Friday 23 March 2018

Evaluation Question Four


Evaluation Question 4

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

 Throughout the course of producing a short film we had to carry out individual and group tasks to link to the genre convention of our movie.  However, in order to do this I had to use new media technologies in which has helped us to gather information to guide us through producing a film. Furthermore, we used new media technologies through the construction of the film, research planning and the evaluation stages upon different sources. 

In the research and planning stage towards the construction of our film we used many online websites in which are reliable sources to find out about thriller films to identify certain aspects of conventions of the sub genre of our film (crime thriller), iconography, characters, story lines, settings, sounds, titles, cinematography and editing all to reflect the genre research of our movie. Google is easily accessible and informative therefore, it is a reliable source to contain a wide range of different information. For example, as I needed to research similar crime thriller films to our movie such as, 'The Gift' it offered me a variety of films in conjunction to this it gave me information upon each of the films as well as consisting to this particular genre. Through using google I could contribute information from this into my work to reflect that this film was similar to ours through the narrative as it depicts the character playing the role of the husband is receiving cryptic and mysterious gifts as he is being stalked. Although, this closely links to the plot of our film as the narrative manipulates the viewers mind to believe the protagonist is being followed by an unknown identity. I believe that Google is the best resource for information as it provides the correct information that is needed throughout my work additionally, the website has widened my knowledge upon thriller films and conventions needed to be a successful film therefore, as it has educated me in certain areas I have adapted aspects of this information into my own work. However, as this website source has been useful it enabled myself and the rest of my group to construct a narrative that linked to the genre of crime thriller. Furthermore, another website source I used to research information about similar films was IMDb and Wikipedia as they both provided a thorough description of the story line for the film as well as giving other suggestions for thriller films. These websites discovered was useful because it concluded different reviews from the film that people had given therefore, this was beneficial for myself and my group as it reveals how we could adapt upon different elements to improve our film. Although, Wikipedia is useful as it illustrates good notes through an easy layout for the conventions of genre however, a disadvantage for this source would be that it isn't always reliable due to the fact that, sometimes the information provided is not always up to date.















On the other hand, I had to use different new media technologies to write and present my research on. I used Microsoft Word to write essays and dissertations therefore, I could follow a word count and precisely know how much work I had produced. I found Microsoft Word useful due to the fact that, the software is easy and simple to use especially when using it for the evaluation stage of my work. This software was also used for the construction of the shot list as we changed our narrative therefore, I believe word is useful as it makes it easy and accessible to edit work where needed. In addition,  we also used word to produce the questionnaires for audience feedback therefore, it could be written up accurately to make sure everything was spell checked and punctual. Although, I used word individually for my own work for example, the explanation into what is a short film. However,  after the results from the questionnaires was calculated as a group task we all participated into making pie charts through a professional and smart approach through the software excel. Additionally, I also used other media technologies to develop the representation of my individual research through software's such as powerpoint and prezi to display my work in a more interesting and effective way as it adds colour. However, a disadvantage of powerpoint would be that it was time consuming as the powerpoint that was created and developed had to be inputted onto slideshare then a link had to be copied onto Blogger to present the finished work. Although, prezi another layout to present my own individual work in an interactive approach which was useful as it allows you to add images and youtube videos easily as well as already giving a set out which is beneficial as it is already provided. Another advantage whilst using prezi would be that it is set out like a mind map and each main bubble adapts extra spaces for sub topics in order to link to the main focus. A limitation whilst using prezi would be that the source would crash and start acting slow therefore, this would add on time to complete this as I would have to restart the computer back up or close down the internet and load it all back up. All these software's that I have used portray that I can develop my skills as well as being able to work these contrasting media technologies.













Although all this information that I have successfully gathered and uploaded upon these different technologies had to be presented upon Blogger. Blogger was the first form of media technology that I was introduced to throughout the whole two years of this media course. Blogger is a blog publishing media source that is significant as it allows myself to display all my work in conjunction with the group tasks towards the construction of our movie. The blog is set out to represent each bloggers names as opposed to how many blogs they have produced individually as well as the shared group projects each blogger is labelled within. To make the page more effective and to create a pleasurable appeal to  the viewers to relate to the crime thriller genre of our film, we changed the layout of the blog by adding a gun animation to create a violent and mysterious atmosphere to link to the narrative of our movie. Although, we changed the background colour to grey as it signifies a neutral and sophisticated way to associate a sense of loss to connect with the death which is presented throughout our film. Although, to juxtapose with the colour motif of grey the typography used is presented as red to follow the conventions of the thriller genre. Furthermore,  the colour motif of red suggests a sense of danger to annotate towards violence and death therefore, this is significant as this also links with our film. I believe these colours link together well as they are both compatible. Throughout our production of the film we changed the layout of the blog multiple times until we felt it fit with our film conventions of a thriller. 









