Evaluation 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

For my Advanced Portfolio I made a short film in the social realist genre. I've learned a host of new skills relating to digital technology which helped me create a very successful media product, along with synergous ancillary tasks – a film poster and a magazine review.

At A2 I was much more comfortable with using a wide range of digital technology and so was able to incorporate more advanced ideas into my research and planning. I also acquired a new Canon 5D camera to better the quality of my shots. So for this task, I created two ancillary tasks of a website and a film poster. This meant researching existing magazine review pages from magazines such as, Empire Magazine and film posters from Movies such as Fish Tank. After analyzing them, as well as watching YouTube videos to help me learn about the different software I was using: photoshop elements 11. I generated a poster and a magazine advertisement to develop my skills in using the software. I used my own pictures from tumblr and instagram to practice using the software to edit the pictures, such as adding text, filters and experimenting with lighting. I was able to upload these to my blog to get feedback from focus groups, which then informed my presentation of the real thing.  Progressing from AS, this time I made an animatic of my storyboard and posted it to my blog so that I could collect feedback and see exactly how long my shots should last and what shots would actually look effective in the project as a whole. Finally, I created a group chat in Whatsapp to communicate with my performers and production team to organize shoot dates. This worked better as we don’t tend to use facebook anymore for communication with our peers.

During the production of my A2 task, for my ancillary tasks, as I had developed my skills in the use of Photoshop through my props including a poster for on set, so I was able to imagine how I was going to use my image in my final film poster and bear that in mind while setting up my photoshoot with my actress Tamara. I used motion to generate and Ident, which after watching multiple youtube videos, finally came together. After importing it into iMovie, i was able to insert it at the beginning of the film. Also, when building my magazine review page I was able to use the research I had gathered to generate my piece. I updated my blog with methods of how I was creating my poster. Furthermore learning all new digital technology skills.

At post-production at A2, I used a new updated iMovie which allowed me to use new software including new effects.  Finally, to make my evaluations of my A2 portfolio as creative as possible, I used different kinds of digital technology, including Prezi, IMovie and photoshop. After collecting the paper-based survey from my focus groups - I was able to use 'Microsoft Excel' to generate pie charts of results from my questions.  In conclusion, I feel I developed my skills in digital technology significantly, enabling me to realize my creative ideas and make four very successful products.