
double page spread.

12. PHOTOSHOP
This is the before and after for the
poster and the banner, there is a
noticeable difference between the two.

13. Magazine Ancillary products edited using
Photoshop

14. FINAL CUT PRO 7
Final Cut Pro 7 is currently my favourite editing programme.
Professional layout and easy to use once understanding how it
works and where everything is. This programme has allowed me to
bring all my clips together onto a timeline to create a narrative with
continuity. It allows me to add diegetic and non diegetic sound as
well as changing the style and effect of the clips. The different
effects and filters I used were widescreen effect, 3 colour wheel,
saturation, blacks, mids, whites, tint, contrast, brightness, levels,
gamma control and a whole host of other adjustments effects and
filters. Final Cut has been an important technology in the
construction of my final product with out this important piece of
technology it would not be possible for my short to exist.

15. EVALUATION
Final Cut Pro offers a straight forward professional way of editing my
short. Easy once understanding where everything is and different
skills and techniques. It has a brilliant easy to use layout that is
efficient and the editing effects are all manually controlled giving me
the editor and mediator the power to do what I want. My
understanding of Photoshop and general photography skills help my
judgements.

16. SOUNDTRACK PRO
Screenshot of an audio file exported from Final Cut Pro into
Soundtrack Pro for a audio analysis of clicks and pops and other
audio disturbances. Soundtrack is a piece of software I haven't used
before so was a new technology skill I have learnt during this
process.

17. EVALUATION SOUNDTRACK PRO
I felt like it defiantly helped with the smoothness of the audio and
ironed out any unwanted audio that was picked up however
because of my audio problems it was often difficult to correct it and
find a solution. I learnt a number of skills from noise reduction
techniques, to analysis of clicks and pops etc. In conclusion this
was a great programme and I learned new skills however it didn’t
allow me to edit to the amount I wanted.

18. IMDB
The Internet Movie Data Base has been extremely useful during the
research stages. I have an account that enables me to view all of the
statistics of how other people have rated films. By selecting the films
that were relevant to my Genre I was able to see what was successful
and find the average rating which had different sections of gender and
age group. I found this to be the best possible audience research
because of the way it was divided between gender and age group.
Another advantage of this was the amount of people that have rated.
Sometimes for a certain age group and gender there has been 300,000
to 500,000 people that have rated. The fact is, is that is has already got
more data than I would have been able to have collated myself so I took
full advantage of this. IMDb has been a great site to use in the research
stages of pre production. It has given me a wealth of information for
myself to observe, interpreting from it and helping me with
understanding of my target audience

19. FLICKR
Flickr was a great site to receive audience feedback and show case
my poster. The advantages of this site is that it is available for the
world to view and is not subjective to just friends and family. It
helped me gain a understanding of what audiences thought about
my ancillary products. Very simple to use again is simple an
uploading task.

20. BOOKS
I just want to mention two books that have been extremely helpful during
the construction of Notes Vexatious. The first is Making Short Films:
The Complete Guide from Script to Screen, Second Edition published
on the 15th of February 2008, author Cliff Thurlow. This book covers
everything you need to know and I would recommend it to any young
filmmaker. This has been the most informative source I have used and
has helped me so much!
The second is The Art of the Film by Ernest Lindgren published 9th of
July 1970. Although it was published in the 70s it is still very relevant,.
Again this is another great book and is a great read for anyone
interested in film.
Media Technologies have been extremely helpful and have enabled me
to achieve a lot in numerous ways however it is important to remember
that books and traditional ways are still very effective. In this digital age
we tend to forget older practises which can make people and filmmakers
ignorant of traditional ways which have worked so successfully for many
years. I am aware this irrelevant to the question “How did you use media
technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation
stages?” but these books were very important during the construction of
Notes Vexatious and I want to pay homage to them.