The student used various media technologies at different stages of their short film project. In the research and planning stage, they used websites like Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, and YouTube to research films and watch examples. They created planning documents using Microsoft Word. For production, they used a Sony Handycam to film, Final Cut Pro X for editing, Logic Pro for soundtracks, and Adobe Photoshop for the film poster. For evaluation, they used Powtoon for a presentation, the Sony Handycam to film again, and iMovie to edit a response video. They have uploaded the PowerPoint for this evaluation question to SlideShare and embedded it in their blog.

1. How did you use media technologies
in the construction, research and
planning and evaluation stages?
Evaluation question 4

2. Technology used in the Research and
Planning stage
• Internet: YouTube, Google, IMDB, Rotten
Tomatoes
• Microsoft Office Word

3. Websites I Used
I used RottenTomatoes.com to learn
about films/short films. Rotten
Tomatoes review lots of films and
have a widely respected point of
view.
I found IMDB a very useful website
because it allows me to search films by
genre/category. It was particularly useful
because it allowed me to search for a list
of short films.
I used YouTube to watch examples of
short films and film trailers.

4. I created planning sheets and
storyboards with Microsoft word

5. Construction/Production
• Sony Handycam HD camcorder
• Final cut pro x
• Logic Pro 9
• Adobe InDesign
• Adobe PhotoShop

6. Sony Handycam
• The Handycam is the digital handheld film
camera that we used to film Amnesia. This is a
very easy camera to use and the fact it is
digital means we were able to store a lot of
footage on it on an SD card. This means we
didn’t need to worry about running out of
memory so we could film the same shot
several times to give us choice when editing.

7. Final Cut Pro X was used for the editing of the film. I found Final Cut Pro X very
easy and intuitive to use. I haven’t had very much experience with editing before
but I have never had a major problem getting used to Final Cut Pro X as it has a
simple and clear layout. I particularly found the sound editing functions on it
good as Final Cut allows you the same software audio plug-ins that are built in to
Logic Pro. As I am a regular user of Logic Pro this meant I had already got
knowledge of how to use these plugins to the best effect. In our film we also
made use of the slow motion function, it was very simple to use as I was given
the choice of slowing the video to 50%, 25% or 10% and I assume that if I needed
to I would be able to slow the video by a different amount however this was not
necessary in my film.

8. I used Logic Pro to create some of the sound track to my film. I am used
to using this program as I am taught it in school. Logic is a popular
Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) that is often used in the music
industry and by many people who produce soundtracks for films. The
reason it is so useful is that it has a very wide range of synthesisers and
samplers built in that allow you to create the sound of thousands of
musical instruments, this makes it a very good creative tool for writing
and recording music.

9. Adobe InDesign
I used InDesign to present my film review. I found this
software difficult to use as I did not like the layout.
Unlike with Final Cut I did not manage to intuitively
learn how to learn InDesign and required quite a lot of
help in order to find out how to do certain things.
Overall I found that InDesign did not make it easy for
me to produce the piece of work I was trying to
produce however in the end I would say I am fairly
happy with the outcome of my film review and I
recognise that in the right hands InDesign is a very
capable piece of software.

10. Adobe
Photoshop
I used Photoshop to create my film poster. At times I found it
frustrating as it can be a very complicated program and has a lot of
functions but on a whole I found it fairly straight forward to use.
Photoshop’s colour balance, contrast and brightness functions I
made particularly good use of in order to make my original photo
look more moody. I found the layer format of Photoshop very nice
and straight forward to work with as it allows you to move around,
delete or edit one layer at a time without affecting the rest of the
image. This makes Photoshop work well as a creative tool as it
allows you to trial and error your ideas.

11. Evaluation Stage
• Powtoon
• Sony Handycam HD camcorder: used to film
question 3
• iMovie

12. PowToon is a free online presentation software. It is similar to
a power point presentation in which the final product is
designed to be viewed as a video with lots of animation. I
used this program to answer question 1 of the evaluation. I
found that PowToon was very easy to use and I particularly
like the way you could directly upload your PowToon project
to YouTube which is then able to be embedded very simply
on to my WordPress Blog. The one problem with Powtoon I
had was that it is a very time consuming way of creating a
presentation because you were forced to think about the
animation and the way it runs as a video on top of the
content of the presentation.

13. iMovie
I movie is the simpler easier to use and more
basic version of Final Cut Pro. I used this to
edit together my video that I created for
question 3 of the evaluation. iMovie was
easy to use and for what I needed to do was
by far capable enough. If I was trying to use
this to edit the short film I would probably
become frustrated at it because of its
limitations in comparison to Final Cut but all
I needed was a simple cross fade and some
text boxes to go with the footage I had shot.

14. For this evaluation
question
For this question I have created a presentation
on Microsoft PowerPoint and have uploaded it
onto slideshare.com which I have embedded in
to my WordPress blog.