Question Four - Essay

4) How did you use new technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Research and planning

To start with, we have used iMac desktop computers throughout the project. In this particular stage, we mostly used the internet to access websites such as:

• Blogger, to record research, videos and our evaluations.
• IMDb, to look up information about films and other media.
• Facebook and Twitter, to send the questionnaire out.
• YouTube, for soundtrack comparison, watching specific movie scenes, and for tutorials (we learnt how to do the Jacob's Ladder head shake effect through YouTube).
• Freesound.org, to download a few royality-free sound effects.

The Internet Movie Database.

Browsing these websites helped us in research, and gave us some scope into what ideas we could implement by looking at other films, camera shots and effects.

Construction

The construction stage allowed us to use more software and hardware based technologies. It was in this stage that I started to design our film logo (original post) which was then changed countless times to suit whatever text it was being used in. Then, I made a newspaper that was going to appear in a few shots and a film poster. All of this was done in Adobe Photoshop, and the access to this software allowed me to be creative and let me design whatever was needed for the project.

At this stage, we were filming. We used HD digital cameras to record our footage and Final Cut Pro to edit it. The cameras caused a few problems - mainly with the batteries - but other than that, everything was fine. Later, we used Zoom recorders to record the radio trailer. This also went without a problem.

Evaluation

Again, I used Photoshop to created the .gif and the newspaper analysis in the first question. Blogger is also being used again more frequently, but that is about it.