Evaluation: how did you use media technologies in the research and planning, construction and evaluation stages of your coursework?
During the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages of my advanced media portfolio - which included a film poster, double page film review and short film - I used many different forms of technology to gather research and information in order to get my products to their current state.
Furthermore, I used various programmes, equipment and websites that enabled my research, planning and construction process to go smoothly. This use of technology made the creation of my advanced portfolio possible and without the existence of these things, it is highly unlikely that my portfolio would have been created or produced to the highest standard necessary.
An important technological element of my A2 production was setting up a blog - this helped me to produce my three products and display them, showing all of the research and planning I had gathered for my portfolio in individual and personal blogs. Blogger is the website that I utilised for my blog as I found it best suited to my needs. Setting up a page was relatively straight-forward and simple as I had used the same website in the previous year for my AS portfolio. Having a blog made it much easier for me to keep track of what I intended to produce, for both my teachers and the examiners. If I were to produce my coursework on paper, it wouldn't be as effective as it looks on Blogger as I wouldn't have been able to incorporate and upload videos and images into my coursework. Therefore, this shows the importance of having a blog, as it acts like the glue of converging all of the other media technologies I have used during my coursework - for example, it allowed me to link my short film from Vimeo and display it on my blog.
Moreover, the comment system enabled me to gain a good amount of feedback for my coursework. The feedback written over the blog is a lot more convenient and quicker than waiting for feedback on written work as you don't have the process of handing it in then waiting for teachers to mark it. As a consequence, by doing my coursework on Blogger, it allowed me to improve and move on with my coursework quite quickly. It allowed my teachers to instantly comment on my work and offer any advice for improvements.
For the production stage of my coursework portfolio, my group and I used a Nikon D5300 and a basic camera tripod, which were lent to us from school. At first, this Nikon model was quite difficult to use as the controls are fiddly and awkward - in my opinion, I think a touch screen would have improved our experience with this camera. However, we decided to overlook this minor detail as the camera was ergonomic to handle and delivered an almost perfect image - sharp and crisp.
One disadvantage about this camera which did irritate me quite a lot was that you could hear the zoom in some footage, and when it came to editing, it was a tricky process to remove the sound of the zoom without removing any sound that was necessary to the effectiveness of the film. Also, in some cases the sound that we captured on the camcorder was quite unclear, so we did have to record a voiceover on our iPhones as well. To help us record the voiceovers, we invested in a clapper board so that we could synchronise the video with the sound on the voiceover.
During the filming stage of our production, we did have a second camera on standby. The reason for this was because we had filmed once before, and the Nikon D5300 had ran out of battery - therefore, when we came to film again, we decided to have a second fully charged camera on set in case the Nikon died once again.
To edit all of our filming footage, we used the Apple programme Final Cut Pro X on the iMac computers at school. Immediately, this was a challenge for us as the only place we could edit was at school as we did not have iMacs at home, therefore - admittedly - the editing process of our film took much longer than what we had originally planned. Furthermore, it was quite difficult to navigate ourselves around the programme at first as we hadn't used it prior to our A2 coursework, so we did find ourselves watching many tutorials on YouTube. Nonetheless, there were many advantages to using this particular editing software.
After a while, it was a very easy programme to use, which gave us the best results when creating our short psychological horror film. Importing videos and music was simple, and a wide range of tools were available which allowed us to precisely edit our footage. For instance, we had the option to zoom, trim, blade, as well as slow down, speed up, or reverse footage. If we were to edit our film on iMovie, none of these options would be available, and our film would have been extremely simplistic. Thus, we are happy that we used Final Cut Pro X to edit our film as it allowed us to achieve the complexity in the overall look of our film.
What's more - Final Cut Pro is highly professional and we did feel very privileged when using it. According to the 2007 SCRI study, Final Cut Pro made up 49% of the United States professional editing market, with major films such as The Ring, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Social Network being edited with it.
