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

Product 2: ZoomTM

Sound RecorderProduct Overview:The Zoom H1 sound recorder is a more budget oriented sound recorder; starting at prices of around £80.

Why we chose it:We chose this sound recorder for many different reasons. The main one being that it was towards the more affordable end of the spectrum whilst still being able to provide a good level of sound quality.

Alternatives?

Looking to utilise the best equipment possible, we were initially set of purchasing an array of products from the company Rode. Although our research online showed that these were, as expected, very high quality products; we found that to buy the collection of products (which reviews said was needed to get the best out of the equipment) was incredibly expensive. Knowing that these products were out of our budget, we started looking at multiple Sony products. This is because we knew that they offered a range of options at multiple different price points. Unfortunately, many of their products were so budget (around £40 - £50) that they ultimately performed worse than the Zoom (with

2 the only option surpassing its quality being the Sony HDR-MV1B Full HD Music Video Recorder which cost well over £220). With this in mind, the Zoom seemed the most affordable option to still provide quality sound.

How we used it:We purchased three sound recorders for use in the creation of our product. In every scene that featured dialogue - excluding scenes that were narrated (because the voices could instead be recorded in a more controlled environments) - actors were required to use a sound recorder. In order to avoid us having to use the recorders like traditional microphones (something that you don’t see as a standard conventions of documentaries) we plug a second clip-on microphone (included in the packaging) which could easily be clipped to the collar of a shirt. This allowed us to keep the recorder in our back pockets and thus out of the view of the audience (preventing the break of immersion).