Media questions- Media evaluation question 6.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

• This camera was useful because it has really good quality and made our filming really easy to do. We did not have any problems with it not working or crashing.
• We used this type of camera to film most of our opening film.
• The flash on this camera did not work, therefore in some places we could not get the lighting we wanted due to this. We overcame this by editing the lighting once we uploaded the film onto the computer.
• The problem that we had with this camera was the fact that it did not fit onto our tripod therefore we had to handhold the camera to film our scenes.

 

 

• The tripod was useful because it allowed us to get some steady and still filming instead of the camera moving along with the actors. The tripod was also useful as it allowed us to get shots from different angles.
• We used a tripod for the scenes where the protagonist and antagonist were not walking, for instance on top of the car park.
• The tripod limited the movement of the camera. We overcame this by making sure we had another camera that was free to move around and follow the action.
• The problem we had with the tripod was there the main camera we used for filming did not fit onto it properly. Also it was hard to put up to the right level /height that we needed and put down again.

 

• We used this camcorder for filming the scene with the protagonist and antagonist on top of the multi storey car park and also to follow the antagonist walking through the car park and out of the door. We also used the camcorder to film the protagonist and antagonist running down the stairs.
• The problem we had with the camcorder was that it did not focus very well on the action, therefore much of the film we did with it was blurry and not as stable as the film we did with the cannon camera.
• The camcorder was useful because we were able to place it on top of the tripod for certain shots. It was also useful because it was light and easy to carry around, especially whilst following the antagonist walking.
• The camcorder limited the quality of our clips. It was also not very reliable as it was easily turn off or the battery would run out quickly.

 

• We used this phone to film the underwater shots for the swimming pool scene. 
• This phone was really useful to use because it allowed us to get the shots we needed from within the pool instead of outside of it. It was entirely waterproof so we could put it right under the water for as long as we needed.
• The limitations we had with this technology were that it would not stop filming whilst it was still underwater and would not start filming underwater either. We overcame this by pressing the record button before we put it underwater and stopping it as soon as we took it out. Another limitation was that the phone would not allow us to film deeper than a meter. We overcame this by making sure where we were filming was before the one metre mark.
• The problems we had with using this phone was the fact that the footage was not as clear as the camera because the quality varied underwater.
• This was a really unusual way to film as we could use it underwater therefore we got shots which we would have not been able to get had we not had this waterproof technology.

Blogger:

I used blogger as the site for my media coursework blog. I used it to store all of my blog posts and pictures from the filming process.

 

Blogger was useful because it allowed me to upload onto my blog via the app on my phone so I could upload from wherever I was I did not have to do it via the computer.

 

The problems that I have had with blogger are the fact that it will not work on the mac computers due to it being unsupported. Another problem that I have had is that it will sometimes not publish my work immediately so I have to go back to it and re-publish it instead of just saving it.

 

The limitation that I have experienced with blogger is the layout, the pictures which I post to my blog do not all show up on there; you have to click on the post before you see the pictures which does not show a very good visual layout. I have overcome this by posting some of the pictures on their own with.

IMovie

We used IMovie to edit the scenes for our film and also to store the shots that we filmed.

IMovie was useful because it allowed us to cut the scenes out that we did not need to use within our film. It was also useful because it showed us many effects which we were then able to see how it would look with our shots before we actually used it. It was also fairly easy to use and saved our editing each time after we shut it down.

The problems which we had with IMovie was that we did not know if it had automatically saved or not, therefore we weren’t sure if our work would all be there next time we came to edit it. Also we struggled to add the music from our documents onto IMovie and it would not allow us to put it over all of the scenes where we wanted the music to be.

The limitations which we had with IMovie was that we would not be able to access our film on any other computer or IMovie app apart from the one we first used to upload our film onto. We overcame this by making sure we were able to have access to that one computer where all our film was uploaded too and also fitting in times to edit our film when no one else needed to use that computer either. For example lunch or break times. Another limitation was that we could not save our film in the format directly from IMovie and upload it to our blogs. We would have to change the document of the film footage on IMovie to another form to enable us to upload it to our blog.

 

Youtube

We used Youtube to look at certain film openings and title sequences that fit in with our chosen genre. We also used Youtube to upload our preliminary task on to so we could then add that link to our blogs.

Youtube was useful because it allowed us to look at other physiological thrillers and gain ideas and inspiration from them. Youtube was also useful in helping us to get a real feel for the aspects of this type of genre that we had to include in our film opening also. We were able to watch the film clips on Youtube and then analyse them so we could add that process on to our blogs. Youtube was also useful because it allowed us to show other people our continuity exercise.

The problems that we had with Youtube was that it was not easy to upload our preliminary task on to  and it was even harder to find the film clip once it had been uploaded to Youtube. Another problem we had with Youtube was that it did not always show us the most recent pyscho thrillers when we searched for them, therefore we had to analyse the older films.

A limitation of using Youtube was that we could not access it on any of the school computers so we were not able to show other members in our group useful physco thriller trailers which we had found at home. We overcame this problem by emailing each other the links to these physco thriller trailers so each member of our group could watch and analyse them at home.

Google

We used google to research about our target audience which is 15 and over. We also used google to find our royalty free music which we then included in our opening film and to find out the key elements of a psychological thriller film.

Google was useful because it came up with many websites which had information that was key to our research. It also answered many of the questions which we had about the specific film genre that we picked as well as facts about the audience which we were trying to appeal too.

The problem we had with Google was that it did not really have much specific information about media filming in general. We had to look through many various websites to gather separate information that we needed to answer the questions in which we were trying to ask. Another problem was that we did not want to copy paste any of the text that we found on google to our blogs because of copyright issues.

A limitation that we found with Google was that a lot of the information that was on there was not really very relevant to our research. We overcame this by only copying text that actually fit with the rest of the answers we had for our questions about the target audience and the physcho thriller genre.

Facebook

We used Facebook for our media group chat.

Facebook was useful because it allowed us to communicate with each other. Since all of our group members had a Facebook account it was easy to contact each other and arrange things over this messaging app.

The problems we had with Facebook was that not everyone had the Facebook messaging app on their phones so if we had to contact each other last minute not everyone received it. Another problem we had with using Facebook to message each other was that if someone did not have internet access on their phone they would not be able to see any of our messages.

The limitation which we found with Facebook was that we could not message each other last minute as it would take a while for every one of our group members to see the message. We overcame this problem by sending a message to everyone in advance so they had time to read and process the information. We did this by sending messages earlier on in the day or in the evening after sixth form had finished.