TW - Evaluation Question 6

What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process Of Constructing The Product?

We have used many technologies in constructing our product, whether it be social networking sites for feedback, or audio recorders for voiceovers and podcasts.

The technologies we used are as follows: IMDB (film search site), Facebook (social networking site), digital video camcorder, digital audio recorder, livetype, keyboard, imovie, scanner, audio converters, email, mobile phones and USB sticks.

The first technology we used was IMDB, a movie database website. We used this for statistics and production information about films we deconstructed in our research and planning. This helped us give evidence that the slasher films we chose to deconstruct were in fact successful, with the website giving us valuable statistics about how much each film grossed, in more than one country, and also it's box office totals, again from more than one country. In response to what I have learnt about this particular technology, I have learnt where to access up-to-date information about just about any film made, and also about upcoming productions. I have also learnt how to access the website, and find the required information, such as profits produced. This website also gave synopsis' of the films, so we could compare these and gain knowledge on common character usage and what slasher plots consisted of ( common conventions used in slashers) to gain a better understanding of the genre we were working in.

Screenshot of IMDB.com

A scanner was required so we could put our completed storyboards and call sheet on our blogs, so I have learnt how to use the scanner and then how to get the scanned info from the computer onto the blog, a process I have never had to perform until now. Ifthe scanner was not available for

use, I would have had to take a picture on my phone, and upload to Facebook, before copying the image into a blog post,  which would have taken much longer than simply scanning the document then inserting the image into the blog post.

Scanned Image Of Our Storyboard

Screen-shot of audience feedback obtained from www.facebook.com

Another technology we used is the social networking site, Facebook. This allowed us to post our rough cuts and company idents, in order for our friends to give feedback. Without this site it would have made it a lot more difficult for us to gain feedback as significantly less people would have viewed our video and therefore we wouldn't have obtained as much feedback.





The digital audio recorder and video recorders we used helped us significantly because they enabled us to record pod casts and our whole production respectively. Without these we wouldn't have been able to make our media product, or analysed it because there would have been almost no other way to create the production the high quality we did. I have learnt how to operate both these products, and also how to plug them into a computer safely so the work we had done could be imported and edited before becoming our production. The video recorder also came with a tripod, which whilst filming I learnt how to operate in order to get the desired camera shots for our film.

E-mail was used so we could contact our group members, and give relevant information and documents, whilst we used USB sticks so we could keep important files and upload them from home. Mobile phones were used to communicate with group members and also we needed to use one as a prop in the film, meaning it was key to our production. Without all these we would have not been able to communicate with our group, and most importantly, we would have not been able to transport and keep files from the school environment to home so we could upload files such as our rough cuts onto youtube and then to the blog. This would have caused problems such as the fact we would not have been able to obtain audience feedback as facebook is restricted in school for use.

We learnt how to use livetype and imovie to enable us to produce our company identification and our finished cut, and without these the quality of both products would have been a lot worse. livetype enabled us to complete an ident from scratch with a background, soundtrack and the company name on it, with the possibility of a logo if needed. Imovie enabled us to cut each clip to the desired length, piece them together to make the film, add soundtrack and also sound effects if needed. Without these our film would basically not exist therefore they were the most significant pieces of technology we used.

Finally, we used a keyboard to produce our soundtrack, as we wanted to recreate a soundtrack similar to John Carpenter's 'Halloween' so using the keyboard was necessary ton get the same eerie feel to the scene that the 'Halloween' soundtrack creates. Without the keyboard we would have had to rely on the soundtracks already created on imovie, and we believed this would take away the originality of the soundtrack to make our film seem completely different to others.