EVALUATION QUESTION 4

HOW DID YOU USE NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

To create the Final Product we used a variety of New Media Technologies to help us Plan and Create the Final Cut and now im using one to help me Evaluate the Film i have created. Here is a List with Notes on how i used these Technologies to help me:

• Blogger - Blogger was the main Technology i used as i stored all of the Research and Planning i did over the period of time that we were doing the Project on here. It was very useful as if there wasnt this facility available i would probably have ended up having to write it all down on paper which can be lost/damaged compared to the blog where it can be saved directly online so others are able to access it. Also with the fact that its an internet based program meant that i can attach media to my posts to give an example of what i mean and show something relevant to my project. For each Pre-production task i made a seperate post (where relevant some posts were joined together) with the research i did or planning on that specific point making it much easier when it came down to filming as we new exactly what we had to acheive. This is a Link to my Blog.
• Final Cut Express 4 and iMovie 06 - Final Cut Express was the main Program we used to edit our Final Cut. Its a very useful piece of software as you can do so much more with it compared to iMovie. For instance Final Cut Express 4 has 99 video tracks with support for nesting sequences whereas imovie HD has only 1 video track. Just small things like this meant that we could achieve so much more with this program in terms of editing and other technical adjustments like tweaking the Brightness/Colours of some shots and also the Audio for the clips could be removed and changed appropriately. Due to Problems with temperamental Macs we ended up having to upload the basic footage onto iMovie 06 then Importing it across to the Final Cut program. This did not take long but it was quite frustrating and annoying as sometimes the uploading straight from Camera to Final Cut worked and sometimes it didnt. For more detailed Info on this visit my Software page.
• Dv Camcorders and Tripods - These were provided by the School and we used them to film the footage that we used for our Final Piece. They were quite basic cameras compared to some of the other cameras available on the market but they were very reliable and did the job. We acheived quite a lot with the cameras and they were fairly easy to use but in certain cases a bit more research on the internet was required for instance with how to use the white balance and how to turn the camera from auto focus to manual focus. The Hardware page on my blog has more detailed information on these pieces of equipment. 
• Mac Computers - We used the Mac Computers which are owned by school and housed in the school buildings to do most of our blogging (split between home and school) and all of our editing as they contained all of the appropriate programs to do this. I dont think there is many advantages of using a Mac over a PC but it was easy to use anyway after using a PC for so many years. If we hadnt had the Macs or the Computers we basically would not have been able to create the films as no editing would have taken place so we would just be stuck with the raw footage with no soundtrack and the scenes would not fit together properly. Using the Macs gave us access to the internet to via Safari so we could look up any problems and also blog too. Some Specifications and Features of the Macs.
•  Social Networking Sites (Facebook) - We used Alex Jowett's (my partner in the Project) Facebook page to advertise for Actors/Actresses and Audience Feedback. This was very useful indeed as we didnt have to ask lots of people individually, we just made one group which people could reply to if they were willing to play the part and with audience Feedback we simply uploaded the Film to the Site and left a message asking for Audience Feedback which people could comment on with helpful criticism on how to improve our film. 
• Photoshop - We used this program to create the teaser poster and the Ancillary text movie poster. It was a very useful program to use as it enabled us to select certain parts from photos we had taken cut them out and arrange them onto one poster in the correct positions. We then changed the colours or added effects to make the posters look proffesional like something that would be actually used to advertise a Blockbuster movie being released at the cinema.
  
• Pages - We used this program on the Mac to create the basic Template for our magazine article (Ancillary Text 2). It was a fairly straightforward program similar to Microsoft Publisher but the Mac Version. We basically made a template then added pictures and appropriate text to it that we had prpared beforehand. If we hadnt had this program we would have probably had to use photoshop or make it by hand but both ways i dont think it would have looked as good as using Pages.
  
• Scanner - We used the scanner just once to scan our storyboard so we could post it onto blogger. The scanning machine was very straightforward to use, just place the sheets into the scanner and press the button then they appear in your computer. Without this i dont think there would be any way to display the storyboard on blogger other than creating it somehow on the computer. 
• Search Engines and Information Sites - We mainly used google and imdb.com for these. Google beause it has links to basially everything on the internet so you only need to type in a search term and lots of pages will appear that are relevant. Imdb.com because it has an extensive library of information about film from the past, present and future and lots of information about them suh as who direted them and what the budgets were etc. I used google mainly for tutorials on how to use or do things ranging from on the Camera to Final Cut Express whih helped a lot with technical difficulties. I used imdb.com to find information about films that i was intertextually referencing and about the short films which i was finding codes and conventions for. Its a very useful sites as it contains a lot of detailed information about any film you can think of and was very useful as a source. Without these websites i think we would have resorted to using books more but this would have taken much, much longer.
  
• Document/Audio/Video Hosting Sites - The sites we used were Scribd, Photobucket and archive.org. Scribd is a useful website for uploading documents such as powerpoints and word files and then embedding them onto my blogger pages. It sets everything out much clearer and you can print it out much easier if you need it quickly. Photobucket i used to upload Film clips to help out with my intertextual references. It lets you host videos and pictures on its site for free which is useful. Archive.com i used to upload audio files which i then embedded into my blogger page. We uploaded the podcasts onto this site.
  
• Portable Digital Audio Recorder - We used this to record Podcasts and the Voieover for the movie. It was basically a Microphone with a built in recording device which we talked into, recording our voices and transferred it to the computer as an mp3. Without this equipment we would have had to use the camera and take the sound from the recording to make the voiceover and podcasts but this would have taken much longer.