Question 4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

What Is New Media?

New media is the industry term for the different electronic forms of communication that have been made readily available for everyone to use through the aid of computer technology. This has really benefited the industry as well as the individuals who start out within the schools and colleges such as myself. This is greatly due to the fact that using the internet and technology proves cheaper and more time efficient then the older more paper based forms and this has cut the time it takes to complete equivalent computer based tasks. moreover the internet has allowed small time producers to readily distribute their work on the internet from the touch of a button and this has seen the production and distribution of short films go through the roof. confidence plays a big role within this industry and now that a movie can be filmed, edited and then uploaded to the internet from one room and one person has contributed to the increase in "young talent spouting" up more and more as technology develops and improves. 


In a society where we live our life around electronic systems and gadgets and where even today’s newspapers are being replaced with online e-reading it would be a good idea to talk about all the technologies I use and how they have helped me to get to where I am with my media studies today.


My montage of images of all the new technology I have used over the last 2 years of me A-level media course:

1. Youtube: www.youtube.com This website has been one of the most useful and helpful website to me out of the many that I use daily and over the last five years I have visited it daily, looking for videos ranging from instruction on how to remove the front bumper of my VW golf to pure comedy entertainment. Moreover it had been the foundation to my media studies and has provided me with countless examples of short films and has also allowed me to upload any video evidence that I produce in conjunction with my studies such as the lighting workshops and audience feedback comments, as well as allowing me to upload my final pieces of film for the public to view. Youtube also provides video comments and up to a five star rating system as well allowing private messages to be sent to individual video hosts, which I have made full use of. This feature has really helped me as I have contacted many different members asking questions about elements of certain videos.

2. USB Drives: I have found USB drives extremely useful throughout my media course, as transferring work from school computers to the computer at home has been made very easy with the use of the USB stick. Moreover, when we are working in our production group, the use of the USB stick has really made sharing work and transferring documents such as the production day photos very quick and hassle free, as I experienced when attempting to email over 250 megabits worth of photos to Nicola Carlisle who is the production design manager in our group. I had tried to send them but it was going to take an hour or so but transferring them through the use of the memory stick took 5 minutes and this proved a lot more efficient and less time consuming. I also use the USB drive as a file and document back up, which has proven very effective as I have deleted or “lost” my work on a few occasions and the USB has ensured I still had a copy. I have started to back my USB work up weekly, which means that every week I copy all my school document folders onto the usb which then ensures if I lost everything, I would only ever be one week behind.

3. Hotmail Account: This website has also made transferring work from computer to computer easier as it allows you to send work to your on email address, thus logging onto a different computer and downloading the work. This feature has really helped me to transfer documents and is a perfect example of new media. The hotmail account is also a way of emailing and contacting people, such as other directors and producers of short film. I have not made great use of the website other then to send work to myself and my piers, mainly due to the fact that other websites are proving more efficient as well as the USB taking over the need to send work.

4. Flip Video Camera: This piece of technology is very familiar to us as we have been using it throughout the two years of doing media A-level. It is extremely easy and quick to use and does not come with any of the difficulties a larger video camera would have such as the Sony PD150. The one button start and stop record feature as well as simple USB plug and play features make it a first choice for us when we want to record evidence of work that has completed, such as the audience feedback which could then be simply uploaded straight to Youtube.com and then embedded onto our blogs. The use of this new technology has made recording work and showing it in a simple video very easy and effective and without it, everything we would do would still have to be paper based and would take up considerately more time, which could be spent completing other pieces of work.

5. Sony PD150: The Sony PD150 was the camera we used to film our final short film production Synchronicity. Being a fan of video cameras and in the knowledge that this was one of the most expensive pieces of kit that we would be using, our group was very privileged to be allowed to use the camera. This piece of equipment proved invaluable as I know that many other schools have to make do with standard video cameras, which would not have given us the sharpness and quality that can bee seen throughout our film.

6.  Cannon Digital SLR Camera: Again, this proved to be a very useful piece of new technology throughout the pre and post production stages of our film, as taking photos of what we were doing as evidence as well as taking shots of certain events during the filming day, in order to use them as post card, was made very quick and easy with this camera. It also made us take light into consideration as the post card photos needed to set the correct mood. The quality of the camera was exquisite and it really gave us every opportunity to get the best photos. If this piece of technology was not available, we may be left to draw out our postcard designs which would not give us that professional that the SLR gives us.

7. Blackberry Curve 9300: The use of the mobile phone has transformed the way we communicate and this proved extremely helpful throughout the production of Synchronicity, as all the members of the group would need to talk to each other and communicate outside of school at some stage or another. For example, on the day of filming, I had to communicate with my teacher, Miss Shipp as well as the rest of the crew to confirm when we were filming and general plans for the day. Without the use of the mobile phone, I would have had to email them all which would have taken longer and I could not have been 100% sure that they would have checked there email messages before setting out. Moreover with the use of the Blackberry curve 9300 emails are sent straight to the phone, therefore I can ensure that I will always look at any email that is sent to me.

8. Blogger Website: www.blogger.com This is an online publishing website where we upload all of our work to. It is a very useful blogging site and allows the individual to publish work, attach videos and pictures to the site as well as personalising each channel to suit preferred layouts. For example, as I am aspiring to be a pilot, blogger allowed me to have a plane wing with the sky as my overall background theme as well as allowing my to change colors of fonts and writing styles. The blogger webpage is very clear and simple to use and most of the work we have dad to do has been posted on this website for us to see, so it is vital that the blogger pages are clear and informative, which they are and this makes completing all the tasks that are set, easier and less time consuming as we do not have to spend time wondering what we actually have to do as it can just be posted on here as opposed to Miss Shipp having to tell us firsthand. Without the use of this technology, we would have to have a vast amount of work on paper which would take more time to complete and could cause serious problems if we lost the work, but I back everything up that is on my blogger page, so I know I always have a copy of what I am doing.

9. Scanner: The scanner proved very useful when transferring all the pre production work that we had to done to the computer, such the script, story board, shot list, mood boards and many other pre production documents. It allowed us to save them as a JPEG picture file and then upload them to blogger.com. without the use of this new technology, we would not have been able to add any pre production work to the blog, which meant that we would either have to draw it all on the computer to start with or we wouldn’t be able to do it at all which would have lost us crucial marks.

10. Editing Suite: This is a industry standard edit suite and we are privileged that all of the editing suites within kings Langley school have this program running on them. Having Adobe premier pro on the computers really allowed us to maximize our editing skills and would cater for any effects and visuals we wanted to incorporate in our short film “Synchronicity”. Without the use of this program, editing would have been very difficult and we would not have been able to have such a professional looking short film.