Thursday 4 March 2010

post production essay

What decisions did you make in post production stages of your two products? evaluate the success of these decisions

Editing
  • in final cut
  • fix any mistakes
  • base shot inter-cut with other shots
  • generated images for animation
  • lip synced the sequence
marketing
  • looked at other ideas from exsisting digipacks
  • used photoshop and illustrator to make digipack
  • used opacity masks and blending effects to combine images some real and some animation
sound
  • synced the music with the video
CGI effects
  • animation in photoshop
  • using filters, blending options and batch production process
  • saved time from original sketching idea
video commentary
  • used to explain various production and post production techniques
feedback on rough cut
  • used audience preview to gather feed back on what did and didn't work
  • we found we had to much of one shot so we re-filmed some extra shot that we could add in
transitions
  • fading effects to move between real footage and animation
  • fade to bring in the heart in the sky
thriller

editing
  • final cut
  • basic techniques such as cuts and simple juxtaposition
marketing
  • used effects to create an overall image theme that could be recreated into posters and adverts
sound
  • made sound track using garage band
  • help make a professional sound track
CGI
  • Green screen to change back ground
  • made titles appear in the computer program
feedback for the rough cut
  • used audience preview to gather feed back on what did and didn't work

Our post production desicions

One thing we obviously needed to sort out, was the synchronizing of the singing. The lyrics to the song had to fit the the mouth movements of the lead vocalist. The decision to sort this out was made for us, just because it would have looked poor any other way. Also after filming we decided to go get some more close-ups so, this proved key into making our video look more successful. We also decided to put the rumble effect in some parts of the video.
We also decided during our post production to have a separate photo shoot for our ancillary task, this is because we wanted to promote individuality, and professionalism.
We also decided to add in the song name and band which added to the overall professional feel, and the splitting of footage on the screen to have more than one band member show t one time.
We also decided to make a DVD commentary, to help market our product and evaluate it overall.


For our thriller we made decisions about what kind of credits we wanted. We ended up making our credits shake and we had them on a black background as we took influence from films like Seven. We also added a mass of effects to make our piece more eerie and unstable, we used colour change, and shaking to make things harder to focus. We sped up a lot of footage aswell as we wanted nothing to be given away in the opener for our audience.
Post production decisions that effected the look of our final product of our music video were based on our rough cut feedback. Much of the comments explained the need for close-ups of the artists in order to advertise their image and star persona. This meant we booked an extra day filming and took extra footage at the three major locations whilst concentrating on achieving acceptable shots and angles. This proved to be successful because when the shots were incorporated into our final product, the feedback from the finished music video didn't discuss the need to sell the artists because it had been achieved.
However, for the Thriller opening project from the AS year various decisions were made about the effects and transitions during the post production stages. Much of the verbal feedback evaluated the effectiveness of transitions and effects and this prompted our decision to add shot filters to add to the disequilibrium by giving a gloomy atmosphere where darkness hides characters both physically and emotionally. This was successful because it was praised in the written feedback of the final product.

post production essay plan

Introduction

Post production means the changing of footage whilst editing such as;
  • consumption
  • marketing/ exchange
  • sound
  • cgi effects
  • video commentary
  • feedback= rough-cut
  • menu for dvd
  • credits
  • subtitles
Main Body = Thriller

with our thriller open, we used sound, credits, feedback to make it look more realistic.

we did a basic soundtrack to go with the footage. we'd talk about how when watching the footage back from production we'd pick out which points would work well with the soundtrack we created and how it would create suspense.

we used basic transitions and editing to create our thriller as we were just used to playing around with the software.

