How did you use technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Research & Planning
For our target audience and concepts research, we used the free version of Survey Monkey whereby we asked 10 specific questions and posted it on our online platforms for people to answer. It was easy to set up, use and embed in our blogs. However we should have done two different surveys which would have given us more specific feedback one on concepts and one on target audience.
Obviously to cover some basic presentation skills for our research in films and genres we had to use Word and Powerpoint Presentation from Microsoft. We've been using these for years so it was easy to just input the data, maybe it was just a little harder to make it look aesthetically pleasing and sophisticated, following the themes on our blogs.
Another app that one of our group members used was Fluent Mind Map, which is just an electronic version of a brain map. It was the first time being used but it was very easy to get the hang of. It also looks colourful and was particularly useful during the initial stages of the course for all the brainstorming the group had to do.
We tried to portray our creativity and ability to work with different tools by also attempting to use Powtoons, which is a free tool online that allows the creation of professional looking animated videos. It was very time consuming and tedious however, the end result looked really good. It was a great way to showcase similar information needed in our research.
To collect our data we also used YouGov which is an international internet based research firm. It was very useful to see the usual consumer profiles of specific films because it allowed us to create a target audience based on films similar to the film we wanted to make. It was very easy to navigate around the website and understand the data being presented to us.
Our group didn't want our blogs to be boring with just words and images so we also went on Youtube to see if we can embed the actual trailers we were using for research on our blogs. It was very easy because all we needed was the link and it only took a few clicks. It brought motion and another level of sophistication on our blogs.
Another software we had to use was Adobe Photoshop, especially for our planning because Kiran drew a number of conventional objects related to film noir on separate pieces of paper. We had to scar it and later put the objects together in one piece of work to save space on our blogs and keep it looking slick.
For our first audience feedback for the ideas that we came up with, we filmed with the Canon E0S1100D which was a borrowed camera, the quality was quite good and it was easy to import the footage from the camera. However, we didn't have the tripod and didn't have enough space at the time to have a better angle and positioning.
After editing the video from the audience feedback, we used Vimeo to upload it. It was quite an easy platform to upload to but the quality dramatically dropped on some computers or laptops. I noticed that the quality was high on smartphones though - which doesn't really help us much.
We used either Blogger or Weebly to showcase our individual representation of our production from planning to evaluation. Each method had both its advantages and disadvantages; one being the sophisticated look it allowed us to achieve for Weebly and the ease of understanding Blogger. However, it was hard to transfer word documents or powerpoint directly into both websites and we had to use Scribd instead.
As I have previously mentioned, it was difficult to import word or powerpoint presentations straight to our blogs. We overcame this issue by using Scribd or Slideshare which was a little bit more complicated and tedious but looks very professional and clean in our websites.
Another way we presented our research is through Prezi, it makes any form of information aesthetically pleasing with the motions, animations and zooms. It's a little tedious when one hasn't used it before but we have all had some experience with it so it was fine. Embedding it on out blogs was also easy because it was already an option to do so on Prezi.
Construction
For the construction of our teaser trailer we had to mostly be on our laptops or computers to import music, footage and edit which took a long time to do because editing is very tedious. Especially concerning the effects, timings and continuity of our teaser trailer. It was a little difficult because we had to continuously import the footage we filmed as we had to share the camera with other groups and sometimes we would forget to import and lost some footage. In addition to that, we had limited space on our desktops so we had to straight away make the cuts of scenes or videos we didn't want even before finishing filming.
For the editing, we used a non-linear editing software where we used Adobe Premier Pro which was what our college had installed on the media computers. Again, it takes quite a while to get used to the different features and effects that could be applied to our work so we had to play around with it a bit to get to know the software. There was some technical difficulties when we were editing our main teaser trailer and other ancillary videos because the sound wouldn't work or it would move the sequences around. It was just very time consuming but we made it in the end. However, the quality got lower when we did upload it to Youtube which was a shame.
During filming, we used the professional camera that the school provided us with which is the Canon XF300. It was again, tedious - as we struggled as a team to turn it on during our first shoot. Quite embarrassing really. However, it was also very heavy especially for our camera man who had to carry it to our location, during filming and after. In addition to that, during the most important scenes of the interview between Eva (the sister) and Tommy (the detective) - there was actually no sound that was recorded - and we only found out when we started editing. So we had to redo the whole scene which was hard on everybody because the actors had to put their costumes on again and we had to book the location again.
For one of our scenes, we planned to go film in the cemetery to drop some roses on a grave. However, our cameraman came with the camera which had low battery - so it was useless- it turned off after 5 minutes. We had to use one of the team mate's phone instead which was a Samsung S7 Edge. It actually made the cut, so you will briefly see some roses fall on a grave. We had to drop the roses a few times and tried dropping the roses one by one or as a bunch. We also had to look at how it dropped if it looked better when they all drop facing the same way or if it was better when they fell and faced in random directions.
Evaluation
For the 4th question, I decided to use Wix, I used it last year for my evaluation as well, so I'm more confident in using it. It is still quite complicated because it has advanced features that makes my work look really good and professional. However, even if it is time consuming, it's worth the effort as it helps my overall product brand have a great finish and allows the quality of my work to be at a high standard throughout this project.
For evaluation question 2 Billy chose to present his work through Prezi which is really sophisticated as mentioned before because it allows you to add pictures, animations and zooms.
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For question three we were meant to use Glogster but it was too tedious and one of our members couldn't work out how to use it in the limited time that we had. So we reverted back to using Prezi instead, which was something that we already knew how to use.
For the 1st question we decided to film using the Sony HDR-CX240E0 handycam and used Adobe Premiere Pro CC to add the black and white filter and cut some of the silences in between sentences to make the video shorter. It was quite easy to set up, film and edit because we've done it so many times during the project and we're familiar with the dos and donts.
This mini website will be covering the different mediums of technology that our group has used throughout this project broken down into three separate sections; Research & Planning, Construction and Evaluation.