CCR4

1. Film
Today
How did you integrate technologies
(software, hardware and online) in this
project?
For my coursework production this year, I
used lots of different types of
technologies to make my production be the
best it could be. I used a blend of
software, hardware and online technologies
to make my whole coursework production. In
this reflection, I will discuss what
software I used, how I integrated it
together across the production and what the
strengths and weaknesses of the technology
was and how it helped me progress.
Software: I used software across all my
productions - this was one of the most
useful types of technology as it has
allowed me to construct more professional
looking products.
Short Film Software:
For my short film production, the main type
of software I used was Final Cut Pro
editing software - this can be compared to
the real film industry as it is the real
film industries choice of editing software.
I believe this really helps to give my film
a professional look. I think that this the
strength to this software. The weakness was
that it was really time time consuming to
learn how to use and I did not have a copy
of the software on my own computer at the
start of the production so had to rely on
using it at my friends house until I bought
it myself when my filming was over. Another
strength was that a piece of real film
industry software was cheap to buy.
Website Software: The website software I
choose to use was Wix which is an online
software but I used logo creator to help
with my branding identity - this again
helped to give my logo a more professional
appearance. I will talk about my use of Wix
later in the article.
Poster Software The software I used for the
production of my postcard was photoshop.
This is an industry design piece of
software. I think the choice of this
software had a good impact on my final
production of the poster because I was able
to manipulate images, use shadows, use
colour grading techniques and text design.
I learnt specific tools and techniques to
be able to use this piece of software
properly.
The techniques I learnt were mainly
composition techniques for lighting. My
poster uses a lot of shadows. I think this is
a strength because it links to my film genre
and helps to convey mystery, suspense and use
Barthes enigma codes which links my print
production to my film production. To evaluate
the use of the photoshop software - I think
it was a really useful to use it to make my
design more professional and make my images
look a lot more professional but I still need
to develop a lot more skills to be able to
get the most use of photoshop. The huge
weakness to using photoshop was how technical
and difficult it was to use but I did learn
from using it and made my production better
because of using it. I was able to match
researched conventions of a film poster, for
example the use of interesting shadows and
lighting on my film poster. I could create a
better brand identity because of using
photoshop software, for an example, I was
able to make my logo to use across all three
products and this made my production company
name and logo.
Hardware: I used hardware technology mostly
in short film
production piece.
The hardware I
used was the
camera, the
lighting and the
props. For
lighting, I used
a set of 3-LED
portable lights to
create the best
professional style
lighting I could.
I wanted to be
able to do high
key lighting for
the interior shooting and chiaroscuro
lighting for the close-ip shots of my main
character. I knew I wanted to shoot in low
light level conditions for the emotional
ending in the desert set and the fill light
in my led lighting pack helped me to be able
to capture the low light levels at dusk but
still be able to see my main character in the
frame whilst not making it obvious to the
audience the character was being lit with
lights.
March 4th 2017

2. I think my last years workshop on lighting
really helped with this but I was able to do
it all myself with my own set of lights this
year.
The other hardware I used was of course the
camera. I shot my film using a 4k resolution
Nikon camera. To evaluate the camera I have
studied the quality of the picture film. I
think my film quality is good. There is no
grainy images because of my lighting
techniques and high shooting resolution and
my film has a professional look. The weakness
to using this camera for the shoot was that I
borrowed it off a friend who helped me on the
day with organizing the shoot but I was not
able to practice shooting as much I wanted to
and this meant that it was took time to learn
the technical points of the camera. I would
have preferred to learn how to use the camera
with longer time. Looking back I could have
tried to borrow
the same camera
for my
preliminary
tasks as this
might have
helped me learn
the technical
skills faster.
Hardware:
Another type of hardware I used was my iPhone
X. My phone helped a lot with my whole
coursework project. The main strength of my
iPhone was that I was able to use it as a
cross-platform device. This is because I was
able to take photographs and videos for my
test shoot to help me plan my cinematography
using my phone. I could then transfer the
files using air drop and work on my products
at home and at school. I also tried out apps
to help with my typography design. I liked
this type of technology because it was fast
and simple to use. I decided not to use it in
my final poster design because I wanted to
try using photoshop which was a harder more
technical type of software but the hardware
of my iPhone X gave me the opportunity to try
out different types of apps and digital
technology that was available. I also used my
iPhone hardware to hep record my production
journey videos and make audio recordings. The
strength of this was how fast and simple the
software was to use. I could also then
transfer the audio files to iMovie all on my
phone and edit them to make a radio show - I
used this technology technique for my other
critical evaluation question.
Online software:
I used online software throughout my project.
I used blogger as the website to host my work
on the blog. The best strength of this
website is that it allows me to show my work
to the examiner in a simple format that the
examiner can understand. The weakness of this
online software is that work can’t be
uploaded directly to the blog, I have to go
through slide share which can be time
consuming and sometimes it changes the format
and design look of my work.
Another strength of blogger is that it can
be accessed anywhere. So I could work on my
blog at home, at school and on my iPhone
which made it really helpful to manage.
I used Wix as the website to host my film
production website and this was useful
because I could design it, add my own logo I
created, change the text, font and look of
the typography to give my products a brand
identity. As blogger, this
software could be accessed
at any time, anywhere and
this helped with the
management of my project and
meant I could complete work
when I wanted to not just in
class. From my research I
also learnt that a lot of
short films or independent films with low
budgets use websites like Wix because the
cost is so low so by using this online
software I was also meeting a convention of
the independent film industry. Distribution
of web products can be hard to finance for
new filmmakers and cheaper free websites
like Wix mean people can build their own
websites properly and
easily without a lot of
technical training.
Another online software I
used was YouTube. I posted
my animations, my
preliminary tasks, my production journey
videos and the final version of my film to
YouTube to host it. I researched how
effective YouTube is at hosting films and
found that
independent
films receive
100% more
views online
then they do
when released
at small
independent
cinemas or
film festivals. Online distribution is the
strongest and best way for new filmmakers to
get their products seen by audiences.
Another type of online software I used was
Prezi the online presentation software. I
used this software for my film pitch the
first time but it got deleted so this is a
main issue with the online software. Using
it also needs a really good internet
connection which school doesn't always have
so that was a technical challenge.
Overall, I integrated many technologies in
my coursework project but think I used the
software packages I knew really well and to
a higher level then last year and I learnt
new techniques this year. The strongest
development I made with my project was using
Wix as a web design package and the hardware
of the lighting kit I bought as I think both
technologies help to make my production more
professional.
Last Exit
released
May 2018