Evaluation Question 4

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

In this post I will identify and explain the media technologies that our group have used throughout the different stages of the A2 media course. I will go in to detail of how we used each technology and the reasons why we chose to use the technologies that we did.

Software Used

The software that we have used most throughout the A2 course has been Blogger, as a class we decided to use this software at the beginning of the course to post all of our work on. We believed that this was the most appropriate software to keep our work on as it is free and easy to use. Additionally, by using Blogger we have never had to do paper based work, which was beneficial as we have never had to worry about losing work. Blogger is a safe and secure software to use, as once as you have published a post it will be on your blog permanently unless you yourself decide to delete it.

Also, Blogger allows us to insert pictures, videos, and links to help support our work. This is very useful as these elements break up continuous chunks of text and also support the work that you are studying.

Here our animatic video on youtube.

YouTube has been a very useful and effective software which we have used a great deal for each section of the course. During the research and planning stages, YouTube was used significantly by myself and the rest of my group to gain knowledge on a subject and to support work which we had created. The majority of videos that are posted on YouTube are accurate and precise to the subject that you have searched. This is what makes YouTube so useful, as there is very little chance of watching a video that has no relevance to the subject that you have searched. Furthermore, YouTube allows us to embed videos onto our posts on Blogger. This is beneficial as it makes posts more rounded off and reliable.

We also used Youtube to upload our videos, such as animatic's, first drafts's and our final cut film draft. This has been very advantageous for our group as when we have had to present these videoes to the rest of our class we have done so through Youtube.

YouTube has demonstrated to be even more helpful in the construction and evaluation sections of the course. Particularly the construction section, because when we was constructing our film poster and film reviews we was using software's such as Photoshop (film poster) and QuarkXPress (film review). None of the members in our group had ever used QuarkXPress before, so when we was stuck on the software when trying to achieve something, we would search how to do it on YouTube which most of the time illustrated to us what we had to do.

YouTube has been a vital software throughout the A2 course as it has helped me with work that I was unsure on hugely.

Celtx is the software which we used to create the script for our short film. This was the most effective software to use to create the script as the font and font size is automatically the font and font size for scripts. Which is courier size 12, also with Celtx you can also create effective storyboards as the software has clip art images that are available to use. Although we had the option to create our storyboard using Celtx, we decided to make our storyboard on whiteboards as one member in our group is very artistic and we also agreed that doing it on whiteboards would be a faster process than constructing it on Celtx.

Photoshop is a software that most of us in our group had very little experience with. Being as we didn't have the need to use it for the AS course, using it this year was a first time for myself and for the rest of the members in my group. We had to use this software to create our film poster, as we were advised by our teacher that this was the most appropriate and effective software to use to create our product.

 Before we began creating our product, we had to watch tutorials on how to create a war themed poster for training on Photoshop. Once I watched the 2 tutorials, I felt comfortable with using Photoshop as I knew were all the tools were and which tool had what effect. Photoshop was a good software to use to create our film poster as you are able to experiment with  a range of different styles, effects and filters. Moreover, once we had finished creating our final film poster, we had feedback informing us that our product actually looked like a real film poster. As a group we was delighted with this feedback, we all agreed that Photoshop was the perfect software to use to achieve our desired poster.



Facebook has also played an important role for our group throughout this course. As a group we have used Facebook a great deal to discuss between each other who's responsible for completing what posts. The A2 course also requires a lot of planning for the filming and editing stages, we used Facebook to discuss what days we were available to shoot for the film and also to stay behind after school to edit our film. The main advantage about this software apart from it being very simple to use, is that its free of charge. So we were able to create a group chat for the members of our group so everyone could see what someone said. Facebook has most definitely helped our group stay organised throughout the course as it has been our groups key for communication.

Our group have used SurveyMonkey a number of times throughout this year to gain the publics feedback on each of our products, from our animatic to our final cut version of Life of Hermit. Our group chose to use SurveyMonkey to collect feedback as it is extremely easy to use and also one of the members in our group had already made an account on the website from collecting feedback for last years products. So we didn't have to waste anytime setting up an account. We chose to use this software because of its simplicity and accessibility as it is free to use. Also SurveyMonkey is perfect for what we wanted to do, create a cheap and simple survey to gain feedback on each of our products.

This was my attempt to create a film review from scratch. 