Another reliable resource that was used towards the production stage of developing the film was freesound in which it is a legal website to download non copyright free music to use within our movie. The free music website has multiple advantages as it enables us to improve our media product by adding special sound effects to create an atmosphere. Also, the music we used adds to the movie as it makes it more realistic. It was simple a process to use due to the fact that when the music was downloaded into documents, you only had to add the sound upon Premier Pro where the film was created. We then juxtaposed the sound alongside the film through the use of editing to make sure everything was accurately presented and in time for example, a certain scale of music has to be co-operated into one scene within our movie which includes a voice over in order to make it more appealing and catch the viewers attention. I believe this source was useful as we could download music without a charge however,  a limitation was that I had to make an account which valued our time. Due to the fact that, this time creating an account could of been spent on other work. Also, another disadvantage with freesound music was that we was unable to capture some pieces of music that we particulary needed for our movie such as music to create a fast pace to use throughout the chase sequence. However, in order to solve this problem we discussed as a group other types of music we could use and downloaded some examples to decide upon which was more suitable and fitted with some specific sequences within our movie. In addition, as this free music of this source was reliable we downloaded music to portray aspects of sound throughout our radio trailer therefore, it made it better quality and more mysterious.
 https://freesound.org/

To create and edit our film we used a software called Adobe Premier Pro. Although, this software was also used for the construction of the restricted and unrestricted narrative, practising how to do elliptical editing. In order to do the elliptical editing we filmed a full length of a journey to a vending machine then, to edit it to the obliged standards we had to cut it down so that it lasted approximately 30 seconds. On premier pro we also had different options in which sound could be altered in order to make things louder or quieter in pitch to make it better quality. In addition, there were other options which allowed us to add specific effects to our movie to make it more precise as well as professional. Some examples of these affects that could be consisted within this software are the following; cross dissolve which is a gradual transition from one image to another furthermore, an effect called fade in and fade out to gradually close the movie in an interesting way. However, this also allows the sound to fade out before the next sequence is shown. The sound effects added using freesound is significant as it creates an atmosphere to suit the particular scene shown at that time. Another advantage of using these elements within media software enabled us to show a manipulation in scenery or reflect a specific time frame passing by. On premier pro it also allows ourselves to add extra interesting outcomes to insert title sequences, and credits to reflect who stars within the movie as opposed to who directed, edited, distributed and inputted sound within our film. As we inputted a title the typography was in red therefore, it shows conventions of a thriller. Whereas, the colour motif of red usually signifies death in conjunction to use of violence and danger. Furthermore, it was presented against a black background in order to stand out as well as using bold large writing this creates emphasise and catches the viewers attention. In order to improve our film we also added a voice over of myself speaking to detect a flashback this is significant as it draws the audience in and it helps them to understand the narrative. Premier Pro was further used for the production of our radio trailer therefore, everything could be editing to suit 30-40 seconds to depict certain parts of the film in order to promote and advertise our film to a wider audience. I believe that Premier Pro is a useful software for editing films as it provides everything we need in order to make our film to be presented well. It has widened my knowledge into media and I can now use these software within the future without any guidance. 

















In the production stage of making our film, we used a ZOOM H1 to take a voice recording of my voice to use within the film to place over some mysterious music. It was easy to use, and produced a clear sound. The voice recorder was useful to use as it allowed us to record parts of the script through using our voice to add to the film as well as using snippets towards inputting into the radio trailer. This piece of equipment was beneficial for our movie as it explained certain parts of the film to the audience as well as making our film more effective and interesting. However, the radio trailer which we produced contained aspects of the voice overs within above elements of continuous music to ensure we could advertise the film to a wide audience. However, a limitation of using the voice over was that it needed to be used within a confined room which consisted of no noise so that it wouldn't pick up any background sound. Also, it was very sensitive on picking up sound therefore, some of the recordings we had to redo in order to make them accurate and sound clear enough to be added within the film. 
Also, in the production stages of creating the film we used a Cannon HFG 25 camera to capture the footage in a clear quality. The camera was extremely useful as it allowed us to zoom in and out to focus upon certain things within the film as well as this is was easy to input this camera footage to the computer in order to edit within premier pro. A limitation for this camera would be that it was complex and quite difficult to use therefore, it was time consuming as we had to learn how to adapt to use this camera in order to provide ourselves with good, clear footage. With the ability of using this camera it has helped to develop my skills therefore, within the near future if I was ever acknowledged with this camera I would be aware of how to use it as well as teaching others around me. 


