New Media Technologies

Research & Planning

• Scribd.com• Youtube.com• Wordpress.com

Scribd.com

• Scribd was helpful as it allowed me to upload documents such as the screen play, ‘Sight & Sound’ magazine analysis and other powerpoints onto my blog. Therefore, I was able to store my work online and make my blog more interesting to read.

Youtube.com• Youtube became a resource for research as it

provided unlimited access to trailers of above and below the line production meaning that independent films were easy to source. Also, by uploading the first and final edit of our trailer we were able to utilise the site’s social network capacity by reading viewers’ feedback. Youtube is particularly important for indie films as it provides a platform for the film to be watched. Without youtube, marketing an indie film would be much more expensive for the company who would be relying on small funds anyway.

Wordpress.com• Wordpress acted as the groups’ journals, tracking

every piece of research and planning undertaken to construct our three media texts. We were able to write text, upload sound, video and still image which could be turned into slideshows, quick and easy to use. The site was undoubtedly the most valuable we utilised as it stored and organised our progress since September. Along the way in addition to classmates commenting on my account, members of the public also commented on some of my posts including –paperclip pitch and –research on Krzysztof Kieślowski’s films which helped me to communicate and hear feedback on the project.

Production

• The cannon camcorders we used were easy to use and compact enough to carry around shoots. Though some of the footage was grainy it didn’t matter so much as the content was able to be captured with ease of movement, zoom and track. The group were able to shoot all of the scenes we wanted to from our storyboard such as large landscape shots.

Post Production

• Final Cut Express• Garageband• Photoshop• Pen tablet

Final Cut Express• This software enabled us to transfer our ideas

from the storyboard into real life through the vast choices made available to us in editing. We were able to experiment with opacity, hue and saturation, split screens, precise cutaways of sound and video and text. The timeline at the base could be manipulated so that we could duck non-diegetic sound to be completely synchronous with the corresponding image. I found the process of split-screening the most insightful. To do this I:

Eg of split screen.

Photoshop• Photoshop acted as a technical drawing pad as the

infinite number of layers allowed the group to add as much text, effect and image as we wanted and were still able to cut, duplicate or go back if we wanted. Using the grids we could drag along ourselves we ensured that the composition of the poster and magazine cover was the best in proportion, to scale and symmetrical. The tools we used the most were the opacity tool which blended in the images into the background which was influenced by magazines such as ‘O Comely’ and also this faded effect alludes to the dreams/reality theme.

Adobe pen tablet

• Clare brought in her pen tablet for us to use in our editing stage of photoshop which allowed us to be more precise when hand-drawing the doodles of birds, ships and train tickets on the poster and the sketches of Beatriz and Caleb. The pen was more stable when it came to writing out the title of the magazine as with the mouse the lettering seemed too illegible and pixellised.

Garageband• This piece of software helped us not only with the sound for the

trailer but also for our group podcast of ‘Cherrybomb’. Due to our trailer being shorter than the songs we chose for the soundtrack, we were able to transfer the two songs into Garageband and cut and re-assemble segments of the composition to sound like one long song rather than a disjointed piece of music. We were able to recognise each beat of the song which made it easier to cut out large parts of the songs but to keep the pace of the music. To add, using the eye icon we had access to pre-recorded material that we could add in to our film such as seagulls and waves. However, we chose not to use these in the end as we wanted an absence of all sound apart from the voices of the characters in the film and the music.