AS Coursework Reflection

Digital Technology:

-How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

We did use different media technologies to plan and also evaluate the progress of our film, mainly just our smartphones to take pictures of what we were researching at the time, for example when deciding how we would like to present our characters using makeup, we took a photograph of each step to show how we would achieve how we did it. We also used media technologies online to post these images and write about what we did and how. By posting on Blogger, we were able to present our research and planning to others making the whole process worth while. During our research stages we used mainly YouTube to found out how other movies began, in particular horror movies as that was the genre we wanted to persue.

- What software was used?
We used a variety of different software to create our final opening two minutes, such as Adobe Premiere Elements 10, which we used to crop each clip and put them in order which would make it a lot easier to then transfer to our prefered software - IMovie. In IMovie we added in the title, sounds, transitions and visual effects, the reason we decided to use this software instead of Adobe as we felt a lot more comfortable to complete our opening two minutes on there. To create our title for our film (The Woods) we used PhotoShop to do so, which we then saved it and inported it into IMovie.

-What equipment was used?
To create our movie we used many different pieces of equipment to make it to the standard we would be happy with, this means we tried to do something interesting and unique, so we included an under water shot using the Kodak Playsport camera, allowing us to try something different making our final piece appeal to more people. To shoot our other clips we decided to use a high tech camera - Canon 9000, this gave us the chance to focus in on what we wanted and felt was the more important subject in the shot, we did this by changing the depth of field in the camera settings and also using the lens, giving our opening two minutes more obvious emotions and enigmas to make the audience want to continue watching.

-What were the technical pros and cons of the software and hardware?
The pros of of the software we used is that it gave us many different options to adapt our opening two minutes making it appeal more to our target audience, due to the range of transitions which we used to show time had passed creating enigmas and making the audience want to continue watching. I personally feel as though the hardware we used left more of an impact as it let us film our clips in a higher quality, making the film seem more realistic and as though there would've been a higher profit if this project was a real senario. The hardware had more than one benefit as we used a range of different hardware to film, such as the Kodak PlaySport camera, which let us film underwater. A con of using the hardware we used, specifically the Canon 9000, was that it is quite a heavy camera because it is an SLR, this restricted us from capturing a couple of the shots we wanted in particular the high angle and birds eye view shots because of the weight.

-In what ways was technology used to create the production?
Without techonology our film wouldn't be the same at all, one obvious reason is that we wouldn't have even been able to film it, the two different cameras we used to shoot our opening two minutes meant we could create our piece easily and fast. Although this is the case, we wouldn't have even been able to present our plans for our film without our blog pages, by posting different documents on these pages allowed us to prove our work is genuine and all our own ideas. I personally feel as though the technology that benefited us the most while creating our opening two minutes was the different editing softwares such as PhotoShop and Adobe Premier Elements 10 because without it we wouldn't have been able to learn different editing skills to make our movie appear more realistic.

-In what ways did the technology constrain or enable the production to be developed?
Technology such as blogger allowed us to present the progress of our work, making it a lot easier to track our own progress and go back to make changes if we felt we could do something to make our final piece stronger. Using a high quality camera let us make our shots look clearer which made the whole piece more enjoyable to watch.