The document discusses how new media technologies were used at various stages of creating a short film project. Technologies like YouTube, Google Forms, and social media were used for inspiration, research, and collaboration. Equipment like cameras and audio recorders were used to film interviews and record voiceovers. Editing software like Final Cut Pro was used to edit footage. Photoshop was used to design a movie poster. Throughout the process, the filmmakers learned new skills like different editing effects to achieve their desired aesthetic.

1. How did you use new media technologies in the
construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
By Lucy Emily
Taylor

2. Media technologies have been the framework of our
production. We have used media technologies to
construct our project. Without these it wouldn’t have
been possible to produce and create our project.
With the internet being the biggest source of
information we were able to access the tools we
needed to help create a firm strong film idea.
YouTube acts as a universal connection to see things
from all over the world, enabling us to view other
short films for inspiration. YouTube was also the
source behind our film idea as we came across the
short film ‘Love Language’, which was also created
by a group of students similar to our age.

3. Before starting our project we came up with some quick questions that we could ask
the public which we filmed live and created a video questionnaire. We filmed this
using HDV - 1000 video recorder and edited the clips together using Final Cut Pro.
We recorded all of our findings in a shared group blog on ‘blogger’. This not only
acted as somewhere to store and expand our ideas but helped us to communicate as a
group; along with new media technologies such as ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’ which
helped us to form group tasks so we were always sure on time for meeting and
locations.
We also used Facebook as a source of distributing our questionnaires as we posted it on each of
our Facebook’s so we could get as much audience response as possible. We made our
questionnaires on ‘Google Forms’ which made the standard a lot higher as I remember last year
recording the publics responses on paper and then typing them up. Using ‘Google Forms’ also
helped for safe keeping!

4. When researching into similar films we used sites
such as IMDB (Internet movie data base) to find
out more information about film genres and
other specific details about the films such as
actors, directors etc. We used the BBFC (British
board film classification), which holds all the
information you need to know about giving your
film the right certificate, which is something
imperative to anyone making a film. The BBFC
helped us to give our film a ‘U’ certificate which
means it’s suitable for all.

5. After prepping everything using all of the above
media technologies we then began filming our
production. I had already used equipment in my
first year such as the HDV-1000 camera and the
Flash Zoom Recorder, this made things a lot
easier when filming this year as I didn’t need to
spend anytime familiarising myself with any of
the equipment. For the opening sequence of our
film we used the zoom recorder to record the
voice over. Using the zoom recorder instead of
recording on the normal camera helped us to
create a sharp clear voice over that was of a high
quality.
We then uploaded the voice over separately
and edited it to the footage using Final Cut
Express. We also used a zoom recorder when
creating our radio trailer as we knew we’d get
the best quality sound and knowing that we
have to sell our film using the preproduction
sources such as our movie poster and radio
trailer, we knew it had to be of a professional
high quality standard.

6. Film posters are one of the main ways you see a film
advertised today. We wanted to make a unique poster
that wouldn’t reveal too much of our story but still
grabbed interest of the public. When researching
other film posters along the same genre we found
that they were quite simple. Keeping this in mind we
decided to take photos of Loren in which we used a
Canon 450D. We then uploaded the photo onto
Photoshop Adobe and began creating our movie
poster for ‘Like, Share, Follow’.

7. We had a few technical errors when recording
which is to be expected when you’re spending a lot
of your time using equipment you don’t necessarily
use every day. One of the days we were filming,
we’d already collected 2 hours worth of footage and
we’d just got round to our final scene when the
focus went on the camera, luckily after playing
around with it we got the focus back. One of the
main problems we came across when editing our
film was finding some appropriate non-diegetic
music to go over the top of our film that wasn’t
trademarked. We didn’t think it would be a huge
problem till researching our ideas and discovering
that almost everything on the internet is copyright.
Through the use of YouTube we came across a boy
who had created his own music so I wrote to him
on twitter and asked if we could use his song over
our short film.
This is a clip taken from
the footage when the
camera lost focus

8. Using digital technologies in both my first and
second year have really helped me to work
independently on my project this year. Without the
use of the media technologies I have used in my final
year, it wouldn’t have been possible to achieve my
final piece, ‘Like, Share, Follow’. My skills using the
equipment and internet have grown even more
during my time this year but I have also learned new
things that I didn’t touch on in my first year such as
some of the editing we applied to our film. As Loren
is a blogger we wanted to make her video look ‘home
made’ so we used an effect which made the video
look like a home video. We also added the ‘bad TV’
effect which made the sound also like a home video
with the crackle effect. Using the skills I have learnt
over the past two years I am confident my short film
has been pushed using my knowledge of the subject
and I have worked to the best of my ability.