Music video

Post Production Essay Plan

Introduction

Post Production is the process of changing the footage after filming has finished. Post production can consist of the following:
  • Editing
  • Consumption/ exchange
  • Marketing
  • Sound
  • CGI effects
  • Video commentary
  • Menu for DVD
  • Credits
  • Transitions/ effects
  • Subtitles
Main Body - Thriller

During the editing processes of this project we used only basic transitions including continuity and parallel editing and some credits showing the audience who was responsible for different areas of the product (sound, camera, lighting etc)

We also added a basic soundtrack using the program GarageBand

Throughout the filming of the product we were always thinking about how we would sell/ market the product

Music Video

During the Post Production process we used more advanced techniques including a simple CGI effect which was similar to that used in the film 'sin city.'

We also had to create a Digipak meaning that we had to research into music video consumption, exchange and marketing techniques.



Rob and Rose's saaafee work mayn. :)


What decisions did you make in the post production stage of your two products? Evaluate the success of these decisions.

-Refer to as many of the post production elements as possible.
Post production elements:
  • editing
In the editing stages of our post production stages we diverted our attention to focusing on enhancing the colour of our footage. In order to create this visual effect we used a saturation tool. We decided to use this effect to make the footage more vibrant, attract the attention of the audience and most importantly in order to keep the footage in keeping with the vibrant, bubbly theme that our product held.
  • consumption/exchange
Creating a blog in conjuction with our product allowed us to access the feedback of others. Including constructive criticism and hepful comments that gave us the opportunity to better our product. In both the thriller and music video project we used blogger however, we had learnt from the first project (the thriller) that the more use we had out of the blog the more successful we felt our end product would be.
  • marketing (digi-pack)
Particularly when marketing our music video we made many decisions in creating the digipack. Our main goal was to combine the theme from the music video itself (the enhanced colouring) to the characteristics of our digipack. We wanted to ensure that the digipack was vibrant and eyecatching however the DVD cover and magazine advert would still differntiate to ensure that customers would be able to see the difference in products and prevent it from becoming too samey.
  • sound
  • CGI effects
  • video commentary
  • feedback - roughcut
  • menu for DVD
  • credits
  • transitions/effects
  • subtitles

What decisions did you make in the post production stages of your two products? Evaluate the success of these decisions.

Music Video

One of the decisions we made during the post production stage of our music video was to film more varied shots. After reading our feedback from our roughcut, we realised that people wanted more varied shots rather than just straight on shots of the artist to make the video more interesting and exciting to watch. We feel this was a successful decision as with a larger variety of shots the video flowed well.

During the editing process we felt that some footage needed to be minimised in order to keep them flowing more professionally. For example we have a shot of the artist being chased where they turn a corner, we decided to cut out the end to make the shot flow better with the following shot. We also enhanced all of our footage after the basic editing was completed. We used the saturation and brightness and contrast tools in final cut to make the footage more vibrant and funky to conform with genre conventions. We feel this decision was a good one as it gave the video an uplifted feel.

We made the decision to use various different transitions between shots in our video as we wanted to make it more interesting. We used the motion key to guide our shots on and off the screen. One transition we thought was particularly successful was the transition where we spun a post it note onto another shot. We thought it was successful because it was timed well and fit with the music.

Our video commentary was fairly straight forward however after we filmed it we decided to cut it down a bit as we spoke about unnecessary things which did not need to be included. This was a good decision as we didnt want people to get bored or loose interest in what we had to say.

Creating our digipack was fairly easy as we had researched previous posters and DVD covers from the hip hop genre so we had a good idea of what to include. We took still images of the artist and made this the main feature in both of the digipack products. We made the decision to photograph the artist in the same clothing as he was wearing in the video to keep continuity but also to enable the consumers to regonise the products and relate them to each other. We were pleased that we made this decision as it gave the final products a professional feel.


Post production.

What decisions did you make in the Post production stages of your two products?Evaluate the success of these decisions.


A2 Music Video.

