Q4. What has been learnt from media technologies across all aspects of the unit?

Kris Thomas – Candidate no. 4883

Different technologies used throughout the project...

Social Technology

Throughout the project, various forms of social media were used to interact with others, generate feedback and aid with planning and producing my final product...

Most notable was the use of facebook, Twitter and Blogger. Facebook allowed for us to connect with the rest of our group to plan the script for the soap, the same goes for twitter. The use of social media and technologies allowed us as a group to easily organise our product and make sure we were all involved in the production.

Facebook used to plan the script

By using Blogger, I was able to keep all of my work towards the product (Planning, Ancillaries etc...) In one easy to access and view place. Blogger was also useful when generating audience feedback for Q2, as peers were able to leave comments and I could base changes to my work around these

I was able to keep track of mine, and others work, cross promotion among other students work allowed my magazine ancillary to be more realistic.

Twitter allowed us to do the same, connecting with other students to plan and collaborate as well as contacting our tutor to confirm work and get feedback. Social media was a large part in the development of my final products.

By tweeting other students we were able to generate feedback for our products to aid with answering Q2 of the evaluation

Editing

The editing process of our trailer was done on Imovie on Apple Macs. It is professionally used editing software which made the process easy and fluent, resulting in a trailer that looked professional and of a high quality. We used conventional editing techniques and the technology involved in the editing process and the use of industry standard software made the final product more believable as a piece of media.

Editing in Photoshop

Having Photoshop as a technological resource allowed me to create more believable and higher quality pieces of work, the front cover for example, was removed of the scruffy looking outline and the text neatened to a standard that looks good on a magazine cover.

Pixilation on photo removed through clone stamping on Photoshop, the distortion was also fixed to a degree using this technique.

Technologies like Photoshop and Publisher were combined when making the ancillaries, Photoshop was used here to remove green screen and then add a background image and text to promote the show.

Edges of figures neatened with clone stamp

The title cards were made in keynote, a programme on Macs that allows for slides with animation to be imported into Imovie. Allowing for movement on the title cards and timed fades, adding to the quality of the work

The timed fades on these title cards allowed us to time when the titles would appear, easier to use and more professional than making slides in PowerPoint and importing them as Jpegs.

Keynote allows the user to create customisable slides that can be imported with animation and timed effects into IMovie.

Filming Technologies.

Throughout the project I was able to learn and develop on my knowledge of film technologies. Most notably using lighting, certain focus types and the Levelling of clips, audio and visual. Precision editing and filming also became a large part of the trailer as well as music layering.

One of the main contributions the technologies gave to my final product, and one of the most important things I learnt technologically was the precision editing and the changing of the different levels on the Imovie timeline. By using the different colour filters I was able to give the trailer a distinctive, grey look to mirror the downbeat nature of the trailer.

This precision editing allows me to change the colour and contrast of each frame, which gave the trailer its unique grey tone, which matched the downbeat and depressing storylines.

I could also change the exposure and brightness of the clips, this worked well when changing the outdoor exposure light to match the tone of the trailer

As well as developing my technological knowledge during post-production of the trailer, I also learned valuable technological lessons during the filming of the trailer. The way light levels and the way non-digetic sounds affect a trailers mood and help to create genre.

Different light levels to symbolise good and bad, or evil and innocent.

Low lux level, achieves in making this character look villainous by covering him in shadows.

Camera set at eye level and set slightly out of focus to denote distortion of character and the distance the audience feels from him.

The slow zoom into the character that precedes this shot shows enigma and mystery as it is shot from behind and doesn't reveal his face straight away

This was a shot that I put careful technological thought into, the light levels help create genre by generating mystery around the character and portray him as shady and dark, whilst the steady camera movement (As it was set on the tripod) helps create tension by not moving and being eerily still.

The music used in the trailer is the song ‘Kiara’ By the electronic artists Bonobo. It fitted the trailer well with its minor keys and downbeat tone helping to create genre and meaning. It was converted to MP3 And then layered over the clips. The site www.clipconverter.com was used in this process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4rVc0cSQ6o (Original video)

The music file automatically inserted itself at the right length of the trailer, and added more sound if the trailer was lengthened in any way

The music was layered onto the trailer and the sound levels ducked accordingly. By doing this we could have the music swell in certain points of the trailer when the dialogue stopped. And it would lower when the characters were talking so no speech was overpowered by the music.

Sound ducking allowed for the music level to automatically adjust itself depending on the amount of noise and speech volume in the clip

I could also change the background noise levels for the outside scenes, particularly useful when eliminating background noise such as cars and traffic.

Sharing the clip on YouTube not only allowed easy access to the video, but also allowed for relatively easy feedback on the product which we could adjust accordingly.

Having a resource like YouTube, and being able to upload to the internet so easily allowed us to generate viewer feedback for the product.

The technological difficulties in the process of making the three products presented themselves mainly in the ancillaries. As we shot the pictures for our magazine cover and billboard promotion on green screen, the green background proved difficult to remove fully and resulted in distortion along the edge of the pictures. Though this was resolved slightly in Photoshop, the faults on the picture are still evident.

Distortion around text and image

White outline left by lasso tool on Photoshop being unable to fully crop the picture

Banner button distorted due to cropping on Jpeg.

The technologies that helped me produce my final products also helped plan them as well. I used a scanner to scan in my storyboards and shooting ideas to my blog, this way I was able to keep track of my ideas and have them present as planning evidence at the same time.

Various storyboards and shooting schedules scanned into the blog.