QuarkXPress is the software that we used to create our film review for Life of Hermit, we had never used this software before so similar to the  Photoshop experience, we had to watch tutorials on how to create a film review for a film of our choice. After watching video's and following the instructions given step by step, I still found the software challenging to use. Eventually I did create my own film review for The Godfather and globally it did look like an actual film review. However when looking at specific features such as the alignment between the page boarder and in between columns there was issues. I personally found my experience with the software difficult to use, but other members in my group found it easy and simple to use. When in the process of creating our film review for Life of Hermit, we paid close attention to detail for every element of the review as we wanted to achieve the highest possible marks for our product. Once we had finally completed out film review, as a group we were fully satisfied with the outcome as the feedback we received was mainly all positive. The majority of people who gave us feedback said that our product did look exactly like a real film review, so this software was great for what we needed to create!

As a group we chose to use Screencast to gather feedback from our media class when presenting our animatic, short film cuts, film posters and film reviews to our class and teacher. We thought that this would be the best way to collect feedback as we could have the Screencast running in the background whilst we were displaying our products and receiving feedback. By using Screencast we knew that we wouldn't miss anyone's feedback as it would all be collected on the video, this wouldn't have been the case if we would have chose to handwrite or type up the feedback. As we could have missed someone's suggestion due to not writing or typing fast enough or remembering what they said. Screencast is a free and easy and effective software to use and is perfect for what we wanted to do.

We used Final Cut Pro last year for the construction of putting all the shots together to create our opening 5 minutes of a film . This year we used Final Cut Pro X which is the new and updated version, the new version is similar to the version we used last year however it does include some beneficial new features. For example, the new version of Final Cut has allocated keys to perform certain things such as command C which copy's a selection of clips. Also on the old version you had to edit the sound for your products on a different software, this isn't the case with this version as you and edit shot and sound together. On top of this, Final Cut Pro X has extremely good safety regarding keeping work safe. As this software automatically saves work so you don't have to worry about losing important files. Being as we all used Final Cut last year we all were comfortable with how to use the new version after experimenting around with it. Its the ideal software to use to construct a short film as you can edit the film exactly how you want it to be with ease.

Being as we have been using Imacs, Safari has been the web browser which we have been using to research things for on the web. We have used this software to allow us to use other softwares such as YouTube, SurveyMonker, and Blogger. Safari has been a very useful due to its speed, easy to use and reliability.

Hardwares Used

The image above is of the digital DSLR camera, this is the camera which we used to shoot our films footage on. This is the first year which we have used this type of camera, as for last years filming we used a Sony HD camcorder. The digital DSLR camera has many advantages over the Sony HD camcorder, firstly with the DSLR camera you have the choice of two modes; manual and automatic. If you use the manual mode as we did to film in, then you are in control of adjusting the focus, brightness, apex and zoom distance to your desired level. The DSLR camera also seems to capture footage clearer in comparison to the Sony HD camera.

Furthermore, another advantage with the DSLR camera is that you can choose which lens you want to use. There are a number of lens that are available for you to use depending on the shot which you wish to capture. The small size of the camera is also beneficial as it is much easy to carry around in comparison to the Sony Hd.

Despite all of the DSLR's advantages, it does also carry some disadvantages. My point being the battery life of the camera, as once you have used the camera for more than one hour the battery begins to run out. This is an issue as if when you are filming the battery runs out then you will lose the shot and have to put a new battery in which can effect the positioning of the camera being as it has come off the tripod. Plus being as the camera is rather small, the camera screen is small also which makes it difficult to navigate around on when attempting to achieve something.

Another hardware that we have used daily throughout the course has been the Imac. Being as we have done all of our coursework throughout the year online using Blogger, every time we were using this site we was using the Imac's. As if we had to search something up during the research and planning stages of the course we would do so on this computer, as they are extremely fast. Also we did all of the editing for our film using Final Cut Pro which you can only use if you have a Apple computer. This reflects how significant this hardware has been throughout the course as otherwise attempting to edit our footage using a different software would have been much more challenging.

Additionally due to the size of the Mac screen you have an extremely clear picture which allows you to see your film productions much better due to the clearness. As well as this, another perk which the Imac has is its multi window option. This allows you to have more than one website open at a time so you can work faster.

We used a white screen when taking photographs that we was going to edit so the subject of the image is different from the background. We used the white screen when we had to take photos of the one of the masks for our poster for our short film. The white screen increases the quality of the image as it helps the camera focus firmly on the subject that is being photographed. This hardware also makes the editing process run smoother due to the fact that it is easy to add a separate selected background.

The picture above is of a Tracking dolly, we used this piece of equipment during the construction stage when shooting the footage for our film. The tracks alongside the wheeled tripod allowed us to achieve tracking and zoom shots for Life of Hermit. The dolly makes the quality of the shot look more effective due to the smoothness of the shot. The tracking dolly is easy to set up and to use, it also enables you to shoot different types of shot. Although it has many advantages, transporting the dolly tracks around can be challenging due to the size and weight of the bag which they come with.

