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

1. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation? Media A2 Evaluation Q4 Owen Roberts

2. New Media Technologies Construction & Research The BBC Film Network – We used the BBC’s Film Network in our visual research portion of pre-production work, as a tool to view and review established short films. Using this new media technology was a benefit as we could gain more information about the short film compared to YouTube. Also, the comments from other filmmakers on the Film Network give a variety of opinions. We also visited various independent short film review websites to give us an industry perspective of the short films we watched. The reviews on these websites were far more detailed and professional than those in the comments of the Film Network, however the Film Network gives you a wider variety of opinions.

3. New Media Technologies Planning We used bubbl.us, an online mind mapping service when developing our ideas. Using bubbl.us we were easily able to contain our ideas and develop them. This free service is extremely accessible as after briefly signing up to use the service, you are ready to go. There is no need to download any additional software. Photoshop was an extremely useful tool in the development of our short film. Throughout the pre-production work we needed to edit images frequently, and Photoshop proved to be the best service for this requirement. Using the default ‘Notes’ app on my iPhone provided to be an extremely useful checklist. If I did not have a copy of the brief at hand, I would check off what work had been completed. This was extremely easy to do and not at all time consuming.

4. New Media Technologies Evaluation After completing our film, we chose to upload it to YouTube. YouTube was the best place to upload our film as it was very easy to upload with all the required information. Using ‘tags’ in the description of the video helps viewers of the film understand more about the film. When we needed to get our film ‘noticed’ by our peers, Facebook provided to be the best tool to get this process done. Once we had uploaded our film to YouTube, all we needed to do was post it to Facebook, and request opinions/thoughts. As teenagers are extremely active on Facebook, feedback was quickly given in the form of ‘likes’. When it came to completing our four evaluation questions we used various tools to complete them. Survey Monkey provided to be an easy way to gain feedback on our short film. We selected around 8 questions, which when answered would give us an insight into how our film was received.

5. Summary New media technologies provided very useful with few drawbacks in the research, planning and evaluation stages of our short film. Such simplistic web-based software that is available nowadays really provides extremely useful tools to media developmental teams, as a quick Google search later and you have what you need. With all the social networking platforms available such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, you can export your project to hundreds and even thousands of people with a few clicks of the mouse. Due to these new technologies, films can become successful by efficient social promotion, whereas previously without at least a 6 figure Hollywood budget, you stood no chance of worldwide recognition. I strongly believe that these new media technologies are opening up various new opportunities for amateur filmmakers to gain more detailed feedback via online surveys/questionnaires, improve their films with more advanced video editing software and to make their film more visible to the general public.