Introduction:

Discussing the main points (Post Production Elements):
- Editing: We all made the decision to keep it simple, which is more powerful and less nauseous. ..We came to this decision from looking at our peer feedback that we achieved, as some of them did have problems with the effects.
- Consumption/Exchange:
- Marketing (Digipack): decided that wanted to realate the genre to the digipack, also wanted it to stand out against others in shops &be eye catching, while also keeping it simple.
- Sound: We only used the sound from the song as we felt that any other sounds would confuse the audience & wouldn't be appropriate for our video. From the feedback we achieve this very well as they really liked it and thought that it fitted in nicely with the genre type.
- CGI Effects: Did not use this.
- Video Commentary: We decided to show the audience what we look like, & jump from the video to us so that they knew what we were talking about, whilst talking over the top. We also put in clips of other videos and stills of our digipack. This proved effective in our video and from our feedback we found out that many people liked the effect of adding the clip of the existing video by lily allen to our video, although some of the commentary was abit quite and hard to hear for the audience.
- Feedback: The feedback on our blog helped us with constructive critism on our music video, digipack and video commentary.
- Roughcut: When we made our roughcut we didnt have all of our footage, so we put in clips with writting on telling people what these clips would contain and what to expect.
- DVD Menu: We wrote down the tracks and made up some special features/live clips in order on the back of the cover of our DVD Digipack idea.
-Transitions/Effects: we were going to use effects but in the end they would have confused the viewer so we scrapped that. Then for transitions we used a basic transition that faded the previous clip into the next making it simple and bold.

Conclusion: Summing it all up.

After watching the DONKEY PUNCH extras; Interview with Director Olly Blackburn, we could see the evaluative decisions made during the post production stage. The film was broadcast at SunDance film festival and the director and producer could reflect on audience responses before marketing and releasing.

Post Production

In the Bourne Ultimatum the director decided to not use many visual effects but to create various techniques for real.

For instance they filmed the rooftop chase scene for real in the location that they wanted to be in.

They used Cable Cameras to film this footage as Dolly's aren't fast enough and the angle of footage is off of the roof. To do this they hung cameras from cranes on cables to move the cameras across. This had complications as they had to contend with going over power lines and other cabling to make it filmable. They were also able to pre-program the cameras to do specific motions as well as manually controlling them.

For the jumping over glass on the wall scene they used Toffee glass to allow the character to safely jump over as well as it creating a realistic crushing image and sound. This was better than CGI or silicon glass as CGI cannot create a realistic view and Silicon glass is extremely flexible.

They also used Jump Cams to follow the character as he jumps off of a building and lands in the kitchen window of the opposite building. To do this they used a Stunt man to film the character and jump with them into the building.

This involved a small bit of CGI to remove safety mats, cables for the cameras as well as removing some people out of windows who were watching the filming.


Post production

Took influence from other films, Worked together previously and rotating character roles. All these factors effected the overall production as from taking factors from a genre they closely interlinked with, they managed to make an individual piece of comedy. The character roles worked well as it made each actors part seem spontaneous and new. And from previously working together the production team had all worked closely and performed well when creating the speciel effects, sounds and making decisions on set.

Snatch - 2 Interesting Decisions

2 interesting decisions made during Post Production.
  • Several Scenes were deleted due to difficult editing (Fast cuts) and poor sound quality (such as background noise) which could not be avoided (i.e traffic) . The director thought that the scenes did not tell the audience much and did not have the right feel. This effected the look of the final product as all of the scenes fit and they were all quite busy scenes rather than quiet simple scenes.
  • Some dialogue was changed during scenes i.e Vinnie Jones kept forgetting his lines and making new ones which Guy Richie (Director) thought were better than the originals. There were also parts that were filmed but then changed as the different dialogue improved how the scenes flowed.

Evaluation

We watched Lost In Zombie land and compared it to our thriller and music video projects.

We chose 3 main similarities:

They had a tight and importance to keep in time, when they shot their film, so did we, as we were allowed 2 weeks to do ours.

Another one was we both used Final Cut to edit our films. And we also layered clips to create more interesting and complecated edited shots.

We also used make-up and had to create it and decide on how it will look and which is the best way to do it. They had the same problems and though they had a bigger budget they had to research and find out what works best, just like us.

