My eval question

1. How did you use media technologies in
the construction, planning, research,
and evaluation stages of your
performance?
Joel Pickard
Question 4

2. Research and Planning

3. New media technologies have been essential to my A2
Advanced Portfolio. They have given me the ability to
successfully research, plan, construct and evaluate my
production.
I used a wide range of new media technologies during
the creation of my Advanced Portfolio; some were used
only once for specific needs and some were
consistently used at every stage of production

4. • The research and planning stage of our
production featured the use of the internet
heavily. We looked at YouTube for
inspiration on how we could condense a
story into a short film. We found a variety of
short small budget films that were similar to
what we wanted from our own. We realised
that the genre conventions within a short
film are much more obvious. This led to our
decision of creating a modern western, due
to our low budget and young cast. We then
looked at many clips on YouTube from films
such as No Country For Old Men and The
Good, The Bad and The Ugly in order to get
inspiration and deepen our understanding of
the ‘Western’ genre.

5. Email
• When choosing the music for my piece, I emailed
the publishers of the artists that I had chosen to
use their songs for, hoping to acquire the
permission to use the tracks, however we did not
get replies from any of the publishers, which
therefore allowed us to use the tracks. The use of
Email enabled us to contact the publishers
relatively easily.

6. • We used Google as our main starting point when
researching anything from costumes and props, to
western themes and locations. Google Images
gave me an idea of the kind of visuals people
think of straight away when thinking about western
movies, this allowed us to create our own version
with a variety of original texts to revert back to for
inspiration.

7. • Google’s Maps feature furthered our research into
locations. It allowed us to look from both the
satellite view, giving us a better understanding of
everything that would surround us and look out for
any safety risks, and the street view. In which I
could view the exact layout of a location as long
as it was near a road. This speeded up our
planning process greatly as I could view potential
locations without having to go there myself.

8. • The utilization of my blog
help when tracking what
we had already done,
and compiling all of our
plans (such as
storyboards, shotlists,
etc.) in one place. As the
production process
carried on, I was able to
document my process
when filming and editing
through the website.

9. • I used my IPhone, firstly our of convenience, as
not only did I always have it with me, but it had a
decent enough camera on it to capture rough
versions of the shots that I used in the final
production. I also used my phone to contact the
actors on where they needed to be and when, this
helped me document the times and locations that
we were filming.

10. • We used two different programs in order to
complete the research and planning stage of our
production through Microsoft Office. These were
Excel and Word. Excel allowed us to create
graphs based on our own audience feedback, and
feedback from the BFI. This helped us clearly see
what the audience felt needed to be a part of our
production. We used word in order to plan our
shotlists, being able to clearly number or bullet
point our order of shots was helpful when
accounting for time management during filming.

11. Filming and Editing

12. Camera: Cannon 600D
DSLR
• This piece of technology was one of, if not,
the most important features of our
production. The camera allowed all of the
scene to be captured in 1080p so we could
later import them into a editing software in
post production. The model of camera was
most effective in letting us pull focus, and
change the shutter speed so we were able
to shoot at different times of day and make
them look seamless. This camera took
every shot in our production and was good
quality and reliable.

13. Tripod
• We used a variety of camera
hardware to aid filming. One of
which was a tripod. This was useful
when holding the camera in a stable
position. Although we focused on
keeping the camera moving for
most of our shots, we used the
tripod during the car scene when
filming the protagonist’s reactions to
the antagonist’s monologue. We
mounted the camera slider on this
to enable the camera to move from
side to side or up and down.

14. Camera Rigs &
SteadyCam
• I utilised the equipment that I had made/bought for
my previous production whilst the filming of our
latest production. The camera rigs gave me
stability when moving with the camera, this allows
me to get a smooth less jolted shot. We tried to
stay away from intentional camera shake as that
feature is more of an action convention rather than
western.

15. X
• Final Cut allowed me to successfully edit our
piece and solve any problems that filming had
given us. I chose this software as it is designed for
more professional film making, however still has a
simple and easy to use format. This allowed me to
learn as I went along. Previously I had used
Audacity to edit audio and Serif Movie Plus to edit
visuals, however Final Cut allowed me to edit
them both. I was also able to spend a lot of time
on the colour correction of my production, draining
the colour and giving it a more western feel.

16. • During the production of my piece, I
used YouTube to acquire the soundtrack
for my piece. listened to countless tracks
searching for the ones that we finally
chose. Without this, our film may not
have followed or even challenged the
genre conventions as much as it does,
and the soundtrack would certainly not
be as good. During production, I used
YouTube to upload rough edits and
behind the scenes footage to my blog,
which has proved an invaluable way of
showing our progress in the Advanced
Portfolio.

17. MacBook Pro
• My MacBook Pro was extremely useful throughout
the entire production process. I used it for all of
the planning and research, uploading visuals and
audio, and editing. It was the main piece of
technology that I used.

18. Evaluation

19. • Due to the majority of my evaluation questions
being completed through video and audio, Final
Cut was used again, this time in order to edit my
evaluation responses. I used different editing
techniques such as overlaying images and pairing
videos with different audio in order to fully answer
my questions.

20. Camera: Cannon 600D
• To capture the video for my third evaluation
question on audience feedback, I used my
Cannon 600D camera once again. This,
accompanied with a tripod, was a good way of
filming a mock interview that I directed with
another group member.

21. • Finally, I used PowerPoint in order to answer the
final question in my evaluation. Due to the vast
amount of technologies used, this question lends
itself to a presentation where a list of features can
be clearly shown and explain. I have used this to
enable the viewer to see what was used in the
production process, and how effective they were.