The Script:
Research and
Planning:
An essential piece of media
technology to my A2 product was Blogger. On the site, I am easily able to
upload my following consciousness, as a type of online diary. As my 45+ Blog
posts show, I kept up to date on presenting where in my creative journey I was,
and the progress I was making throughout the Pre and Post production stages. As
I would have an idea or influence come to me, I can easily embed and upload
where my ideas are currently taking my planning. In allowing my Blog to be open
to fellow students and tutors, in the early stages of Construction for my
Product; this allowed for easier access to critic and offer suggestions to how
my Product can be improved – Thus the idea for it to be in Black and White was
a student suggestion. Word, Excel and PowerPoint were all useful to creating
risk assessments, questionnaires and my initial pitch for the product. It was
through this initial pitch that the idea to change the documentary into a
short, as this was favoured through both questionnaires and Blog criticism.
Essay writing was also essential to formulating cohesive ideas and even the
screenplay for the short film, to which I used Grammarly to offer great
improvements on my punctuation and grammar in these essays. Bluetooth and
Airdrop were very helpful tools to use, especially between Apple product users
as this allowed for much easier communication with my fellow actor, locations
Rep., also sending files and samples to my fellow actor for an additional
opinion. Communication was key through the planning stages as the Garage in
which we shot in would not have been so easily cleared and cleaned out had it
not been for communication between myself and the owners of the lot. Of course
the internet was useful for gathering information, specifics on actually what
qualifies as a “short film”, to which I used the BBFC site to inform me on
this. I was very adamant to establish exactly what a “Short Film” was as this
allowed me to experiment and develop my understanding of mixing-genres, to
which is reflected very much so throughout my entire research stage and
actually shown through my construction stage. The internet was very useful also
in being able to source props, sound effects and tutorials on how I would later
edit my movie on to a higher standard of editing skill.
Construction:
The Sony HD camera was used
for all of the primary shooting stage and additional reshoots that needed to be
made. I opted for this particular camera rather than the more advanced JVC
because of the simple fact I was very proficient with it, thus saving time to
be more creative and get into actually using the technologies for creating my
film. During the construction process, Adobe Premiere Pro on the iMac was used
to upload footage, edit and export my product to Blogger. As referenced before,
the internet was very helpful at offering tutorials on how to edit in Premiere
Pro and later on in Evaluation – how to operate the green screen and
teleprompter. Across all of my Print product photos I used a Fuji X-E1 to take
the still photos. I favoured this camera over the Sony HD camera as not only
did I want to convey the combination between my main product and ancillary
products, I wanted to ensure that my print products were of sufficient quality
to which they could be graded upon. In taking influence from Trent Reznor and
Artticus Ross, I wanted to convey some life through the score of my short film,
which led me to downloading LMMS and creating my own score. Again using video
tutorials I created my own score, at the same time as editing pieces of my
short, to which I believe allows these two elements within the film to speak to
each other. The music is able to actively respond to new plot points and
information.
Evaluation:
Youtube was an essential
piece of technology through the evaluation stages. In being set a deadline for
the end of post-production, this simulates real life deadlines for release for
any kind of movie. In publishing my product to the Media YouTube channel, this
provides the same feeling of distributing my short film to the mass audience
that is the internet.Prezi offers a service of being able to show a visually
pleasing progression of my A2 product, using the flow of Prezi to demonstrate
that journey. In having used Prezi last year for my evaluation questions, it
was not a hard decisions to want to use it again because of its simplicity and
intrigue as the slide glides from one slide to another. For one of the
evaluation question I made a green screen director's commentary where I spoke
about one of the evaluation questions in detail. I decided to use this method
as in my AS I choose not to use it for my evaluation questions, instead
deciding it would further suit my progress over the two years if I opted to do
it in A2. I decided to use particular media technology as not only is it
suitable for a director to discuss the behind the scenes of their movie in the
bonus features, but it also acts as a true self-reflection.
