Jamie Smith used several new media technologies in the production of a short film. Adobe Premier Pro was used to edit footage and add sound effects and music. Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator were used to design the film poster. Blogger allowed the group to collaborate and record research. Google Forms provided a way to get audience feedback on the storyline. Celtx was used to write the script in a proper format. A camera, tripod, and zoom recorder were also used to capture footage and sounds. Overall, the technologies enhanced skills in editing, camerawork, research, planning, and gaining audience feedback.

1. How did you use new media
technologies in the construction and
research, planning and evaluation
stages?
BY JAMIE SMITH

2. Adobe Premier Pro CC 2015
For editing, we used ‘Adobe Premier Pro’ to help piece each
of our individual shots together to create our film. This
programme was very useful as it gave us the option to layer
shots with sound effects and music and also use things such a
colour correction which came in use for some of our more
darker and discoloured shots. We also used Premier to help
piece together our Radio Trailer. Premier was good for this as
it allowed us to work with audio alone as well as audio and
video for our film.

3. Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator
We used both Photoshop and Illustrator to create our film
poster. The majority of our poster was put together on
Photoshop and this was a good programme to use at it allows
you to build up the poster in layers. You can also lock layers and
edit different layers separately, making the process very quick
and simple. We also created our own font for ‘UNKNOWN’ and
‘KNOCK KNOCK’ and we did this using Illustrator. We took a
sample font (shown below) and we opened this into Illustrator.
We then decided to image trace the font, making it more solid
and easier to manage and we changed the colour to make it
more fitting for our poster.

4. Blogger
To record our research and planning, we used
Blogger, a site that allows people to write blogs
using posts and this is the platform we used to
record our research into genre, narrative and
audience and also used this to plan our film. We
did this by posting things onto Blogger such as
storyline ideas, character profiles and scripts.
This was a good website to use as it allowed all
members of our group to contribute to our
research and planning as each member of the
group could access the blog and, as we were all
administrators of the blog, we could create and
edit posts meaning each person could do
individual research as well as all of the group
doing research together.

5. Google Forms
Google Forms was used to help us gain feedback from
our audience in terms of our original storyline. We
used google forms to create an online survey for
people to fill out once they had read through our
detailed outline of our storyline. This was very useful
as this helped direct us in terms of our approach to
our film and how we should include different types of
music, mise-en-scene and characters to create a
successful short film. Google forms was also useful as
it gave us the results in a very clear way which meant
we could easily interpret what the audience thought
of and expected from our film.

6. Celtx
The programme ‘Celtx’ is what we used to help write
our script. This programme was very effective to use
as it helped us write our script in an appropriate
format, making it easier for us to establish what the
characters would say, what they would do and when
they would do it. It also helped us visualise how to
shoot each part of the film. This programme was also
very easy to use and we could easily change the script
and export it as a PDF to put onto blogger when we
were happy with it.

7. Camera and Tripod
When filming our footage we used a camera and a tripod. The camera was useful as it allowed
us to record, zoom and control the focus which really helped during our filming sessions. Also,
the size of the camera was very convenient as it was small and compact and this allowed us to
take shots that would’ve been tricky to shoot with a larger camera. We also used a tripod
during our filming sessions. This was very helpful as it allowed us to take still shots and also
allowed us to experiment with camera angles and also panning.

8. Zoom Recorder
We used a zoom recorder during the production of
our short film. We used this to record the sound of
knocking which is a vital element to the film. We felt
like this would be the best way to produce the
knocking as we felt that all the knocking sounds we
found online weren’t suitable so we recorded our
own to ensure we obtained the right sound for our
film.

9. What we learnt
From using these different technologies, we learnt, and enhanced on, many new skills and
these include:
- Working with editing programmes
We learnt how to use Adobe Premier to make a high quality film. We learnt how to edit
footage while maintaining continuity as well as using a range of different camera angles and
movement.
- Using a camera and tripod effectively
We learnt how to shoot footage in the most effective way. This included repeating the same
action to ensure that we maintained continuity. We also learnt how to use a tripod effectively
which also helped us use a range of shots.

10. What we learnt
From using these different technologies, we learnt, and enhanced on, many new skills and
these include:
- How to research and plan effectively
We learnt during our research stages that research is key to creating a high quality final
product. We used a variety of different online resources and platforms to carry out effective
research and planning
- We learnt how to gain feedback from our target audience
We used Google Forms to reach out to our audience and this helped us gain knowledge on
how to improve our film, making it of higher quality and more enjoyable to watch.