In order to create the whole project I needed a format where I could keep everything up to date, structure my research and planning and a central point which I could refer to for taking notes and showing the journey I have taken from start to finish. It was evident that
Blogger was the most effective way forward as it is simple to use with a easy navigation bar that helps you get around the site, quickly and effectively. It was also advantageous to use Blogger as I had used it for my AS Foundation Portfolio so I was familiar with the site and I already knew how to make a detailed blog on it. Using it throughout the year I would say that it has developed my writing skills which is key in Media in order to be successful. I have also been able to add links, images and videos into my posts in order to make them more visually effective and fun to look through instead of too much text which can be very time consuming and dull to read.
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| Internet Explorer Logo |
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| The Blogger Logo |
Furthermore the Internet has been a vital tool throughout my Portfolio, without it I would not have been able to complete anything or upload pieces of work onto my blog. In order to complete my Blog, I have had to use a variety of different sites:
Google
On the search engine
Google I have been able to search for images of film posters, magazine covers for inspiration on how to model my magazine review and to stick to the conventions of what my ancillary tasks should follow on each of these. I have also been able to research studio ident's such as "twisted pictures" which often produce films from the horror and psychological thriller genre, which has inspired me to create my ident for my film which fits in with these genres. Furthermore I have been able to gather images from Google Maps to try and find specific locations for our film to take place as we needed a quiet area for the car scene, where Maps was particularly helpful in finding a road like this within the schools vicinity.
YouTube
I used
YouTube to view trailers such as "The Dark Knight Rises" and short films such as the "Sandman" and "Dipper" to view what the typical conventions were, this gave me an insight of what I needed to do in order to make a successful short film and "The Dark Knight Rises" gave me particular inspiration as it is a thriller and is an effective way of advertising an upcoming blockbuster film. This helped me when I decided to advertise my short film through the use of a film poster as it had to be eye-catching and effective at advertising. Another use of YouTube that me and Stephen found was uploading our short film and our interview which talks about the short film onto the site, this was effective advertising as it got people to watch them and also generated discussion which gained feedback, which gave us another way of seeing how good our film was.
DaFont
DaFont was key for me in creating the text for the title on my poster, this was due to it being unique and eye-catching as I could not have created the same effect with the fonts on Microsoft Office, DaFont is good as it brought my poster to life with the effective text as it was capable of making it look creepy and mysterious at the same time, this was the look I wanted as it represented my film perfectly and it stuck to the conventions of a typical poster for a film.
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| DaFont logo |
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Effective text as it looks eerie and sets the tone that the film will follow.
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Other Computer Programmes:
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash helped us put together our studio ident and helped us to create a number of drafts (such as the one above) before finalising my piece that was used at the start and end of our short film, we used it as it was helpful at creating a variety of designs and easy to mess around with small things to make adjustments, and change colour schemes to come up with new and interesting designs that would represent our short film.
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Adobe Flash logo
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| Final studio ident created with the help of Flash. |
Microsoft Paint
Paint was key in editing most things when I needed to print screen and make screenshots out of my film to upload my progress onto the blog and was also key at cropping unwanted things off the print screen or making it look more professional, this came in handy when I had to make my poster and film review as I could crop out unwanted pieces and only use the good quality parts of the image if I wanted.
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| Edited in paint so it could be used as an image. |
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Sides of the screen have been edited out, gives an insight into the film but also Elements (editing package).
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| Microsoft Paint logo |
Adobe Premier Elements
Elements was the editing package that we used which was based on the school computers and allowed us to merge all our shots together and putting in sound, text and edits when we pleased throughout our film, it was a professional programme which worked efficiently in terms of making it look like a short film, however, at times it was a little slow and would sometimes crash completely for a few minutes which would slow our work rate at times.
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Adobe Premier Elements logo
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Other media tools we used:
Video Recorders and Camera
We used a Nikon Coolpix camera to capture all our images that we wanted such as for our ancillary products, it was a highly professional camera which never blurred and had flash auto, which meant that when a photo was taken, the camera itself would decide whether or not the flash needed to be used. It had optical zoom and an 8 mega pixel lens which allowed clarity across our pictures.
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| This is the camera we used |
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| These were practice shots I used before taking ancillary photos in order to check whether the quality was of a standard that would be found on a film poster |
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| Posing was necessary as I needed to see what it would be like in that kind of scenario, I decided that the cameras quality was of a high standard and was perfect for my film poster. |
The video recorder we used for the filming process of our short film was the JVC Everio which was an excellent camera as it was really clear and the sound quality was pretty good with it too, one criticism of it would be that the battery life was quite short and this was problematic as if we were filming away from school we would sometimes have to rush and whilst rushing as we did not have a charger, we may have not done some scenes up to the best standard. However, it is not noticeable whilst watching the film that any shots were rushed and our film still looks a high standard.
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| This was the tripod that attached to the video recorder |
For one scene where the battery died on the camera we decided to use my iPhone 4S camera as it was High Definition quality with an 8 mega pixel camera lens, this was effective as it was not noticeable we had changes camera and the sound quality was still the same, and it was equally as easy to upload to Elements from iPhone as it was from the JVC to elements, through using USB leads.
Other Media Technologies Used:
Kingston Memory stick
The memory stick I used was effective and it functioned fast, it was 1GB but was enough memory for me to store all my A2 Media on and my other subjects.
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| A print screen of the opening of my memory stick |
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| A print screen of inside the folder "Film". |
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| The memory stick I used. |
Finally I used Microsoft Office programmes: Microsoft Word and Microsoft Publisher which allowed me to edit images and screenshots, so I could produce effective ancillary's that complimented my film and also a strong evaluation of my portfolio as I could collect stills from the film and planning of ancillary's and then discuss them in detail.
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| Microsoft Publisher logo |
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| Microsoft Word logo |
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