Monday 2 February 2015

EVALUATION- What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

EVALUATION- How did you use media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?



So after an explanation about what different technologies and applications that I will be using I will now talk through how I used them in my construction, research and planning and evaluation stages. 

Without the use of technologies and applications my short film would not have been possible to create. Although some of these applications I had used before it was harder for me to create a short film as I had only previously used them for my AS coursework which was only a still image. 

My main technologies and applications that I used were, all of these helped me construct my main and ancillary texts, gather research and display my planning and evaluation stages:

Final cut pro: I used this to create my opening of my short film, it was harder for me as I used still images that I had to scan onto the computer before hand to allow me to move them onto the macs computer file. As they were discoloured it didn't look at professional compared to the video clips therefore I had to change the saturation and colouring to make them look a better quality. I then used Ken Burns to make the images move from one position to the other to make a bit more depth the only probably I occurred through this was that some of the images were landscape and the others were horizontal so it was difficult to make them look at though they are the same. I finally added my last picture which was another image but of a recent one of my protagonist and then I added the title in which I chose a fade in and away effect to make it look sophisticated. I then managed to save this title and then upload it to my MacBook Pro to use in iMovie.

iMovie: I used this to create my short film and edit all of the clips to make the final product. I did have a trial edition of final cut pro on my laptop however it finished before I finished my short tim so I then had to create it on iMovie. This was difficult at first because I had got used to all the various things on final cut pro so I had to learn from a new application. It didn't have as many editing effects that I could use but I still changed the colouring of the clips made some of them slower added a couple of effects between such as an iris. I also added the music and recorded my voice for the voiceover which was easier than I thought.

Blogger: Allowed me to document all of my progress that I have made from start to finish. At the beginning I posted more about my PLANNING AND RESEARCH for my creation of my short film. I wanted to keep a clear and organised place to keep all of my research for my short film including TEXTUAL ANALYSIS, GATHERING PRIMARY AND SECONDARY DATA FROM OTHER STUDENTS WORK AND MOODBOARDS. I was also able to analyse to make sure I gathered the conventions of a short film, poster and film review and document them all on Blogger. I also used blogger to document my PLANNING for my short film such as STORYBOARDS, SCRIPTS AND EDITING TIMETABLES. Having everything in one place made it much easier to find and it allowed me to see my own development and I could see where my mistakes were happening and how I could change them.

Macbook pro: Although I had the opportunity to use the macs at school I found that I would probably be best to use my own at home as I could then work on it outside of school and also bring it into school when everybody was editing. I found the macs at school were very slow and had trouble with uploading my clips, therefore I decided to use my own as I could have all of my clips in one place. 

Google: Was a great help for me as I used this to search for short film websites and gather all of my photos that I then used to create a textual analysis. Google has a massive collection of various websites that I found to create my poster and also make it much easier to find we sites that I had used such as prezi and pixlr.

Youtube: Was great when I wanted to look at previous students work and also find other professional students work to analyse. I found it very easy as well to upload my own work for people to look at and then embed it to my blog. Youtube allowed me to find music that I could use for my short film and that is where I found the artist that I would use. It was also very informative as when I had a problem with final cut pro or iMovie youtube had videos in which it told me how to resolve the problem.

Pixlr: I love Pixlr as it is an easy and effective way of creating a poster and review. I have used Pixlr a lot now since my AS and therefore I fond that it was the best application to use when creating my ancillary texts. I knew that everything that I needed was on there and that I could get a consistent piece of irk as they had all of the same fonts and effects that I could use. I found that Pixlr was also free and therefore I found that I could only really use this website as it created a professional piece of work without paying for it. The only problem with pixlr is that once you have saved something you can't go back so you would have to start again however I sorted this problem with saving everything before I added another bit of text etc.

Prezi: Is also brilliant as I was able to present my work a different and creative way. I tried to display a lot of my evaluations with prezi as I found that it would be much more engaging and I know that I would prefer to read something that has a bit more colour etc that reading a block of text. I know that it can be frustrating to create and can sometimes take a lot of time but again it is free and therefore I decided that I would try to create as many posts as I could with Prezi.

Internet: This is obviously a big application that I used to research and plan my short film. I used the internet a great deal to find different websites that would help to make a professional looking short film. whilst on the internet I found a website that allowed me to create a picture storyboard for free which I thought was very helpful for me as I was not the best at drawing. I also found out lots of information about short films and their conventions.

Overall I found that all of these various technologies have helped me create a professional looking final product and ancillary texts. They have all had their pros and cons but they have allowed me to find research which I needed to make sure my short film was going to be conventional and also display my work in a creative way.