Post Production- lost in zombieville

Three things we found interesting in the talk through for lost in zombie ville were three things we used in our products or had trouble with. These three things are;

One problem that affected the maker of lost in zombie ville was apparent is that during production they encountered problems working in the cold weather, which affected their footage when it came to post production and editing. With our music video we encountered the problem of not being able to shoot outside when we wanted to because of the wet conditions. This overall affected our piece's direction and eventually our post production editing of the footage we had.

Post Production - Once Upon A Time In The Midlands

Three points which we felt impacted the final product most from the video commentary were:
  • lots of improvisation was used which allowed the actors to reflect their and the characters mood more than if they were always following the script word for word.
  • Another point was that the actors had a weeks rehearsal time before the start of filming, this allowed them to understand the actors more making it easier to film some tougher scenes as they would not have to waste time before shooting to work out how best to portray the character.
  • the final point was that the script would change from day to day depending on the mood created from the previous day of filming, this means that again understanding the character was very important as areas of the script may be unfinished or half written when they needed to be filmed.

Wednesday 3 March 2010

Most media areas such as music/film/magazines have developed as digital technology has advanced. Media institutions are so dependant on technology that as equipment progresses the entire media area enhances. Studying the music industry as an example we can appreciate how it relys on modern technology. Firstly, over the past 15years synthesised instruments have been introduced and formed a completely different genre and various hybrids. Genres such as pop rely on commercial success, by extension the development of advertisments have affected the music industry. Extensive use of the internet have maximised recognition of artists and tracks aswell as instant downloads. Also, the uprise of mp3 players and ipods have expanded the entire market aswell as increase sales.

Monday 1 March 2010

Plan to Question

Question- How has your understanding of real media conventions developed over your A level media studies?

Plan
  • Thriller
  • Music video
  • Opening sequence
Plan to Question

INTRO-> Explain the importance of conventions
STRUCTURE-> 3 parts; thriller, opening sequence, music video
CONCLUSION-> Summary of how skills developed

Robs Posted Commentary

Here is my completed Posted Commentary



=D

Digital technology: Journalism

One areas of media that's becoming effected by new media technologies is Journalism. More products are emerging like sound-bites, blogs, forums and internet broadcasts.
All big news papers have their own web-pages now, which have evolved into a mass source of downloads and printable stories from the net. This new way of broadcasting means that newspapers themselves might be run out of production. With programs like iTunes producing news sound bites that these sites use for download, people might not want to continue reading themselves.
There is a huge accumulation of blog pages on the internet now, where anyone can publish their own products and stories. This is making news sources evermore unreliable, but on the other hand allowing a lot more free expression and feedback adding to certain journalism articles.
Of course, it isn't all making negative impacts. Internet broadcasting means that people can catch news whenever they want. Home pages such like 'Yahoo' and 'MSN' have news articles on them, so when people first get onto the internet they are met by numerous news stories. New stories are also added throughout the day, so people are never left behind if they want to keep up to date.
Having news accessible on the internet isn't new. It was founded back in the 90's, but the fact is the area is growing, and much more is now advertised through news sites.
All of these factors are changing the way we receive our journalism, there are so many ways we can obtain different adaptations of stories now that people never have to look far for recent news updates. But it also could be argues that the journalism profession is being effected by so Blog by products and sources are becoming more unreliable. People surely will have to say with main stream newspapaers if they want an un-morphed and professional story.

lydia, Steven and Nathan

How has the new technology effected this music video?...

The video i chose is: P!nk - So What

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XKZh3vWeGc

This music video has several different new technologies to affect the video.

