Question Four

 

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

For the construction of our short film we agreed upon the genre in which we want our film to be, we decided upon a comedy genre and we chose a case study which will act as a prime example for our film,and we wanted Mr Bean to be that case study. We also decided that our film would be a silent film, where the main character would not speak and would make comedy through his facial expressions and body language, due to this reason we thought that Mr bean would be the best for this due to the reason most of his films are the best for this technique. We also came up with the story of our film through viewing clips of MrBean and other case studies on YouTube as well as our own ideas. YouTube is a great research resource because it enabled us to view any clips of Mr bean and also clips of other case study’s thus giving us the ability to have a widened amount of ideas to choose from, YouTube was also a great research resource because it gave us the opportunity to look at other case study’s which we hadn’t kept in mind and we could note down the key point which we take from the clips and share it on our blogger. Blogger was an easy diary to use; it was really basic and simple so we could get round it comfortably. It allowed us to share clips from YouTube and save it on our diary plan and also talk a bit about the clip, this was really great full as it allowed showing evidence that we did research upon clips from YouTube. Blogger did allow us to keep us organized because it worked as a diary of everything we did so we could review our work and view and strength and weaknesses in our project. Blogger was a better tool to use compared to Wix which we used last year because blogger gave us the opportunity to talk about our work more in depth and it gave us the ability to track our work easily as well. We viewed more clips through YouTubeto see other case study’s to try and take out some valuable points and features which we could use in our film. We also looked at other case studies like east is east and 4 lions, to help us give some ideas on Mise-en-scene, Camera angle and the way they use Sound and how they use all the elements stated. After that we finalised the story line of the film, we finalised locations of each scene, we finalised costume and props which would be needed and wrote up all the points made on blogger. We wrote up all the ideas on word using a template which the teacher gave to keep us organized and stay update.  We downloaded the templates from the college MLE Moodle; this was really helpful as the templates would work as a guide line for the work. The templates which we used were the risk assessment, recce form and also the guide to answering the questions for the evaluation. As most of these templates are difficult to draw, by having already made template it made everything more easily, we could fill the template up without any stress on how to actually draw up the template.Next we wrote up the storyboard on a template on paper and we also wrote up a script for the film on Microsoft word. After all this, we decided to start to shoot the film via a cannon HV40 camera and a tripod. we had use this camera last year for a different project in which all the students had grasped a few knowledge about how to use the camera, we also used the camera as a training to remind ourselves how the camera works, overall using the camera wasn’t difficult it was simple to use, at first we had problems with the camera because we there was four modes to the camera and we would save the clips we took in different areas in the camera so that was at first the only problem after we knew how to overcome this problem it was much easier to use the camera, the technician taught us about how to save the clips on the right mode. Another criticism about the camera which made it difficult for us was the amount of time the camera would last, even after charging it fully the battery would die after two or three hours of filming which meant that we had to sometimes call it a day even with a few footage left. As a group I and Aadam shared the role of camera work and Akik was staring as the main actor, this was because I could track and pan the camera at times really well where Aadam had a steadier hold of the camera and he could zoom in and out at the correct moments. We didn’t use a tripod during these times because the tripod wasn’t that effective during them moments so we just decided to use it as hand held.  We filmed and saved the clips on the camera after we finished the filming; we edited the film on the Mac pc and put the clips together on final cut pro on the college Mac pc and also in one of our group members home computer because he also had access to final cut pro. Using final cut pro was a bit difficult, we hadn’t used it before and it was the first time for me and my group members. We learnt the basic of final cut pro in lessons for example how to cut the clips and use the part of the footage we need, we also knew how to move the clips around and add specific effects to the footage like slow motion or fast pace, we also learnt how to make the footage more lighter and dreamier for the day dream scene even though a lot of help was given by the technician, another feature that we learnt was how to put in sound in the timeline. My contribution on the editing part was most of the editing part although Aadam and Akik chipped in with ideas. I and Akik did share the role of editing however I did take the role on more than Akik as he was the director of the film. We also used photo shop for making the movie poste. Using Photoshop was hard to use as it was very technical and there was a lot to learn in little time. Although we had to use Photoshop last year we still didn’t remember how to use it as much as we did because we hadn’t used it for a long time. However we were fortunate enough to have friends within the media course to help us in using photo shop. They taught us how to change the tone of the image more desirable according to how we wanted it. And they showed us how to make the day dream bubbles in the movie poster and how to put a glow behind it, apart from that the rest was all of our ideas. We would play around with the features until it was right. I and Akik took the role of making the movie poster on Photoshop and Aadam took the responsibility of making the movie review on Indesign. We also needed to make a Prezzi for the print products to find out audience feedback. And overall using Prezzi was easy and simple to use because we have used it many times before.