Question 5

What technology did you use in making your film?

Research

In the research we started by using Microsoft Word to create a questionnaire, and then graphs to show our results. This helped us to be able to see what our target audience expected, and the graphs made it a clear and easy way for us to be able to see the results. The audience questionnaire is an important part of this project as we wouldn't have been able to be sure we were including the right things if we didn't know what an audience would expect, the questionnaire helps us to see specifically what out target audience wants and helped with some of the decisions when making the final opening.

We used the internet frequently during the research part of this project. We often used websites such as wikipedia, google, youtube and others similar to this. We used it to look up for information and examples of the genre. We also used the internet to get ideas from other openings and to look at the conventions of a Supernatural horror. It impacted our project greatly by giving us ideas and evidence of different aspects of the Supernatural.

Planning

In the planning stage of our project we used Celtx in order to create a storyboard and a script. This allowed us to use the specific layout for the storyboard and the script. This impacted our project by allowing us to get a professional look for our research, and to make it clear and precise for us to allow us to change and alter things easily. The script allowed us to add extra information such as shots and information about the characters.

Along with this we used digital cameras in order to take photos of the different shots we would use in our opening. This allowed us to get a visual example of what our opening may look like, this can also allow us to see what parts might not work which would allow us to easily change then when we are creating the final production.

We frequently used scanners during the planning stage of this project as we would scan in work that we had written on paper such as the mind maps and other information like this. Scanners impacted our planning stage by allowing us to update our blogs with other information that we have been looking at during the planning of our opening.

We used the scanners to scan our storyboards and our scripts after we had made notes on them.
















We also used scanners to scan in mind-maps and sheets which contained information such as audience feedback. 


It is important that we have this information scanned on to a computer so we can update our blogs with information that has changed our final coursework project.








Production

We used digital cameras during the production stage, in order to film the opening to our trailer, along with the camera we also used a tripod. We started by filming the title image and the later filmed the parts with the characters. We filmed from many different shots in order to get a range of views so that we could decide which was the best when we edited it together. The camera had a large impact as it is a vital piece of technology that was needed in order to make the opening. 

During the production stage the main technology that we used was iMovie, as it was the base of where we created our opening. We used the transitions, the titles and the sounds from iMovie. We also changed the colour of the film in iMovie to show the different cameras and different perspectives; also to create a scarier mood. This technology had the biggest impact during the production stage as we wouldn't have been able to create our opening without it. It has allowed me personally to develop skills in being able to spot when things work and when they don't and then use the different aspects of iMovie to change it. It has also allowed me to experiment with different styles of editing.

We used Zamzar and Youtube in order to convert files in to either mp3 files to use for sound effects or mov files to use. We converted the Film4 logo to mov so that we could have that at the beginning of our opening, this has a more professional look as all films have these titles in. We converted two different Youtube videos to sound files so that we could use them for sound effects throughout the opening to create a scary and eerie mood and tone to the film.

Throughout all of the stages of creating our opening, we used Blogger as a place to present our work. For each stage and each different task we uploaded a blog post on to Blogger to present it in order to show our stages and to make it clear what we have done throughout the project. It allowed us to bring the three stages (research, planning and production) together and present it in a clear and formal manner. It allowed us to have a visual portfolio in which we could get feedback on to through comments on the posts. It impacted our whole project by allowing us an easy and manageable way to keep track of our progress and to easily see what we should've done.