  • The camera is the most quality and professionalism and it has a very good director (Dave Meyers) and camera men.
  • It uses Green Screen to add a background that is more interesting and impossible to create in real life.
  • It uses a panning/tracking shot on a dolly, which is a camera on wheels or on a long extending arm.
  • The video uses hi-tech lights and effects of lights to create and more professional look.
  • It uses very impressive effects to make the video look even better.
  • It uses expensive and awesome locations, equipment to make the locations look really great. they use things that in older videos these things that don't exist, eg. fire and props of the new age.
Overall i think that the music world is using a lot more impressive technologies and i think it is improving and making a music video more interesting to watch over and over again as you miss little things in them.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Digital Technology

In media there are many advantage of using digital technology when completing tasks.
The main disadvantage we came across whilst using 'Digital Technology' was the fact that we had insufficient equipment therefore rendering us with limited attributes for our piece of mediaorical work for example the battery pack on our filming device was insufficient, and at Sawston Village College (Our chosen place of Filming and Activities) We were unfortunate to have a lack of equipment which consiquently inadequetly lengthened our filming time.

While The main Advantage of our 'Digital Technology' was the fact that we, as a group had many advanced skills in the different technologies and were able to create (in the areas we had time to spend) very professional products and an awesome final piece.

Digital Technology - Advantages and Disadvantages

Digital technology is widely used in all media areas. It was important in the making of our thriller project and music video as it allowed us to explore different techniques and enabled us to be more creative with our products. It also gave us an insight into the way that professional industries use advanced technology to create their products.
An advantage of using digital technology is that it is useful to collect a wide range of in depth research by using the internet. During the planning of our music video and thriller project we used the search engine Google to do this. It was useful to help us find out any information we were unsure about, we could also search for images to put on our blog. However, Google also has some disadvantages. Some of the information can be misleading, inaccurate and out of date. It can also sometimes be very irrelevant to the subject being searched. We took this into account and read all information with caution trying not to believe everything we saw.
The programs we used during the production of our products such as final cut, photoshop and itunes were an important element in creating a proffesional looking product suitable for our specific genre. Final cut enabled us to edit our footage, adding transitions and effects to make it as good as we can. Photoshop was important in creating our digipack. It allowed us to add effects to our images and create interesting text. However a drawback of using these programmes is that it they are fairly complicated to use and can be very time consuming if you are unsure of how to use them.

Advantages & Disadvantages of using Digital technology.

Advantages.
  • Having a Group Blog on Blogger allowed all of the members of our group to access the blog from pretty much anywhere that had internet access, which meant that any of us could add to the blog at anytime, at college or at home. Other groups could also leave feedback.
  • Garageband; helped us to create our own soundtrack for our thrillers which avoided having to contact bands or record labels in order to have permission to use their tracks.
  • Myspace; allowed us to contact bands in order to seek permission to use their tracks in our music video, without the internet this would not have been possible as we would have to find their address and hope they received our letter personally. Whereas with the help of the internet we can send our message and hopefully receive a reply quicker.
  • We used Google alot when researching in both projects. Google was a good choice for us as a search engine as it helped us find websites, information, images and videos online from key words. Using Google images we found alot of our images for our Mise-en-scene and mood boards. Google videos helped us find existing videos or music videos which were either not on Youtube or we could not access through Youtube.
  • Youtube let us search existing video clips & music videos. Which helped in our research for both projects, we could find existing videos that shared similar ideas to which we had come up with i.e. when we first heard our song for our music video we all agreed that we had a similar idea in our head to the video to Lily Allen's LDN.
  • Our music video project required us to create a digipack for our single, which meant we had to create a cover for our CD and a poster for this which could be a tour poster, Photoshop let us edit images, add texts etc.
  • We used final cut alot in both our projects to create our final videos. However our skills & knowledge of final cut improved in our second year as we had learnt the basics in As doing our thriller and so we could explore different effects in A2 for our music video we also looked at sound alot more in our music video.


Disadvantages.
  • College equipment; we had access to college equipment and were allowed to take the college (video) cameras out for one weekend and once overnight, which meant we had to plan what we were going to do first, but things don't always go to plan in our case they didn't, we didn't have a backup plan and didn't get the right footage for our music video.
  • The problem with our college blog on blogger, was that everyone else could also access it which meant that in some groups cases people had posted innopropriate material on their blogs.
  • The problem with researching using the internet is that not all the infomation online is true and with sites like Wikipedia the content is added by anyone online.

