Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Jamie Beveridge

Research and Planning During my research, I used a number of different websites to provide a greater understanding of genre and postmodernism. The search engine Google was especially useful in locating information on how genres are compiled of themes, ideas and conventions which are included by film and media products. I also used Google when researching Postmodernist theory, which led me to websites such as Wikipedia which provided the relevant information on Postmodernism, from the general overview of the approach to directors who are known for using Postmodern elements in their productions, such as Quentin Tarantino. When researching examples of postmodern films, the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) was very useful, as it gave me information such as box office figures, trivia and cast overviews, which was very helpful when examining the common conventions found within the genre. These websites also helped me to explore the budgets of independent films in our genre, which informed our plan for marketing our promotional package. It also helped us to decide upon a release date, based on factors including the box office revenues of films released on dates throughout the year. I found that YouTube was the most useful site when examining films from the crime genre, particularly when looking for individual scenes. YouTube made it easy and simple to locate the trailers for the films I wanted to study, which in turn made the task of analyzing them simpler.

Blog Throughout the project I have been posting all my work on my individual blog. This has been hugely beneficial in the process of answering the evaluation questions, as I have been able to look back on all my work and accurately reflect on it. Using the blog made it very easy to see how my work had progressed over the course, and helped me to identify elements of my project last year that I wanted to do differently during this task. It helped me to manage my work as any work uploaded to the blogs is filed under one of four categories (Research, Planning, Construction, Evaluation). The blogs also made it easy to connect with members of the group, which helped us all in gathering all the required work to put up on our own blogs. Another advantage of uploading my work to the blogs is that my tutor was able to look at all my work throughout the year and give me feedback on it both in person and in the comments section provided on each post on the blog itself, which was very beneficial in the process of editing and updating my work over the course.

Construction During the filming of our trailer, we used a variety of technologies that allowed us to create the best quality trailer possible. The camera we used was a Canon 550D DSLR, which allowed me to straightforwardly shoot the trailer in high definition, which gave our trailer more of a professional feel to it. To edit the film trailer, we used the program Adobe Premiere Pro, which was very helpful in making the editing process straightforward without neglecting the quality of the production. The first step was to transfer all the film footage from the SD card onto the Mac computers we were using in the edit suite. Before deciding which shots we were going to use and placing them in the correct order as a rough cut according to the storyboard we produced when writing the trailer. We used colour correction to grade the shots and edit them to give them a darker, neo-noir look. Using Premiere Pro meant that we had access to editing features such as transitions and time remapping, which we made us of in our trailer. We were also able to add titles to our production, which we found on the website Dafont.com, as well as locating copyright free sounds and music to add to our soundtrack from Incompetech.com and SoundCloud.com. The fact that they were copyright free was beneficial as we did not have to spend time obtaining permission to use them in our production. For our voiceover, we had access to a high quality microphone with a pop filter, which gave us a crisp, high quality sound, which we were able to integrate into our soundtrack..

Evaluation I used Windows PowerPoint to answer each evaluation question, as while it is simple and easy to use, it presents my work in an attractive, efficient way. The fact that I am familiar with the program made my choice to exclusively use it to present my evaluation questions easier, as I was comfortable using the program, which meant I could focus more on the content of the presentation rather than the formatting. The blogs have been beneficial during the evaluation process as I have been able to look back at the work I have produced over the course and accurately evaluate it all, as well as being a place where I can easily and simply upload my evaluation questions.