Rob Oxley

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

Software we used

For the A2 Media coursework we had to use a range of different software products including Photoshop, Indesign, Microsoft word and Powerpoint, Final Cut Pro, Garageband and then different websites such as Facebook, Blogger, Youtube and Prezi

Photoshop and Indesign

IndesignI used Indesign to produce the double page spread because you can set up the

column grids which help make the text more presentable and professional. Also it helped getting all of the text on the same line horizontally through the

two pages. When using Indesign there where several problems that I encountered. The

first one was, when I re-opened Indesign after the first time, I could not change anything on the page which meant that the smaller picture of the phone

was slightly overlapping the text in the middle column. I tried for some time to fix this problem but in the end gave up as I needed to get on with the rest of

the double page. There where also some minor problems which set me back slightly, for

example when I imported the background image I accidently kept cropping it instead of making it smaller. Also there was a minor problem with changing the text colour so it would stand out from the background but eventually I

fixed this problem and decided to have the text white because it would stand out best.

PhotoshopPhotoshop was used to create the short film poster. The reason I chose this over

InDesign is because I can use it easier and produce a better poster with it. I used Photoshop to produce my AS coursework and therefore knew how to use it all effectively so when designing the poster I set up the grid so that the text was

aligned and looked professional.

Photoshop and InDesign are similar programs so getting used to using InDesign wasn’t that much of a problem. Many of the features in Photoshop appeared in

Indesign at the same location which made it easier to use. When using Photoshop I did not encounter any problems.

Microsoft Word and PowerPoint

WordWe used Microsoft word to produce a shooting plan and to plan

what camera angles we would use for each shot. This proved to be very helpful later as it enabled us to shoot without looking at

different shots which saved us time. The shooting plan gave us an indication as to where we needed to go on what days, however I do not think that we stuck to it very well as we just filmed when the

full group was present, and some days we were missing other members and so did not meet the deadline.

As a result we had to re-shoot some of our scenes later on. We used Microsoft Word with Blogger to produce posts and then put them on the blog. It was much easier to make a table on Word

than it was on Blogger, so we used both. Through using Word I did not come across any problems.

PowerpointI used powerpoint to create this presentation and other questions of

the evalution. You cannot make presentations on Blogger itself, therefore I had to make it on here and then use an embedding

website and then eventually put it on my blog. When using Powerpoint I did not come across any problems.

Final Cut Pro and Garageband

GaragebandIn my group I did not use Garageband as much as much as other members of my group. From the use I had with Garageband I did not have any problems with the

soundtrack.It was hard to find songs that went with our short film and we rushed the

soundtrack, in the end I think that the song didn't’t go very well with the film and think it could have been improved.

We used Garageband to produce the soundtrack to our film.

Final Cut ProWe used Final Cut Pro to edit the film and add effects. It took us a while to get used to using it which set our work back. It also took a while to render the files, and save to scratch. When we moved the files Final Cut could not find them so it made the

media offline. It also took a while to find out how to do a text overlay to put at the beginning. I

think that a lot of problems occurred because of Final Cut Pro and slowed our film making down.

YoutubeWe used Youtube to look at other short film trailers which would help s find out what the audience liked and what genre to make our movie. Also we used it to get audience feedback when the movie

was completed. The only problem with Youtube was accessing it as we couldn't’t from college and had to do it at

home.

Facebook, Blogger and Prezi

FacebookThroughout our coursework we used the social networking website Facebook a

couple of times. Firstly we made an account which was going to feature in our film which would send a message to the main character telling him his wife has been

taken. We used this in the film, however you do not see the Facebook page itself and the character just reads out the message.

Secondly we used it to get some audience feedback after our film was completed.

BloggerWe also used Blogger to post our media pitches, video, and

ancillary tasks on. The blog was our way of getting our work on the internet and similarly to Facebook, could use it to get audience

feedback. When using Blogger I did not encounter any problems with posting, only that the items that you can post are limited and

everything must be done through the URL’s/

PreziI used prezi to display short film research and then part 2 of the

evaluation. Mostly I found Prezi easy to use, however there were some minor problems with the paths. We used Prezi because it is a different type

of media for presentations.

Hardware we used – Apple Mac and Camera

HD CameraWhen filming our product we used a HD camera with a tripod. After filming our scenes we returned to college and plugged it into an Apple Mac, and began transferring the footage over. Apart from the time it took to transfer the footage we had not problems with using the camera. Throughout the filming of our product my skills with the camera improved as I tried different shots. Also we shot different scenes which would be edited together to make one quick shot. We went out filming, got the footage, brought it back to college, uploaded it and then edited and posted it on our blog.

Apple MacThe last piece of equipment we used was an Apple Mac. In my opinion I

think that this caused the most problems when trying to produce our short film and ancillary tasks. The Mac kept crashing and sometimes lost our

work which meant we had to do re-shoots of some scenes.When we were putting the clips onto the Mac it worked fine and, apart

from the time it took, did not cause any problems. I think that the Mac did make it a lot easier to produce and edit our film,

and it helped us improve our editing skills.

Conclusion

Overall I think that the main problems arose from using the Macs and Final Cut Pro, everything else worked ok and did not slow us down. Society now spends a lot of time on the internet and communicates through it, I think it is a good idea that we used the blogs and other websites to display our work as there is a much larger audience on the internet from around the world. Websites such as Youtube and Blogger are web 2.0 and allowed others to comment and review our productions. Without this we would not know what to include in our film and how to stick to the conventions. Youtube was particularly useful as we could get feedback, and could look at other short films to get inspired and look at camera angles etc. This allowed us to produce a better short film with a clearer narrative and better camerawork.

Media technologies helped us conduct research and planning as it allowed us to look at other short films and films in the genre, and then plan how we would include similar conventions in ours. Without this technology we would not have seen other short films and therefore would not really stick the the genre properly. At the start of the course we conducted audience research and presented our idea as a movie pitch to the class, with this we got some feedback which helped us improve the quality of our final product.