-Did you experience any problems when working on your Thriller/Music Video?
Thriller. We didn't have many problems with our thriller project looking back at the video now we could have re-filmed a clip where a girl throws a doll into shot and then walks in, but that was about it.
Music Video. Our biggest problem with our music video was that our plan didn't turn out right and so our music video ended up as a completely different idea to our original idea.

Rose, rob

Some examples of the digital technology we used are: the internet (facebook, blogger, wikipedia, google, youtube,) garageband, finalcut, photoshop, camera equipment. In society today digital technolgy is extensively used. With the use of digital technology in our project we were able to research, develop and create a bettered final product although, using these digital tecnologies there are some drawbacks.

The advantages of facebook:
-social network that enables user to search for new and old friends
-enables user to talk to people in similar classes or groups.
-can be used to find love.

The disadvantages of facebook:
-peadophiles can find you
-can be used as a form of online bulling
- details about individuals can be false

The advantages of google:
-offers a wide range of information that can be found by searching
-saves time searching through many internet sites
-very efficient for research purposes

The disadvantages of google:
-information provided could be unreliable and unrelated
-information found could be plaguerised

The advantages of blogger:
- view others working progress whilst they are able to view ours and produce feedback and advice that will improve our product.
-blogger is a free service to the community
-provides an place for people to store ideas, opinions etc. for are production.

The disadvantages of blogger:
- you have to have a blogger account
-

Rob, Bryony, Jodie, Rose

Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using digital technology.
The main disadvantage of using digital technology is the reliability of the video camera and equipment. During the filming of our music video we encountered problems, such as the wireless battery pack for the camera was insufficient. We lost a days filming as there were no plugs to charge the battery or run the camera off electricity. This reflected negatively on the overall production of our work and was noticeable in our final product. Our filming was scheduled at an outdoor location and energy resources available.
Other problems we faced with the camera equipment were the tripod didn't secure to the dolly. This meant the shot movements were rigid and unlevel and radically disadvantaged our music video which criticized our other camera shots.
However, there were also many advantages of using digital technology. These included using modern software such as the iMac which utilizes Photoshop and Final Cut Express.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Digital Technology

In producing our music video and thriller projects we used google, youtube, wikipedia, amazon, blogger, facebook, digital camcorders, final cut, garage band, photoshop, illustrator.