We used the lighting kit to adjust the lighting for our shots. The lighting kit gives you a clearer shot as it makes the actors more visible due to the brightness. The lighting kit helped give our shots more clarity which resulted the shots looking more professional. What's more, the lighting kit allows you to be in control of the shadowing in the shot, this can help emphasise moods and characters emotions. 

This is a sound recording kit, this device allows you to record what an actor is saying and then transfer the clip onto a software to be edited. We used this device when constructing our film, as we needed to record the main character for the voice narration of the film. The sound recording kit helped make his speech very clear as it blocked out lots of background noise pollution. This make the quality of the recording better as we could here his tone and emotion more, plus as the kit is so small it is easy to carry around.

The reflector reflects the light in the room onto any object or character you want and solves any shadow issues. We used this product in the cinema scene of our film to reflect the light onto the characters faces in the audience to make it look as if they were actual watching a film on screen. The reflector is also very easy to assemble, use and put away.

During the construction stage of the course, we used the crane to achieve a crane shot for the final shot of our film. Cranes are useful pieces of kit as you can achieve Ariel shots with them due to the height that they can reach when up in the air. They are commonly used for establishing shots as we used it for this type of shot in our final scene. Although the crane can help you achieve more of an interesting and effective shot, being as the crane is so big, it is hard to transport around when in pieces in the bag because of its weight. It can also be difficult to assemble. 

Evaluation Question 3

What have your learnt from Audience feedback?

Throughout the A2 course we have received significant amounts of feedback for the different stages of the subject. From the beginning of the year when we had to pitch our individual short film ideas to our class to the likes of rough cuts, animatics and for the ancillary tasks such as the film poster and review. All of the feedback which we have received we have been very grateful for as it has helped us improve and develop our products. 

Initial Individual Film Idea:

At the beginning of the course each student had to come up with their own short film idea and present it to the class and teacher. The purpose of this was to see if our ideas could be achieved due to the locations needed, creativity of the narrative and having actors who would be willing to work for you. 

Here is my pitch of my film 'Was It Worth It':

            

This pitch was very important as I pitched it convincingly to the class and they liked the plot, there was a chance that it could be used for the final group film at the end of the course.

There was a mixture of positive and negative feedback which my film idea had received from our small group.

Positive feedback:

Tilly Whitehouse and Daniel Vidmar:

• "Simple and effective plot that would be easy to achieve."
• "With the target audience being the same age as the characters, they will be able to relate to what they are seeing."
• "With the film having a moral follows the conventions of short films. The moral is also informing the audience to think about their actions in reality."
• "Small cast, would be easy acquire actors"

Negative feedback:

Tilly Whitehouse and Daniel Vidmar:

• "The location, being as scenes in the film are set in the Cannock Chase it would be difficult to get transportation there and back with all of the kit which we would need. Plus as we would be filming in the winter, by the time we got to our location we would have limited time to shoot due to it going dark at 4 o'clock. This is a problem as you aren't allowed to film in the dark."
• "We would have to use the colour corrector tool to turn our day shoots into night shots. This tool can be difficult to use as you have to ensure that every shot is the same colour otherwise the film will look unprofessional."
• "Weather influences, being as the location is exterior, if the weather fluctuated each time we filmed we would have continuity in our film."

After receiving this feedback our group came to the conclusion that it would not be the most sensible choice to use my film idea for our actual film idea for the rest of the year. As we agreed that it would be too risky to use the idea due to expected changing weather conditions, limited time of daylight and difficulty of having to use colour corrector for our shots. After absorbing this feedback it became apparent to me that the negatives of my idea outweigh the positives and that there are better ideas compared to mine.

Animatic:

Once we had discussed which film idea we were going to go with, we then had to create an animatic that was going to be presented to the rest of our class. The feedback which we got from our animatic would tell our group whether or not our idea was popular and understandable. 

Life of Hermit Animatic:

To collect feedback for our animatic, we asked all of our classmates and friends outside of the lesson to fill in an online survey using SurveyMonkey. Here are the questions which we asked and the answers we received:

From the feedback above we were happy to realise that our animatic does have an understandable and a clearly popular narrative. After receiving this feedback we were able to continue using this idea which allowed us to begin shooting the footage for our film.

Life Of Hermit Rough Cut:

Once we had finished shooting and editing the footage for our film we finally had our short film rough cut. Being as it was a rough cut it was by no means flawless, as there was no ident and some elements of the film needed to be improved.