For the creation of my ancillary tasks, I used the graphic design website Canva. Again, this was familiar to me as I made use of it last year for my foundation portfolio. The reason why I chose to carry on using it for my advanced portfolio is because it didn't cost anything and was very undemanding to use. As my group and I had spent so much time editing our film, I decided it would be best to create my ancillaries as quickly as possible on a tool in which I was familiar with. Additionally, Canva is a very fun tool to use, which takes the friction away from designing as it revolves around templates and intuitive drag-and-drop controls. However, you do have the option of creating your design on a blank canvas, which I opted for as it didn't restrict me on creating what I had in mind for my ancillary products.
Moreover, the comment system enabled me to gain a good amount of feedback for my coursework. The feedback written over the blog is a lot more convenient and quicker than waiting for feedback on written work as you don't have the process of handing it in then waiting for teachers to mark it. As a consequence, by doing my coursework on Blogger, it allowed me to improve and move on with my coursework quite quickly. It allowed my teachers to instantly comment on my work and offer any advice for improvements.
During the research and planning stage of my coursework, I heavily relied on Google and YouTube. YouTube partook a crucial role towards most stages of my coursework portfolio as it allowed me to research films from the early years of filmmaking, and watch various horror films in which I could analyse and deconstruct. Google is an international search engine which I most frequently used for thorough research and inspiration. When my group and I were deciding upon a location to shoot, Google maps proved to be useful as it enabled us to browse around areas that were suitable for our aesthetic, without the expense of physically going to the location. Furthermore, it also gave us an estimated idea on the practicality of moving around our chosen locations on our shoot day.
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| The street in which the alters follow Grey into his house. |
One disadvantage about this camera which did irritate me quite a lot was that you could hear the zoom in some footage, and when it came to editing, it was a tricky process to remove the sound of the zoom without removing any sound that was necessary to the effectiveness of the film. Also, in some cases the sound that we captured on the camcorder was quite unclear, so we did have to record a voiceover on our iPhones as well. To help us record the voiceovers, we invested in a clapper board so that we could synchronise the video with the sound on the voiceover. During the filming stage of our production, we did have a second camera on standby. The reason for this was because we had filmed once before, and the Nikon D5300 had ran out of battery - therefore, when we came to film again, we decided to have a second fully charged camera on set in case the Nikon died once again.
Another piece of equipment that we used during the production stage of our coursework was a GoPro. Although this camera didn't produce an image of the best quality, it did give our film an air of technique as it is resistant to water so we were able to film scenes under water.
To edit all of our filming footage, we used the Apple programme Final Cut Pro X on the iMac computers at school. Immediately, this was a challenge for us as the only place we could edit was at school as we did not have iMacs at home, therefore - admittedly - the editing process of our film took much longer than what we had originally planned. Furthermore, it was quite difficult to navigate ourselves around the programme at first as we hadn't used it prior to our A2 coursework, so we did find ourselves watching many tutorials on YouTube. Nonetheless, there were many advantages to using this particular editing software.
After a while, it was a very easy programme to use, which gave us the best results when creating our short psychological horror film. Importing videos and music was simple, and a wide range of tools were available which allowed us to precisely edit our footage. For instance, we had the option to zoom, trim, blade, as well as slow down, speed up, or reverse footage. If we were to edit our film on iMovie, none of these options would be available, and our film would have been extremely simplistic. Thus, we are happy that we used Final Cut Pro X to edit our film as it allowed us to achieve the complexity in the overall look of our film.
What's more - Final Cut Pro is highly professional and we did feel very privileged when using it. According to the 2007 SCRI study, Final Cut Pro made up 49% of the United States professional editing market, with major films such as The Ring, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Social Network being edited with it.
For the creation of my ancillary tasks, I used the graphic design website Canva. Again, this was familiar to me as I made use of it last year for my foundation portfolio. The reason why I chose to carry on using it for my advanced portfolio is because it didn't cost anything and was very undemanding to use. As my group and I had spent so much time editing our film, I decided it would be best to create my ancillaries as quickly as possible on a tool in which I was familiar with. Additionally, Canva is a very fun tool to use, which takes the friction away from designing as it revolves around templates and intuitive drag-and-drop controls. However, you do have the option of creating your design on a blank canvas, which I opted for as it didn't restrict me on creating what I had in mind for my ancillary products.
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