Evaluate your use of technologies in research and planning, construction

and evaluation

Research using Digital Technology

Use of Search Engines

By using search engines it enabled us to:

* Find relevant information for our film quickly and easily.

*Gain knowledge about the film industry free of charge.

*Access YouTube to visualise certain aspects that we would need in our film, for example, an ident.

*Gain a further understanding due to the huge amount of content and research available.

*Get information quickly and be able to pick out information relevant to our film.

Search Engines

YouTube:

Wikipedia:

Advantages Disadvantages

Big selection of tutorial's.

Slow connection sometimes and often it was buffering.

Visualise idents and production logos.

Could potentially have the same ideas as other people as it is an open source.

Advantages Disadvantages

Wide variety of knowledge.

A lot of text displayed.

Information is accessible globally therefore many ideas can be generated together rather than relying on UK ideas

Information may not always be reliable as anyone can post on there. Therefore certain aspects may not be valid.

Example of Internet Use

*We researched into ‘Skyfall’ a lot because we knew that it had many aspects that we wanted to include in our film, for example a car scene.

By researching into this it allowed us to establish what camera angles best suit car scenes.

Seeing examples from successful action films ensured us that using a car was an effective prop if it was used successfully.

Quick to Find Ideas

*We were able to research successful films in the same genre as ours (action). Digital technology gives access to a wide variety of information all free and easily available.

We were able to access reviews to films such as : ‘Taken’.

We could quickly ensure that our film was part of the action genre by evaluating the plot of other actions films.

Finding Music

*Lots of sites with copyright free music to download, however it was a long process and was very time-consuming.

We were able to search by: track name, artist or genre – however, there was so much available it was overwhelming

It was relatively easy to transfer the music onto Final Cut Express.

Becoming Familiar with Sites

As there is so much information on the internet, we had to learn to head for the most relevant sites first such as IMDb and Artofthetitle. Without the knowledge of these specific sites, internet research can be time-consuming and does not always yield profitable results.

Disadvantages of Using the Internet

We couldn’t always find the relevant information for our piece, for example:

* Music took us a long period of time to find because all of the music that we were finding was too energetic for our piece.

*Anyone can access the internet and perhaps the same sites that we used for our research, therefore anyone researching into the same genre as us could have the same research.

*Sometimes the internet connection was quite slow so we wasted a bit of time waiting.

Planning using Digital Technology

Blogger

Using blogger was our most valuable use of digital technology for planning. We were able to put all our research in one place as a group and were able to access this anywhere, even on our phones.

This was helpful as our work was organised and clearly labelled with the name responsible. It also meant that we could keep checking our ideas which made the next phase of planning much easier.

Blogger

The other really useful element of Blogger was that it allowed us to present our work in a multimedia format.

This was helpful because:- We could choose ways of

presenting our work which seemed most useful according to what it was

- It made the blog more interesting and we were more likely to look at other people’s work.

Mind Map Software

*Free online software: bubbl.us

*We were able to add as many branches and extensions as we needed and were able to move them around to where we wanted them to be on the page.

*It is clear and simple to use

*However, if we had a lot of information in a text box it was hard to read when it appeared on the blog.

In this genre post it was quite hard to read the information displayed in the text boxes on the mind map.

PowerPoints

Advantages Disadvantages

To make a filmed presentation of our task.

Powerpoints appeared in a small format on the blog.

Easy to access the slide you wanted.

Wasted time sorting out the fonts and format.

Made information more clear. We couldn’t write large documents as it had to be short.

Final Cut

We used the digital editing software as part of our preparations and planning; we turned our storyboard into an animatic so we could check our timings as we felt our piece might be running short; and we filmed a practise sequence to see how an edited version might look.

This ability to create accurate mock ups was a very important aspect of our use of digital technology.

Filming Equipment

*A key aspect of our planning was to make ourselves comfortable with equipment for example: cameras, other filming equipment and MACs.

*We carried out many practice activities which involved us using canon cameras to make sure we were confident using them.

*The canon camera was easy to use once we were taught all of the basics and it gave good and clear results.

*However, occasionally there was focusing issues and battery charge was a relatively big issue on our practice task especially.

Images of Equipment

The mac allowed us to use Final Cut Express for our practice filming tasks to make it into a film.

The Canon camera allowed us to film our piece and take take relevant pictures for our piece.

This equipment was only available in school; even the latest digital technology is not effective if you can’t access it when you need.

Construction using Digital Technology

Cutting and Ordering

*In Final Cut Express you can quickly arrange clips into the order that you wanted.

*It was easy to change the order as when we changed the order we could still make changes as nothing is permanent in this kind of digital editing.

*You can change the length’s of the clips and return it to its original length if you didn’t like what you had done.

*We were able to cut and trim the clips to the length we wanted. We were also able to add text, effects and transitions.

