Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 4: How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

Thursday 17 March

 

 Transcript:

Mariam - Red // Jack - Blue

We used blogger primarily as this was the site where we uploaded all of our work, we treated blogger as a personal diary relating to media studies. Blogger allowed us to upload posts frequently and edit or change them as we continued. Blogger also allows the viewer to see the dates and times we uploaded our tasks. Uploading frequently whether it was a large written post or a snapshot of our group chat was key.

Google Docs was primarily used for audience feedback and research - for example, our online survey was sent out from Google Forms. The link was sent as a mass e-mail to the entire secondary sector of our school in one easy click, (screen capture) which was made possible thanks to Microsoft Outlook Office, a variation of Hotmail that caters to work or professional environments. Google Docs was used to present a summary of the answers to the multiple choice questions asked in our survey. This is an easily accessible and visually stimulating method of gathering data as it allows you view results in percentages and pie charts. In this instance, some of the things we found out was preferable for our target audience included the genre of the score, favoured colour palettes, the gender of the main characters, among other things. This heavily influenced our decisions on many aspects of the film opening. Blogger, as previously mentioned, was used to keep track of our progress and present our findings in a structured, easy-to-navigate manner.

We used a mixture of Adobe Premiere and IMovie to edit our movies. Adobe Premiere was a more complicated editing software which was helpful as it allowed us to cut and remove or add certain effects and transitions that IMovie wasn’t capable of. At one point we did attempt to use Final Cut to integrate into the editing stage of our film opening in the hopes of finding added or beneficial features that Adobe Premiere and iMovie did not have, however this was not the case. We found that Final Cut was an interesting albeit slightly unusual software to edit movies; for example the saving feature was missing. We found out later that the saving feature is missing simply because the software had a built-in autosave function which was immensely relieving and convenient. I personally forget to save my projects a lot and as a result I have lost some drafts while logging out of my computer. Final Cut combats this common issue  in one easy step. On the other hand though, iMovie and Adobe Premier were ultimately the most useful and lacked the complexity Final Cut unfortunately has, therefore we used it for a majority of the time. I personally also used Movavi Video Editor for my evaluation questions, which I found quite convenient although the trial version restricts me from saving my work without a watermark which is disappointing. Firefly is another essential part of this project for it is where we uploaded all our files and resources and presented our final data. Finally, Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint were distinguishably vital throughout this project as we used them numerous times to present our findings or analyse shots from film openings.

Websites and filmmaking blogs such as The Film Book were also extremely beneficial in aiding us to produce a smooth, efficient film opening. (x) For example, The Film Book suggested some tips on how to manually handle a GoPro so as to reduce shakiness and stabilise the setting in a point-of-view shot. This is directly applicable in our comparison of the first draft and the final draft, respectively. On the first day of shooting, we attempted to shoot a POV scene of one of the characters driving on a quadbike but due to the bumpy desert location and the noisy quadbike the result was unimpressive. The footage was shaky in a clearly amateur fashion rather than purposefully, the frames were overexposed, the lighting too saturated, as well as a handful of sound issues.Through some articles from The Film Book this was able to be addressed. Another influential blog was No Film School, a popular website for independent filmmakers that provided its readers with fresh and innovative methods to film on a budget. No Film School’s article on the rule of thirds was especially helpful for me personally in understanding composition techniques. Premium Beat gave us a practical outlook on filmmaking in general but was particularly notable in its wide range of royalty free music tracks.

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