EVAL Q4

How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware and online - in this project?

What I cover in this post:

• Different software/online resources used (blogger, FCPX, Instagram, youtube, slideshare etc)
• How we engaged with audiences online
• Different hardware used (cameras, tripods, etc)

This is a video explaining how we integrated technologies

TRANSCRIPT

Hello I am Spikey films and this is evaluation question 4. I am going to discuss the different software and online resources I’ve used, how we engaged with online audiences and the different hardware we used.

So starting with the different software and online resourced I’ve used. So the first thing we did was set up our blogs at the start of the school year. I decided to use the simple template as I feel it looks the most professional. I set up the blog to look as I wanted it to, including background and all the different fonts. I set up all the different lists on the side, including the DB blogs and various different articles from the guardian. At the top we have all the different social media’s, but I will get onto that after. We also set up the small introductions and formatted many other things to how we wanted them. As you can see this blog says old. That is because I decided to move all my work onto a blog that I had formatted differently. Previously I have been blogging every different idea and development individually, however this got complicated to control therefore I decided to add them into a structure of 23 blog posts and this is what the new blog looks like. We also set up similar features on this blog. Along with blogger, we used Final cut to edit everything throughout the year. This is a top program that allows us to use lots of different techniques to create the best film opening possible. If you check out my evaluation question 3, you will see I created a techtips series, presenting the knowledge I have gained throughout the year. We would upload all our videos to our individual channels and then share them with the rest of the group. This was important as generally, the embedded video looks better on blogger than the video upload option they provide on their website. It also meant I had a hub for all the videos I needed for my blog. Another thing we used to get our work onto our blogs was Slideshare which is something that comes along with a LinkedIn account. This meant that we could upload our Powerpoints or word documents onto our blog. This is a feature that I used a lot.

Okay so how did we engage with our audience. As myself and scope productions worked together, we decided to set up a social media each. I set up a TikTok and Emma set up an Instagram. For this, we wanted to market our film on social media as much as possible so we teamed up with Tristan Plumridge. He was in charge of Twitter. Here are a few tiktoks I made. And as you can see, here are a few posts by Emma and Tristan. I took the role as a super fan, Tristan took the role of playing his own production company, Polyhedron Productions and Emma was in charge of the product placement we had in our film. We had seen films like Hinterland market their film on social media so we know it’s effective. We also used social media to communicate with each other, in order to create the best work together, and this was done on Snapchat.

Now moving onto the actual equipment we used for filming. We used lots of different equipment. One of which was the iPhone 11. This is a phone with the best camera, meaning it is up there with Sony and Canon cameras. It also allows us to use a very wide lense, which resolves the issue of filming in small rooms. We loaned out 2 different tripods, as well as a phone adaptor. One of which being a large tripod, and the other being used for steady worms eye view shots. We used the large tripod less than we had expected as we acknowledged that a lot of comedies are filmed with handheld. Although we had that in mind, I still feel as though it was a mistake, as some of our footage isn’t as steady as we had hoped. Another piece of equipment that we used was the LED camera light. This was a very important piece of equipment when we were filming, as there were many situations where there was bad lighting in the room. You could also adjust the lighting on this LED light, meaning we could obtain the verisimilitude. Other than that, we used a gimbal, which meant we could get steady tracking shots. Finally, for editing, I used my MacBook Pro 2019 edition, which meant I could edit and work on my blog efficiently. Although we got most of our shots from the iPhone, we also loaned out a Sony camera because it is important to get various shots when you have a limited amount of time.

Digitisation, Disruption and Convergence

The ongoing but advanced process of moving from analogue (eg VHS, 35mm film) to digital production, distribution and exchange, which has reduced costs and led to convergence and disruption

DISRUPTION

Radical changes to the established methods of distribution, often leading to new competitors arising

CONVERGENCE

The reducing gap between professional and amateur/consumer/prosumer level equipment; the shrinking distinction between audience and producers as old top-down approaches and passive audiences are replaced by active audiences (web 2.0) and a dynamic two-way flow (UGC); the blurring of once clear divides between media industries - film and TV are notable, and think about how both now extend across web and smart devices too, plus VR

E.G

Film4 and the BBC are UK TV channels/producers with limited funds for film production. Where Amazon and Netflixspend billions worldwide, and over $100m just in the UK, the combined TV/film budget of all traditional UK TV channels(and their film wings) is far less than Netflix's UK spend alone. They pay upfront for rights to low budget films like Warp's output. This, combined with non-repayable grants from the likes of the UK Film Council (today that is the BFI) and its regional wings like EM Media and Screen Yorkshire (using government and National Lottery funding), or EU funds. These grants ensure cultural diversity in film production, which would be impossible on raw commercial terms - US movies would simply take up almost all UK screen time otherwise. What box office prospects does She, A Chinese or Tyrannosaurhave?!

Warp generally struggle to get UK theatrical distribution for their movies, never mind international (let alone China...). However, you will see Optimem Releasing on several of their movies - a StudioCanal subsidiary that has now been relaunched as StudioCanal UK, forming an unlikely link with Working Title.

FCPX TechTips series:

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Communication

We communicated as a group through the Snapchat group chat we set up. This allowed us to share any information with each other, as well as have group calls. An example of something we shared between each other was the different font options we were looking at, and we wanted feedback from the others