We used a whole range of different technologies during the production and research for this project, without which the task would have been very much harder, if not impossible - certainly within the time available.
During the research and planning we used the internet (primarily using Google) a lot to review examples of trailers, posters and film magazine covers, so as to understand what the key conventions are and what make them work well. Google is a fantastic tool for carrying out research. It is amazing what you can find out there on the world wide web. Google images alone provided a whole range of movie posters for us to look at.
I also used a website called Box which allows free storage of files where I can store up to a gigabyte worth for anyone to access in the world. I did not know about the box website before this campaign and it could come in very useful in future situations.
We used Microsoft Word to take notes on our findings from our research and to create our plans for the progress of the project. Microsoft Word is the most common word processor application used and has become a part of almost all our lives. It allows one to write, edit and lay our work very quickly - although it does still have some annoying quirks when it tries to auto-format stuff you don't want formatted. We also used Microsoft Word to create our questionnaire.
We used Microsoft Excel to capture the results of the questionnaire and to analyse them, create charts etc. Excel is a great tool for this. It has some really powerful data analysis tools, although to be truthful we didn't really scratch the surface of what it can do. It also has some great charting tools, which make it really easy to take some numbers, tables etc. and convert them into a good looking chart which displays the numbers as an image. This is important as some people find images (charts) a much better way of gaining an understanding of what the numbers really mean and imply.
During the production of the poster and magazine camera we used a digital Kodak stills camera to take the primary image used as the basis for the two artworks. We then downloaded the pictures onto an Apple Macintosh computer and used iPhoto to view them and pick the one we wanted to use.
We used Adobe Photoshop to work on the image, to clean it up and create the core image. We could have used Adobe InDesign to lay out the poster and cover but we decided to stay within Adobe Photoshop, especially as we were working on just single page documents. We are all more comfortable working with Photoshop and using the layers really helps with putting the documents together, especially when you are combining text and images. Photoshop is a really amazing piece of software and it allows anyone to access exactly the same tools that the professionals use. Frankly you could do almost anything you could want to do with a still image or a single page document. I love it.
To film the trailer we used a Sony Digital video camera with a microphone attached. We used a tripod so as to keep the camera steady. The camera was very simple to use and we used all the automatic features (focus, aperture, etc.) because we do not have the expertise to use the manual settings. The camera did not produce the high quality footage that a professional crew would be used to, but considering our low level of expertise it was probably perfect for us.
After filming we uploaded all the footage (the rushes) to the Macintosh computer and reviewed it in iMovie. We edited the whole trailer in iMovie. We imported still images for the start and endframes and music for the backing sound track (which we found on a royalty free music site). iMovie is a great application for us. It does not have all the high functionality of applications like Final Cut Pro, but it is much simpler to use and has more than enough for our needs. We needed something that would allow us to put something together quickly at reasonable quality and iMovie was perfect for that. I also used iMovie to record a video answer to a question on my blog.
Furthermore, for the evaluation process I created this blog using Blogger.com as you can see. I also used a USB microphone to upload an audio file to the blog. Blogger.com is a great site to use to create a blog. It is pretty straightforward to use if you just want the basics. Some things were a little trickier like embedding a YouTube movie and providing a link to a word document (in the end I had to create the document as a GoogleDoc and then link to that), but overall it was a really brilliant tool for the job.
We used Microsoft Word to take notes on our findings from our research and to create our plans for the progress of the project. Microsoft Word is the most common word processor application used and has become a part of almost all our lives. It allows one to write, edit and lay our work very quickly - although it does still have some annoying quirks when it tries to auto-format stuff you don't want formatted. We also used Microsoft Word to create our questionnaire.
We used Microsoft Excel to capture the results of the questionnaire and to analyse them, create charts etc. Excel is a great tool for this. It has some really powerful data analysis tools, although to be truthful we didn't really scratch the surface of what it can do. It also has some great charting tools, which make it really easy to take some numbers, tables etc. and convert them into a good looking chart which displays the numbers as an image. This is important as some people find images (charts) a much better way of gaining an understanding of what the numbers really mean and imply.
During the production of the poster and magazine camera we used a digital Kodak stills camera to take the primary image used as the basis for the two artworks. We then downloaded the pictures onto an Apple Macintosh computer and used iPhoto to view them and pick the one we wanted to use.
We used Adobe Photoshop to work on the image, to clean it up and create the core image. We could have used Adobe InDesign to lay out the poster and cover but we decided to stay within Adobe Photoshop, especially as we were working on just single page documents. We are all more comfortable working with Photoshop and using the layers really helps with putting the documents together, especially when you are combining text and images. Photoshop is a really amazing piece of software and it allows anyone to access exactly the same tools that the professionals use. Frankly you could do almost anything you could want to do with a still image or a single page document. I love it.
To film the trailer we used a Sony Digital video camera with a microphone attached. We used a tripod so as to keep the camera steady. The camera was very simple to use and we used all the automatic features (focus, aperture, etc.) because we do not have the expertise to use the manual settings. The camera did not produce the high quality footage that a professional crew would be used to, but considering our low level of expertise it was probably perfect for us.
After filming we uploaded all the footage (the rushes) to the Macintosh computer and reviewed it in iMovie. We edited the whole trailer in iMovie. We imported still images for the start and endframes and music for the backing sound track (which we found on a royalty free music site). iMovie is a great application for us. It does not have all the high functionality of applications like Final Cut Pro, but it is much simpler to use and has more than enough for our needs. We needed something that would allow us to put something together quickly at reasonable quality and iMovie was perfect for that. I also used iMovie to record a video answer to a question on my blog.
Furthermore, for the evaluation process I created this blog using Blogger.com as you can see. I also used a USB microphone to upload an audio file to the blog. Blogger.com is a great site to use to create a blog. It is pretty straightforward to use if you just want the basics. Some things were a little trickier like embedding a YouTube movie and providing a link to a word document (in the end I had to create the document as a GoogleDoc and then link to that), but overall it was a really brilliant tool for the job.
We also created a Facebook Group for sharing our ideas and work with others, which helped with audience feedback. The very fact that we could show people a trailer, a poster and a magazine cover on a site demonstrates how all the media are so rapidly converging.
At the end of the process I can safely say that I have learnt a lot about the use of new media technologies and new media overall. One major factor for me is that less than 5 or 6 years ago it would not have been possible to undertake a project like this with the time and budget constraints we had and the lack of much previous experience.
The technologies we used were all readily available and affordable and yet in most instances were either the same as those used by professionals or not far short of it. The actual production processes have become much more straightforward due to the use of digital tools. 10 years ago the idea of walking around with a 60 second trailer master edit on a thing that fits in your pocket (my USB drive) and cost £15 would have seemed almost like science fiction.
All the software used was on one computer - the Mac, so it was easy to incorporate the same elements in the multiple media we produced. There was no scanning or file format conversions needed, it all just worked together so neatly.
Of course, these advances in technology are something my generation tends to take for granted, we have grown up with them after all - we all our comfortable with watching a movie on TV, DVD, a computer, a Playstation, an iPhone, a whatever comes next. We are saturated with imagery and information like never before but are so conversant with all the media types and so unconcerned with the specific channel being used that we forget that for many they are still considered very separate. Of course we don't use them exactly the same and you can't create for them all in exactly the same way but you can re-purpose so readily that you can make a multi-media campaign very much more readily than was possible in the past - despite there being so many more media.
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