Different Views

*The clips that you have recorded are all in the main area and you can drag each one on to the timeline separately or all at the same time to edit as a group.

* It was easy to see how the sequence looked by looking at the sequence on the viewer.

*You could also see how well the editing was coming along by watching on the timeline.

*Being offered these different views made the editing process much easier.

Effects and Transitions

*In Final Cut Express we had the option to pick from many different transitions to put into our sequence.

*The transitions make the work look more professional when you are changing from scene to scene and can add different meanings.

*In our sequence we used fade in and fade to black as our transitions to show the beginning and end of the sequence.

(Transition)

(Transition)

Sound

*We were able to add sound to our sequence from websites that had free copyright tracks.

*We chose to add some at the start of our sequence and the end.

*We could also add sound from different clips and put it over a separate clip.

*We could also adjust the volume, speed, pitch and add effects such as reverb.

*Final Cut Express accepts most file formats – this gave us a lot of control.

(Free copyright track)

(Adjusting sound)

Ident

*For creating our ident we also used Final Cut Express.

*It was good once we learnt how to use it, as it was easy to move everything around and change it if you had made a mistake.

*But it was very time consuming as we had to create all our shots in Photoshop first and then create the stop motion effect..

Photoshop

*We used Photoshop to create the series of images needed for our ident. We created each letter separately and saved the file as a jpeg at each stage. This is a very useful package but was tricky to use and required us to master the use of layers.

LiveType

*We used LiveType to create our credits. This programme allowed us to choose from fonts, colours and sizes and to add animations to our credits if we wanted. This programme is totally compatible with Final Cut which is ideal – digital technology is not useful if you cannot use programmes together.

Disadvantages of Digital Tech for Construction

*Can be very complicated to learn how to use it.

*Takes a lot of time to learn how to use, very time consuming.

*Your work can be lost very easily if you aren’t careful when saving.

*It is only available to use on Apple computers and laptops.

*Expensive to purchase if you wanted to do it at home.

*We all couldn’t edit on it at the same time.

Evaluation using Digital Technology

*When evaluating, we used ‘Blogger’ as a way of presenting our progress and recording our evidence as we had with our research and planning. Many of the comments that we made about Blogger in that section also apply here.

Evaluation using Blogger

*When evaluating, we used ‘Blogger’ as a way of presenting our progress and recording our evidence as we had with our research and planning. Many of the comments that we made about Blogger in that section also apply here.

*For example, we used labels so we could easily identify our own work. We were also able to look at each other’s work.

Evaluation using Blogger

*We were able to get students from another school to look at an early cut of our work and offer their comments and advice. This was a really valuable use of digital technology – we really needed this unbiased help and the blog made it easy to get this

Evaluation using Blogger

*Probably the most important use of Blogger for the evaluation was being able to present our work in a multimedia format. We were able to choose what kind of format we wanted for each task depending what we wanted to convey.

Evaluation using Blogger

*By using Paint we could create a contact sheet that could be uploaded to Blogger and used to help us explain our work. This collage effect really gave a good visual impression of our genre.

Evaluation using Paint

Advantages Disadvantages

Easy to use. Sometimes became quite tedious.

Advantages Disadvantages

A really unique way of presenting our work.

Some people were camera shy and this could have effect our performance.

It was an interesting way of evaluating and allowed us to role play a bit and find out a lot of interesting facts from other people in the group.

It was live and not practiced so there were some mistakes.

Evaluation using Filmed Presentation

Evaluation using Filmed Presentation

Advantages Disadvantages

A great way of editing what we needed to se and adding in pictures that we needed to show whilst we were talking about them.

Forever rendering and needing to place images in the right place.

*When uploading pictures this was good because we could add a picture to back up what we wanted to say.

*Pretty much any picture could be uploaded as long as it was saved as a JPEG. As film is such a visual medium, we preferred having a mainly visual record of our work.

Evaluation using Text and Image

Evaluation using Text and Image

Advantages Disadvantages

Easy to use most of the time. Sometimes it would be hard to control and wouldn’t do what we wanted.

A unique way of publishing our progress.

Trying to upload pictures to put up on the blog could sometimes have been a hassle.

People could give you constructive criticisms and this was helpful to us and were easy to find.

Although it would have been hard to find, there was a chance it could have been seen by anyone.

We could see our progress and our history of work and we could always go back and change our other piece of work when needed.

There was also the risk of getting comments that weren’t meant to help us and could be abusive.

*This was an efficient way of evaluating our work and was a really good way of presenting our work as a group as we have all been able to create slides in the presentation.

*It is a very visual way of analysing technology and the slideshow format makes you be concise.

Evaluation using PowerPoint

Advantages Disadvantages

Easy to use and an interesting approach to evaluating.

Couldn’t be edited once on Blogger.

Evaluation using PowerPoint