The Advantages of Google

  • Convenient as it has access to all information for users to view
  • Readily accessible, no special hardware or software needed to access it
The Disadvantages
  • Not always relevant information appears
  • Can lead to false websites asking for payment for information
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Advantages of YouTube
  • Easily accessible content
  • Provides access to user made and official information and videos
  • A Way for users to learn new techniques
  • Very good for research
The Disadvantages of YouTube
  • Copyright material is very hard to upload to it, i.e. user made music videos
  • Restricted by YouTube and users on what can be put on the website
  • Some videos are false, as they say they are one thing when they are actually something different
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Advantages of Wikipedia
  • Readily accessible information
  • Easy access to any information you may need
The Disadvantages
  • Not always accurate as anyone can edit it
  • Not regulated to make sure information is correct, up-to-date, and complete
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Advantages of amazon
  • Easy access to information on actual products available, e.g. digipacks, music genres
  • Allows users to buy content at a decent price
The Disadvantages
  • Limited information about the products as they are focused on the selling
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Advantages of Blogger
  • Easily accessible user submitted content
  • Allows for users to voice their own opinions
  • Allows users to use it a place to store research and project timelines, etc.
The Disadvantages
  • Not restricted in terms of what can be posted
  • Not regulated for what comments are posted other than the blog owner
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Advantages of Facebook
  • Social Networking, allowing access to people, groups, pages, fan pages of who you know or want to find more information about
  • Easy access to talk to artists, celebrities and other users
The Disadvantages
  • Sign up to access the content
  • Some of the pages aren't official, fan made
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Advantages of Digital Camcoders
  • Allows easy recording of footage
  • Allows easy review of footage to see if it needs to be re-recorded
  • Easy to capture into a computer and be edited
The Disadvantages
  • Storage media has to be kept safe to prevent data loss
  • No lock to stop the footage being overwritten
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Advantages of Final Cut
  • Easy editing of footage
  • Powerful Software to make professional products with filter
  • Almost unrestricted in terms of what you can produce
The Disadvantages
  • Expensive to buy for normal users
  • Requires a bit of training to get used to how to use it
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Advantages of Garage Band
  • Create professional style music without the expense of making all of the music yourself or getting people to do it for you
  • Lots of sample music which can be used as well as edited to suit the users needs
The Disadvantages
  • Limited in terms of how to capture any actual music
  • Difficult to get used to initially and set up to work in the right way
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Advantages of Photoshop
  • Allows users to create and edit any photo file formats
  • Can create professional images
  • Easy to use interface for any users to use
  • Almost unrestricted design
The Disadvantages
  • Training needed to get full potential of editing software
  • Very Expenive to buy
  • May need plug-ins or other software to make an even better image, e.g. part of Adobe Creative Suite
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Advantages of Illustrator
  • Easy to use print or web graphic production software
  • Unrestricted Design Capabilites
  • Widely used so lots of tutorials from users to make new style of graphics
The Disadvantages
  • Expensive
  • Needs Training to become very good at using the software
  • May need other software in the creative suite range to make even better graphics, further expense

Disadavntages of digital technology

With our post-it presentation, we discussed how digital technologies had helped us progress and the advantages it gave us towards our final products. But there are disadvantages of these products also.
Firstly with the internet research in general its hard to find reliable sources. Wikipedia is, effectively, an open blog where anyone can publish fact-files on certain topics. This makes some of what you read inaccurate or unbelievable. This could potentially be a set back if you were researching certain genre areas, or locations. This is reflected in the rest of the internet, you have to make sure the sources you have collected form are accurate and true.
Programs like photo-shop could also be a set back, because you have to put a lot of reliance into it for you ancillary tasks. In our case, none of us could grasp any more than the basics with it, so it made our final product unattractive, and lacking individuality.
Other programs like slide share and twitter, that we used to help add to the blog, requires a sign up to use. This could be argued a disadvantage as it requires time, and possibly spam mail from that site. When using these sites, reaching a final product sometimes took too long for us to use, so alternative sites and products had to be found, which was all very time consuming.

Dicuss the advantages and diadvantages of using digital technology...

Advantages:

  • It made the film look more professonal - using modern and hi-tech programs and equipment.
  • It gave us the chance to experience how to make a really great music video/thriller - through Final Cut etc...
  • It let us research really well and get a much more clearer and compare ideas - Through YouTube and Google we saw other videos and ideas.
  • We also could keep our ideas and progress up to date really well by using Blogger.
  • We could also listen and create and well done piece of music or get a better idea of the piece by using iTunes and Garage Band.

Disadvantages:

  • Though it made the video look more professional, i feel that we were let down by how much we didn't know and how much more we could of learnt.
  • Using some of the programs to research, YouTube, Wikipedia and iTunes it could of been bias because they are through own opinion, not all fact.
  • Blogger didn't always work as it would be open to others, risk of things being messed about with and canceled and lost.
  • The cameras are the not the most expensive so it did not give the greatest quality.

Although we had all the great Digital Technologies it does not mean that we will have the best film as it completely depends on the groups knowledge and professionalism. So if you do not know how to use a certain program really well then it would suffer more than the rest.

Jon, Jack, Jack N Post-It Animation

Here is our finished post-it animation


Wednesday 10 February 2010

Planning & Reseach Essay Plan.

How have the Advantages & Disadvantages of Planning & Research effected your 2 Products (AS/A2).

