Q4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

There are many different media technologies that I used during the production of my short film. For the research and planning stage, I mainly used websites to look up information which I could then analyse and link it to the development of my short film. An example of this would be the blogger site. This website contains blog posts relevant to the production of my short film. The first couple of posts were about the preliminary task, but then it slowly moved on to thinking about what our short film could be about. It included a mind map of topics and themes which we could focus on. After deciding that we wanted to create a short film using the thriller genre, I wrote down character traits which could link in with our actual audience and created audience profiles using an avatar website.

Although we wanted to stick with the thriller genre we had to make sure what the audience wanted to see was part of our short film. We used survey monkey to ask them questions like what would you like the main character to be? and what do you want to feel after watching the short film? Looking at my results I found that people wanted a male role and to feel intrigued at the end. Surprisingly, no one thought that we should make a short film in the thriller genre.

Moreover, during the research and planning stage I went on to look at thriller short films on YouTube. This helped me analyse certain codes and conventions which would fit into our film. E.g. ominous music and creepy characters. YouTube also allowed me to upload my own videos which I could then link onto my blog posts. This was very helpful because a normal MOV. file video would take twice as long to post onto blogger but on YouTube anyone can easily go on the site and look up the video if it didn't work. Specifically on our construction page, YouTube allowed me to upload our preliminary task and draft to our short film. On the other hand, YouTube wasn't the only site that helped me gather research; IMDb and google helped me look at posters for the thriller genre which I could then analyse and link in certain traits for the production of our poster.

The types of media technologies that I used in my research and planning was a software called Paint. I thought it would've been a good idea to use this software to draw out the storyboards but after realising that it would take a lot of time and effort I only managed to draw the first two shots. What I liked about this software is that it was easy to use and it wasn't so technical. Not only did it benefit me but it also helped me explore the artistic side of me again. You can easily hook up a tablet and pen to the computer and start drawing just like that. In addition, you can also paste images, crop them and edit the pixel size which could then be included in a blog post.

Lastly, Prezi was one of the sites I used instead of creating a power point. I used this site because it looked more glamorous than a simple PowerPoint. Moreover, I can easily log on and access it from any computer. I can edit any time I want and I can also use it to add pictures/ videos. Apart from Prezi, I also used slide share to show my results on my blog which I got from Survey Monkey. This is a site which can turn your power points into public ones which could be then embedded into a blog post. Just like Prezi its easy and simple to use and it displays your research in a more professional way.

However, after listing all the site I've used to help me with my research and planning, I couldn't have made the film without the hardware stuff. E.g. Camera, Tripod, Microphone. If I didn't have these things which the school nicely provided for us, we wouldn't have been able to create a high quality looking - short film. Moreover, we used Final cut pro on the Macs which allowed us to edit our film. This helped us cut videos and put them together and add in sound effects to create impact. We could also add in music which created tension and the feeling of mystery which is one of the thriller genre conventions.When our teacher helped us on certain parts to help improve our short film, I learned
new techniques like sound bridging. It also helped me develop my editing skills because I now know what looks good and sounds good.For example, the birds in the background sound effect helps add life and atmosphere to the shot. Another technology which helped produce the magazine article for our short film is Photoshop. This was very useful because you can layer images and add text. You can also cut out a person from the original image to make sure that the reader focuses on him (As you can see in the screenshot above.) Because I do A level Photography I'm used to playing around with Photoshop so I already knew how the tools work. My knowledge of Photoshop benefited me because it allowed me to create these two pages. However, the only reason I think this kind of format looks good is because I did my research on magazine articles and followed the codes and conventions. E.g. Include images from the film, director/ producer quotes and columns.

 Overall, I think that the internet had a huge impact on the progress of my short film therefore, without blogger the website, I wouldn't have been able to collect and analyse information and put together all the ideas that relates to our short film. This includes using it for the construction and evaluation stages of my coursework.