Rough Cut:



To gather feedback for our first draft of Life of Hermit, we used questionnaires, screencasts, interviews and surveys so our target audience was able to express their opinion of our film.

We asked the following questions:

• Are you aged between 15-24?
• What are your first initial reactions to the film? Liked it? Didn't? Why?
• Did you understand the plot line?
• What do you think about the style of the film at the beginning? Any improvements?
• Are there any moments you did not like?
• Any improvements we can make that you think would be useful for us to know?

We were very happy with the feedback which the questionnaires provided! This was a good method to gather feedback as it allowed our target audience to spend as much time as they wished to answer each question. This may not have been the case if we video recorded them as they may have felt nervous, which may have resulted in them giving rushed answers. However, the only downfall with using questionnaires is that the answers may not be completely honest being as they are not anonymous. This could result in some of the feedback being untrue due to the person not wanting to sound mean or hurtful.  

Here is the screencast which we used to receive feedback off our media class and teacher:

Picture-in-Picture Target Audience Response & Feedback

 

We chose to use screencast for our classes feedback as everything which they say will be recorded, so when we watch the video back we will not miss anyone's suggestions. This may not have been the case if we wrote the feedback down as we could have easily forgotten what somebody suggested which would mean losing valuable feedback. Also by using screencast we were able to see their reactions to the film for the first time which is a good indicator to see what they think about our film. We were particularly happy to see what our classmates thought about our film as they look at the film from a technical aspect which is beneficial as they were able to spot any technical issues which we had missed.

Interview Feedback:


To get as much feedback as we possibly could, we decided to interview fellow sixth form students and people who were included in producing our film such as the cast. Interviewing these people is advantageous as they won't spot technical issues like the media students will, instead they will be able to see if there are any obvious mistakes in the film.

Survey feedback:



The main advantage about using SurveyMonkey for feedback is that the feedback is anonymous. This means the feedback is more reliable as the audience is able to give their truthful opinion of the film without having to worry about being mean or upsetting us.

Film Review:

For ancillary task 2, we had to create a film review for our product. The purpose of the review was to attract a wider audience by informing them about our film. Before we could begin creating our review we had to research and observe real existing film reviews so we knew what ours should include and look like. After looking through Empire magazine's film reviews we decided to design ours in the style of an Empire review.

We followed the structure and design of this review for our own review.

First draft.

As we had never created a film review before, we were eager to find out what our classmates thought of our first draft review. Our media class also looked at Empire's magazines for example reviews, so they know what to look for regarding the stet up and design of our review.

Throughout the screencast we asked the following question:

1) What are your initial thoughts of the review?

2) What is there in terms of layout? What is there that you would expect to see?

3) In terms of layout and what it looks like, how can it be improved?

Screencast:



         

Here is the useful feedback which we acquired after watching the screencast back :

 Question1: What are you initial thoughts of the review?

"I like the catch line, "Pi wants its title back."

"It looks like a real review."

"The picture doesn't give away anything but at the same time with the masks included you want to know why their there. It sparks your interest."

"I like how the colour scheme matches the poster."

"The only problem is though, this is an actual magazine review, so the magazine wouldn't wouldn't match the colour with the poster because there both done by different people."

Question 2: What's there in terms of layout? Whats there that you would expect to see?

"There isn't a pull quote, that's a choice I'm presuming you have made." We decided not to use a pull quote purposely because the of example film reviews that we had used, as none of our example included them.

"The caption at the bottom right of the photo, that's a convention of film reviews."

"The byline again is a usual convention of film reviews."

"On the whole globally, it does look like a film review."

"The 'IN CINEMAS' isn't in two colours, and Empires style is normally to do that in two different colours."

"The 'IN CINEMAS' is almost centred, there's slightly a bigger gap at the top compared to the bottom." There was a small alignment issue with this element, however we have measured the distances accurately to ensure that the spaces are the same distances apart.

"There's a boarder around the review that is consistent."

"There's a caption to anchor the image."

"Good use of the furniture that they have used, I'd say fits in with their review, it helps separate between sections."

"The 'SOMETHING CLEVER' being in a larger font and in bold is a convention that is commonly used for film reviews."

"The folio information is all there, the page number, the edition, web address 

"The thick bold line are the bottom of the page is a convention, I've seen it used in their examples. Also the small orange triangle at the bottom left of that bold line almost looks as if it wraps back on itself like a ribbon, I've never noticed that before, that's very close attention to detail."

Question 3: In terms of layout and what it looks like, how can it be improved?

"I think in terms of the text and columns, the columns could do with been move down a little bit because at the moment I think it looks to close to the image. "

"The bottom line at the bottom right of the page is not in line with the text on the bottom line."