Another use of software which was reliable that I used throughout the course of producing the film poster was Photoshop. First of all I made individual ideas for a film poster before constructing the final film poster. I used photoshop for the final poster as it allows many different effects which can be used towards our poster. Photoshop is a really good software for creating the poster as you are able to add colour, pictures, and effects such as, blurs, splatter, black cut outs and many more to make it more appealing. Our film poster consisted of all these effects in order to connect with the genre of our film. To learn how to use photoshop and develop my ongoing skills I spoke to my sister, a graphic designer who taught me how to use certain elements as well as watching online youtube videos which guided myself through the basics. Although, alongside the use of photoshop, in order to produce the script we used a software called celtex as it was easy to understand as well as that it already gave us a layout of how to present our movie script. It offered us everything we needed to ensure our script was of good standard although, if anything was to be amended then it could be accessed and changed easily.  














Towards the planning of our film I produced a storyboard to show each sequence with an image as well as a sentence to provide the viewer a brief summary of a context to depict what was happening within each scene. To produce the final story board, I used a website page called 'www.storyboardthat.com'. It provided myself with a storyboard layout and backgrounds as well as cartoon characters therefore, all I had to do was construct the board with images as opposed to the scenes within our film. We produced a storyboard therefore, it would briefly describe each scene to the viewers therefore, they are able to understand the narrative of our film better. This was useful and beneficial as it was free to use however, it is good and easy to use. In addition, as I was only obliged to use the free setting of the storyboard we was limited to certain backgrounds and images that could be included within the storyboard. However, this was only a minor issue as I used my creativity skills to produce this to represent a clear sense of what happens within each scene of the film. 

Overall, to conclude new media technologies in the constructions and research planning and evaluation stages of making our media product are useful sources of evidence as well as the softwares which provide good quality footage. In addition, through the course of producing this media product I have developed my skills and knowledge upon digital technology. I can now confidently contribute individually to edit films within softwares I was unsure how to use at the beginning of my media course as opposed to now. Whereas, I can now use a Cannon HFG 25 camera, and a ZOOM H1 for creating voice overs. All of these media technologies that I have used and focused upon throughout this essay have been vital to use in order to present the success and achievement throughout our film.  








Thursday 22 March 2018

Q4

Question 4; How did you use new media technologies in the constructions and research, planning and evaluation stages?



Blogger.com
First form of new media technology we used was google blogger.This was so we could display all the research we did for our film and to share any group projects anyone had done so the rest of the team members could all so see them. To make the page more aesthetically appealing and show the genre of our movie we changed different parts of the page. We used grey for the background colour and red for the writing, these two colours worked well together and were conventional colours for the thriller genre. For the web pages background we used a moving animated picture of a gun being fired to symbolise the thriller genre of our movie.  We changed the layout, colours and styles of the blog a couple of times in order to make one we liked and believed went along with our vision of the finished product.



IMDb+wikipedia
For research into similar films to our film i used IMDb. We had to do in depth research into the genre by looking at conventional sound, storyline, characters and cinematography. For finding similar films i used IMDb and Wikipedia which gave me full story lines of the movies and  often suggested other movies like that as well. This was useful because it provided us with different reviews people had left of the movies which then helped us see how well our movie would do. Wikipedia was especially good for finding the conventions of the genre. It provided easy to understand information that i could use to talk about the conventions of the thriller genre. 




Word,Prezi,PowerPoint/slideshare, excel
To present all my research in different ways i used different new media technologies to write them on. I used word for writing essays and making any mindmaps we also used it to make the questionnaires for audience feedback. Once we had all the results for the questionnaires i used excel to make charts showing the results in a easy and professional way. I then made conclusions for each question and added pictures of the charts, I then wrote it on blogger and added pictures of the charts. I used Prezi and PowerPoint for displaying my independent research. I used Prezi for certain research presentations because it allowed me to have subtopics for bigger topics, this was useful when I was looking at conventions of a thriller film. PowerPoint allowed me to focus on one area of a topic at a time and to make detailed comments that didn't go on for too long. To put a PowerPoint on to blogger I used slideshare. 




Celtx and Photoshop
For making our film poster we used Photoshop. We all made one poster individually and then as a team made the final one that we would use. Photoshop allowed us to put more than one picture together and change the colouring on some pictures to match it to our movie genre. To learn how to use Photoshop i looked at videos on YouTube and read about it through google. For the movie we also had to make a script and to make that we used celtx as it was easy to use after a few tries. It also had everything we needed for a script, it also allowed us to make any changes whenever we needed to when we made changes to the script and storyline of the movie. 