Introduction.
-Introduce the question and the two products.

Paragraph 1 - Advantages.
-We had a longer period of time to Plan our A2 project than for our AS project, which meant that we could go into more detail in our planning and in depth research.
-We learnt new Theories to help us to plan our video and analyze existing videos for A2 (Goodwin's Points, Auteur theory, etc.).

Paragraph 2 - Disadvantages.
-Despite all the planning we for our A2 Music Video our plan fell through as a member of our cast was unavailable and they were the main character in our plan, Unlike our AS Thriller Project where we had a plan and stuck to it right the way through.

Conclusion.
-Improvement from AS to A2.

Planning and Research Essay Plan

How have the advantages and disadvantages ofplanning and research effected your two products (As/A2)

Introduction= What we wanted to do with our products, how we wanted the audience to read it

Main body = music video

Advantages=

  • Effective "sin city" effect
  • Kept to genre characteristics well
  • Good pitch
  • Researched into stages we were unsure off to help us
  • Good, helpful feedback which helped improve our footage
  • Storyboard, call sheets which we could refer to when filming
Disadvantages=

  • Didn't have a back up plan
  • Members of group failed to turn up when filming
  • Some lip syncing was out of place
  • Had repeated footage which had to be replaced so more filming needed
  • Commentary had more talking to certain members of the group and not shared out evenly
Conclusion= What we thought overall, what we liked most/least, overall final video, feedback, improvements- what we would do if we had more time etc,

Thriller=

Advantages=
  • Good research into genre, plot setting etc

Disadvantages=
  • Didn't have a great setting but did our best with what we had.

Planning and Research - Essay Plan

How have the advantages and disadvantages of planning and research affected your two products? (AS/A2)

With our first product, we were a bit stumped at the start, we had never done this before.

Lack of innovative ideas?

Less knowledge of genre. Lack of understanding of what to do.

Passion for media driven us to complete the work.

Passion has had a negative effect could have rushed us to complete, lack of experience of knowing how long something would take.

We had to do a lot of research which given less time to film.

Lack of experience on how to plan everything.

We are now better at organising. Common problems can still occur.

Lack of budget can restrict the capabilities available for our aspirations.

Our experience makes us able of quickly doing shots and knowing what to do in advance to use the best possible use of time. Giving us extra time to do other work.

Location was always a problem with both years. Restriction on where we could go.

Costumes and make-up were both restricted on both years due to a limit of clothing available and make up as well.

When some one was ill, it could hold back parts of the work. Especially if the actors or one of them were ill.

Planning and Research Essay Plan

Structure:
Introduction - Introduction the two projects (Thriller and Music Video) and mention the areas covered in planning and research.
Paragraph 1 - List the advantages in AS
Paragraph 2 - List the advantages in A2
Paragraph 3 - List the disadvantages in AS
Paragraph 4 - List the disadvantages in A2
Conclusion - Summarize and conclude the points made above

ADVANTAGES
- Good location
- music planning led to a good soundtrack
- Knew all thriller conventions
- Blog use made idea sharing easier

DISADVANTAGES
- Short of planning time
- Hard location for some people to get to

planning and research essay plan

Paragraph 1 - Thriller
Planning
ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES
- Good location - Short of planning time
- music planning led to a good soundtrack - Hard location for some people to get to
- Knew all thriller conventions
- Blog use made idea sharing easier
Research
- A lot of knowledge on thrillers - Some props we hadn't got the budget for
- Music track research gave us a lot of ideas

Paragraph 2 - Music Video
Planning
ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES
- Call sheet and location research - location similar to previous project
- Pitch, we got feedback to help us advance - There were conditions to the hire
- Contacted expertise for their opinions and sheet.
permission - Some things didn't go to plan like
- Location report making things more thorough the people dancing in town.
Research
- Goodwins points made us able to mae a more - To much research on digi-pack made us
efficient video. loose time and make ineffective result.
- Through watching other videos we knew what
factors to include