"There's no glaring obvious mistakes."
Overall we were happy with the feedback which the media students gave us as they could only identify minor issues regarding alignment and colour problems which could easily be fixed.

Our group also decided to create a questionnaire for non media students to complete as we were curious to find out what the general eye thought about our first draft review.

Questionnaire:

The only real issues that was identified in the questionnaires was alignment and colour issues. As both of these issues were brought up in the screencast also, we were well aware that we must fix these problems to improve our review.

Here are the improvements we made due to listening to our feedback:



This is the pull quote which we used to accompany the main body.

This is the alignment in the final review compared to the first draft. Notice how the 'IN CINEMAS' has been centred for the final print.

Notice how the bottom line of the first column in the final draft is inline with the bottom line of the second column compared to the first draft.

Overall the feedback which we received for our film review helped us achieve a level 4, scoring 9/10. This shows how useful the feedback which we received was regarding our product.

Film Poster

We had to create a film poster for ancillary task 2. The purpose of creating a film poster was to attract our target audiences attention and to promote and advertise our film to the general public. It was imperative that we gathered honest feedback for our poster because if it wasn't relatable to our film and didn't reflect what our film may be about then it wouldn't appeal to our target audience.

Here is our first draft film poster:

To collect our first feedback off our media class we used screencast:

          

Here is the answers which we received for our poster:

Question 1: Is there there awareness of conventions of layouts and page design?"Yeah it looks like its in the style of a poster"

"Its looks like a real film poster and I do like the colour match between the mask and the colour of the boarder."

Question 2: Is there awareness of the need for a variety in fonts and text size?

"I Like the Life of Hermit text font, it makes it personal, it makes it seem like a diary that they've written."

"The tag line is a little small." Our group agreed with this statement, and we have increased the size of the tag line 'Ones a crowd'.

"I think maybe Davids name, his christian name needs to be a little bigger." After hearing this and looking more closely at our main actors first name, we agreed that it could do with being slightly larger. So we have increased it to make it more readable.

"I like the fact that both of his names are different sizes and that his last name is in bigger bolder writing".

Question 3: Is there any accurate use of language and register?

"You've put all the actors names in haven't you? That doesn't normally happen, you usually only have like one or two actors names" This is a good point and it is a convention of posters to only include a small number of actors in the credit block. However, the examples that we looked at such as the Harry Potter films included all of the actors in the credit block. Also as it is a short film and there is only a small cast we thought that we might as well just include all of them.

"The colour of the credit block suits the theme, but it could be a little bit faint it think ."

"It does fit in with the brand of the whole poster".

"I think maybe it needs to be bit more of a peach colour, because it looks bit like an off orange/brown colour. Maybe it needs to be a little bit brighter." We purposely had the credit block this colour as it matched the colour of the mask and the boarder. Although after hearing this, we believed that what was said was accurate so we have changed the colour of the credit block and listened to the criticism that was given by making it a brighter colour.

Question 4: Is there any appropriate integration of illustration and text?

"I do like the use of just the mask."

Question 5: Is there framing of shot using a variety of shot distances as appropriate?

"I think the mask is the right size."

"I don't know whether the mask needs blending into the background, maybe some shadowing underneath to give it a 3D effect" We understood Charlotte's point but in our defence, in Photoshop the mask looks less shiny so it looks more like part of the photo.

"Its because the mask is an actual live picture and then you look at the background and its just a block colour that's why it looks bait weird. But I think it works that way, it just draws your attention straight to the mask."

"It looks like they have based it very similarly on the film Frank's poster which also has just the mask. It is simple but its very effective."

"It sells there film in a way because their film doesn't give to much away at the beginning and their posters the same."

"You sort of want to see the relevance of the mask like, it makes you think whys it there."
We also created a survey using Survey Monkey for our poster:

After listening to the improvements suggested in both sets of feedback, we realised we had to adjust some elements of our film poster in order to increase the quality of it.

Here are the improvements which we made:



Notice how in the final draft we removed the black pieces of elastic and made the mask a duller colour.

We also decided to listen to the person who suggested increasing the name of the actors name.

For the final draft, we made the boarder and credit block colour duller and enlarged the size of the web address below the credit block.

After following the improvements suggested, here is our final film poster which was given level 4 and scored 9/10:



To conclude, all of the feedback which we have received throughout the year has been very helpful and we as a production team were extremely grateful to receive it as it did have many positive influences on each of our products. Feedback is so important as without it you wouldn't be able to identify mistakes which you have made regardless of how minor they may be.