Storyboardthat.com
Before we made our film we made a shot list and a storyboard to go along with that to make the filming easier so we would know how some of the shots should be. The shotlist was made on word but for the storyboard we used a website called "storyboardthat.com". It gave us a storyboard template and provided backgrounds and pictures of characters to use that almost matched all the places we used for our film. This was good as it was free and easy to use however the fact that we used the free version did  limit some of the pictures we received, this didn't really affect  our creativity as we still got to show everything we wanted to. 



Free music websites
Free music websites allowed us to get non-copyrighted sounds for our movie. It was easy as all we had to do was find the right sound and then download and put it on to Premier pro where our movie was.  We then edited the length of our sound to make sure it matched the scene and the genre of our movie. Teh websites were also useful in the planning stages as we saw waht was availbale so we could make sure we dont film someting that there is no sound avilable for.The website we used to get our free music was freesound.org, all we did was write in the search part what we need and then download it. It was good because all teh sounds we used were free adn we knew they were made for the public to use. However we did need to amek an account to be able to download teh music from there another problem we encontered with the website was the fact that we couldnt find the exact sound we wanted. 



Voice recorder
To make the radio trailer and and have the voice over for a part of the film we used a voice recorder. The recorder we used was ZOOM H1, it provided clear sound and was very easy to work. The voice recorder was used to make a voiceover for two different parts of our movie and also for our radio trailer. Using the voie recorder allowed us to make voiceovers that expalined sertain aspects of our movie in places where the audince otherwise may not understand what was happening. 


Premier Pro
To edit our film we used Premier Pro. We used this thorughout our project for multiple things that we needed to edit. This was used for our full movie but also for our restricted and un-restrected narrative, we aslo used it to practise eliptical editing by filming a full length journey and then cuting it down to last abourn 30 seconds. On premier pro we also had the options of adding differnet affects to our movie to make it more profesional and intresting, some examples of effects we used are; cross disolve, fade in and out and fade to black. These allowed us to show the change in scenery or to show the passing of time. There were also adio effects that we could use to make sure it matched with the actions in the frame. It allowed us to fade the sound out along with the scene and title to amke it look and sound good. On prmier pro we were also able to instert titles which we used to show things like who is starring in the movie, the production and disturbition company and who was part of the whole movie making process. It also allowed us to put the title of our movie in there and let us change the font, colour and size of the text to make it our own and to match it with the theme of our movie. We were also able to add music and sound to our production thorugh premier pro to make sure every scene had the sound to match the mood of the action in that scene. We also put in a voiceover to secure that evryon e understood sertain parts of the movie. 
Premier pro was also used by us to make our radio trailer, we took part of our movie and also added a voiceover to advertise our movie. Using sounds from our movie alowed the audience to connect soem of the advertising to certain parts of the movie. 

Camera
For filming our short movie we used a Cannon HFG 25, we also used atripod wiht it to secure that the shots remained still when we needed and to have them at a sertain level. The camera was really easy to use however it take some  learning due to using a different camera last year. The camra had many differnt options and it alo allowed us to change the focus of a shot. It was easy to use for handheld shots as well due to the small size and it being lightweight. It also had amanual focus switch which we used to secure that everything we did was of the best quality to secure that our movie was the best that it could be. The fact that we could watch what we filmed on the camera after shooting it allowed us to see what shots need to be retaken or what we could chnage to make it better. The tripod allowed us to do variety of diferent shots and movements like pans and tilts due to teh easy movement and that handles that moved. We aslo used this camera to film our eliptical editing, restricted narration and our unrestricted narration. These halped us to become more comfortable with teh camera, every team member also took part of different areas of filming so we could all use the camrea to let evryone have a part of creating the film but alos so anyone who had an idea of how to imrove some parts of the movie could do it in their own way. Overall im very happy with our end project. 

Evaluation 4


Wednesday 21 March 2018

Final questionnaire results after production

Final questionnaire answers 

This questionnaire was our final questionnaire to find out peoples opinions on the finished movie. We asked things like their opinion on the movie, whether they would change anyhting and would the recomend it to a friend. We had 8 questions plus their age and gender. This questionnaire was sent out through messanger so we could send the movie along with the questionnaire that way we wouldnt have to keep showing it to everyone. Overall we asked 16 people with a response from everyone within a few days of it being sent out. 

