Question Four

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

Throughout the various stages of production my group and I had to use many new and old media technologies to complete our research, planning and evaluation work.

Research began in June 2010 where our brief was to make our silent film based on the idea of ‘The Fall’. Interpreting ‘The Fall’ in any way we could, I found myself using the internet and sites such as Google, Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers to find a creative interpretation from which I could stem a story idea. My research from Google led me to the ‘Fall of Man’, the classic biblical story of the fall of Lucifer as God’s highest angel to the Devil himself. I also came across the cliché of ‘falling in love’, ‘falling over’, ‘falling ill’, and ‘falling pregnant’ but these all seemed too generic and I wanted to create something that had not been done before. Wikipedia had on the other hand led me to a novel ‘The Fall’ in which the story follows a very depressed man, but as a group we wanted to stay clear of gloomy and dark storylines.

This year as well as researching story ideas we had to put a great amount of focus into the cinematography of ours and previous films. Once we were given a photography workshop using photographs and Microsoft Power Point we were given our own assignment to capture everyday objects in interesting ways. From the beginning I was interested in shadows and lighting and with the combination of my simple iPod Touch 3G, Blackberry Torch and Samsung 12 megapixel camera I was able to capture and create funny images from the table condiments at Nandos. (as seen on my Blog). I also captured amazing shadow lines underneath classroom huts within my school grounds. Whilst taken pictures I took advantage of the various settings on the camera such as Macro to change the focus and blur of each picture. This enabled me to get a focused shot of a spider on its web with the view of a rose behind it. I thoroughly enjoyed this research but publishing the images statically on my blog just was not interesting enough and so I researched another photo publishing software, Kizoa. Kizoa was brilliant as it was easy to download and allowed me to arrange the images in a way that I wanted whilst looping a soundtrack to the slideshow. This was new software that I had not come across before and was much more interesting than the normal Power Point Presentation as it brought images to life

In addition to media technologies used during research and planning we had to use document publishing software like slide share and Scrib’d which let us publish our scripts and treatments in original document format. I was not as familiar with that new technology as I was with the technologies used during production. As we were using the same filming and sound equipment as previous years I was very comfortable using the Canon XHA1 camera and the Libec Tripod as it is easier to assemble and I had familiarised myself with it. This made setting up and taking down the equipment less time consuming enabling us to move from each location swiftly. The only difference this year as having to get used to using the camera without the tripod, which I adapted to as the master shot of the drug deal is not shaky and blurred. The only major challenge whilst using the camera and sound equipment was shooting outside in the thunder storm. As we as a group had to make sure that the equipment was dry and that the ‘Hairy Harry’ was secured correctly to assure we did not pick up any wind noise and crackling due to the gust of wind and heavy downpour. The weather also created a problem with continuity as the rain would stop and start between different scenes, meaning that we had a change of weather in different shots. Therefore to overcome this problem when it came to editing, we had to find heavy rain sound effects to put over the top of certain shots to sustain the impression of Frank and Charlie being caught in the middle of a thunderstorm and failing at scheme miserably. Ironically, the weather was a positive as it created pathetic fallacy and extra comic effect as the gloomy reflected the twos decreasing success at making money.

Moreover, we continued to use previous technology in editing. Adobe Premier Pro is software that I love using as it is easy and efficient, but last year I only had basic knowledge of it. Whereas this year we broadened our range and shot scenes with the intention of creating split screens and slow motion because we all wanted to increase our technical skill and make further progress from our previous AS production for which Silent Play only used static shots and a few pans. To do this, I inquired into how to do these new effects and with practice I was able to teach and help others with their editing problems. However, I was not a complete expert on the software and there were certain graphics that I could not accomplice with the basic Adobe Premier Pro, so we had to get help using Adobe After Effects. After using this new software, other group members created the graphics, but once incorporated into film, we all felt that they lowered our production value and so they were discarded.

To conclude, we used a wide range of new and old technologies to help us complete the work needed for the construction, research and planning stages for our A2 Media production.