Evaluation Question 6

What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this produc

t?

Hardware: we used a digital SLR camera to do our filming. The first day of our filming we had a bit of problem using a professional camera as none of us was fully aware of its functions and features. There were a variety of settings that could adjust the lighting and the clarity of the picture. It had to be set to auto in order for it to work with the lighting and suit the settings. When we started filming we weren’t aware of the tripod which we came to realise about later. The shots that we did without a tripod, holding the camera in hand were very wobbly and not clear. This wasn’t visible on the camera itself but when we watched it on computer we realised that it hadn’t come out that well. However, when we filmed with a tripod it made the videos more stable and helped us to get clearer shots. During this process, I learned the importance of a tripod and how it makes the shooting easy and handy. The camera we used had a much better quality of shots then when we used an IPad. The quality was not as clearer and it had no feature to fix the lighting of th shot. The IPad was the mini step towards the using a professional camera. During the process of filming i also learned how to use a tripod, as when we started our filming we were filming everything by holding the camera in our hands. However, after learning about the tripod we used it to film which helped us get more stable and clear shots as compared to the shots we had dont without using the tripod. I was succesfully able to use a tripod for our filming.

Previously, for our preliminary task I used IMovie for editing on the IPad which had very less features compared to the windows movie maker that we used for our final product. At first, we faced some problems with the editing as we didn’t know many features that were there to use. Many of the transitions in the movie maker looked faked when we used them on our product however, I realised that editing was very time consuming and had to be done with full concentration. Th vido overall was good but i think it would have worked better for us if we edited on the macs instead of movie maker as the features which are provided on macs are not there on movie maker. Also, IMovie has more transitions that can be put in between to make the video look more effective.

I used many different internet sites such as: blogger, Prezi, YouTube. I was familiar with YouTube but I had never uploaded videos on it which was a new experience for me but it was not as much challenging. Before this I had never used blogger before. It was a totally new website to me and it was at first hard to get on board with it because of the things that couldn’t happen on blogger. I had to write everything on word and then copy paste it. I had also never used prezi before which was a new experince for me. Prezi has its own way of making things look more efective and attractive. Its similar to what we do on powerpoint but the layout is what stands out. Overall, the sites and editors that i used taught a few new things and some of which helped me to gain more knowldge about its use.

Overall, I learnt a lot about technologies in the process of constructing our final product. It was challenging at first but I found a way around it. I gained a bit more knowledge on how to use IMovie on apple and how to add different features to it. In terms of blogger, I learnt how to create your own blog and publish things to it. Whenever, I use all these technologies next it would be a lot more easier and smoother than it was the first time. After using all thse products and website to make our media product as effective i came to learn that its not an easy task to make a film as it has many before and after processes that need to be kept in mind while thinking to start filming. The little aspects of technology can effect the media product emmensly.

Evaluation Question 4 and 5

Evaluation Question 3

 

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our thriller film the social groups that we focused on were gender, age, sex, and ethnicity. The main protagonist in our film is a female which is less often in films in general as females are presented as the weaker sex. They are damsel in distress who needs to be saved by a male character in a movie. Therefore, we experimented with gender roles by having a main female protagonist, who is a victim as well as her own saviour. She doesn’t need a male character to come save her day as she herself does the job and has power of her own role.

During my research I ascertained that mainstream media products like Donnie Darko and seven which are action-thrillers have a male dominant character. However, other films like the hunger games and the boy next door the main character is the female and they aren’t portrayed as weaklings. Similarly, for our thriller films we conform to the stereotype of thriller films. We wanted to go against the norms and create something that the audience wouldnt normally see in a thriller. We decided to use a female main character as i believe it will also help the female audience of our film to relate to it more. This challenges the idea of always seeing a male protagonist in the film. Women usuallty in films are shown as damsel in distress and are treated as sex obejects by men. They are always in the background being the lead man's love ineterest, there costumers are always revealing short dresses or bikini to make them look more appealing to the leading man.

The character in our piece is opposite of that is not in backgroud opposite a lead man. She is the lead herself however she still does conform to some extent because of her victimised state. Another main aspect of challenging social groups is that the main character Mary is Asian which is not what we usually expect to see in films. Asian people are usually presented as baddie's and they are in the background. They are always mocked and made fun of in films for example in the tv series The big bang theory the character of Raj is always made fun of, although he is one of the main characters he still joked with and bullied by his other mates. Even though the main character of our piece is an Asian she hasnt got the typical asian accent and subverts the stereotype as she was born and rasied in the UK which allows her to get the proper british accent and this applies to both of our main characters.

The female character in our thriller film is portrayed in a positive light and not as the bad person. Similarly, the second character of Maya her friend is also portrayed as a friendly person. As our film features teenagers this might to some extent limit our target audience as the adults critics might argue that the content is not what an adult might prefer to see and it might be boring for them. Because the main characters our teenagers this allows us to attract teenagers above the age of 15. Our female character is similar to that of Mary Rose who represents power and control over her own character throughout the film.

Evaluation Question 1

Editting day 1-3

The day we started our editing it was hard to get a grip on the macs as the USB we had our clips on was not working on them. We decided to edit on the windows movie maker as it was easier to get hold on it. However, after creating our rough cut we realised that windows movie maker didnt have a good quality and there were few glitches which we were not able to take out on the movie maker.
We were successful in making our opening through windows movie maker but it didnt come out to be as good. I believe it would have been better if we did it on macs and i movies has many different features which would have made our piece look good.

Filming day 3

On this day we nearly finished everything, we tried to take as many different types of shots as possible so when we blend them in together it gives a more professional look. However, we had problems with some shots as it was hard to decide what type of shots we needed and wanted to add to create some more effect. We had problems with shooting Raima's bit where she had to do the dialogure delivery as she is not professional and it took time for her to come in form. Overall, on this day we nearly finished everything and it was done fluently. Obviously there were some problems but we tackled them and came out with good shots.