Age and Gender: 
 In our questionnaire we asked 16 people, making it equal we asked 8 females and 8 males and tried to make it loads of different ages. The age ranges were 12-16 from where we had 3 people, 17-20 with 6 people answering from this age range, 21-30 having 5 people and 31+ with only 2.


Question 1:
The first question asked people on a scale of one to five how likely are you to watch this movie. While they did watch it in order to fill the questionnaire we wanted to know in a sense of if they just wanted to watch any movie how likely they would be in picking our one. Number one meant least likely and number five menat highly likely. the resluts showed that most people chose the number 3, while five people chose number 4 and four people chose the answer 5, with only one person circiling two and no onew picking one.


Question 2: 
Question two we asked people where would they go and watch the movie. The options were cinema, DVD and online as they are the most popular ways of watching movies. This quetsion helped us see that if we were to relise the movie which option would have been most successful. The answers showed that 8 people asked would watch it in the cinema, 2 would purcases the DVD and 6 would watch it online.


Question 3:
In this question we asked what genre do they think our movie is. All the answers showed that we did show through the thriller genre like we wanted to. It was an even split between thriller and crime thriller with six people saying those two. The other four said that they tought it was a thriller mystery.




Question 4:
Question 4 was asking if they understood the storyline. This question was very important becasue of the amount of changes we made during our production to the storyline. All of the changes were made to make the movie make more sense. The results showed that it made quite a lot of sense, with 10 people saying yes, 5 answering sort of and with just one person not understanding teh storyline.

Question 5:
In this question we asked if they would suggest this movie to their friends. This question was to see how popular our movie could get. It also allowed us to see if the storyline would be intresting to differnet types of people.  Five people answered yes, seven people said maybe and four people said no.



Question 6:
In this question we asked what were peoples favorite parts of the movie. This was becasue we wanted to know which scenes we did the best on.  Most people liked the plot twist that we had. Some other people also liked the fact taht we gave the main character a background story and showed her childhood  and why she did the job that she did. 



Question 7:
In this question we asked the people if they would change any part of the movie. While it was too late to make any chnages it was still good to know how we could of improved our film. Most of the responses mentioned how the scene where the main charcater is followed could have been more tense by having darker lighting. Another change that the people asked suggeted was the scene where Charlie was getting ready to be in focus, as quite a few shots were out of focus.


Question 8: 
This question was our last question and asked, if there was to be a sequel would you watch it? This was so we coud see if our movie left any following questions even once it was done. It allso helped us see how much people liked our movie and if they liked it enough to see a sequel. 

Final Questionnaire after production


Tuesday 20 March 2018

Questionaire results during production

We asked 10 people to watch our movie and answer a questionnaire based on it. The questionnaire had nine questions on it which gave us a good idea of peoples opinions of our movie. We had a range of ages which gave us multiple different answers.

Question 1
The first question was the gender of the person answering. This was so we could see the difference in how our movie seemed to both genders.


Question 2
The second question asked the age of the person answering. For this we had four age ranges 12-16, 17-20, 21-30 and 31+, this made it easier to put the answers in a chart.




Question 3
The third question asked the people what genre they thought our movie belonged to. For this question we didn't give the people options to choose from we just let them make their own decision. This showed us if our movie looked part of the genre we wanted it to.




Question 4
This question asked people what age certificate would they give our movie. the options were PG, 12, 12A, 15 and 18. The results said 3 for age 12 certificate and 7 for 12A, the majority went with the same certificate which we chose for the movie.  In this question we also asked why they think that would be the correct certificate to give and all of the answers focused on the use of mild violence and the use of gun. The answers for why also said it doesn't need a high certificate due to there not being anything most 12A rated films wouldn't have.


Question 5
The fifth question asked what gender would our movie appeal to and why they think that. The results showed that most people asked thought the movie would appeal to women because of the female lead and the almost all female cast.



Question 6
This question asked how well they understood the storyline of the movie. The answers gave the option of understood completely, understand a little and too complex. Most people who answered understood the storyline a little. The question also asked if the person understood who the little girl in the movie was which most viewers guessed correctly.


Question 7
In this question we asked if they could think of any movies like ours or do they think its unique. For this question we let the people think of their own answers as some of the movies we could of suggested the people may have not seen or heard of. The answers that suggested another movie all suggested movies with female lead.


Question 8
This question asked how likely they are the view the movie on scale of one to five with one representing definitely not and five representing absolutely. The answers were placed between 3 and 5.  Four people said 3, another four said 4 and two people said 5.


Question 9
In our last question we asked how could we improve our movie. Most answers said to answer more sound in order to make it more understandable. This is something we have almost finished doing after winch the movie will be finished.



Filled in questionnaires: