Evaluation: Question 4

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

Before we started to film for our production, we used the internet to research our chosen topic: we did gathered some in depth detail about the work within the job role of a fire fighter, including the training and the service they provide for the service e.g. car washes and going round schools and explaining to children about the dangers of fire and prank calls. We used this information to give us an agenda and structure as to what we wished to find out from the fire service, to help structure our questions and to help develop our already existing ideas. We gained this information by using the South Yorkshire Fire Service website (http://www.syfire.gov.uk). The fire service website was a very useful tool in our documentary: it has the different locations and contact numbers of the local fire stations; this allowed us to contact our chosen fire station. We explained to the fire fighters our aims and activities of our filming and asked to see if it was possible for us to film them. It made it easy for us to choose a fire station due to their location for example travel issues etc. The website is regularly updated so changes to the station could be assessed easily.
The internet also allowed us to broaden our knowledge and understanding into our chosen genre: documentary. By doing this research, along with attending Sheffield’s documentary festival we were able to produce an effect documentary, working within the expectations of our genre. We analysis similar documentaries available on Channel 4 OD (Coppers) and www.youtube.com compared them to our documentary: how was it effective how did it get their point across ect. This enabled us to model our documentary on these similar attributes.
By using this blog we have been able to post on our findings, monitor our progression and recall all past work to develop our production to our aims that we set. We were able to monitor our contributions to our blog and add all necessary data: scripts, treatment, risk assessments, questions ect. The blog also enabled us to develop our creativity: by having a coloured background we were able to choose a background/image that resembled our blog and create the positive atmosphere we were trying to achieve (the fire picture for the background of our blog).
The camera equipment that was available to us helped us to develop our creativity of our work: we were able to take our location shots on a small, handheld Sony camera. Because the Sony handheld was used for the location shots it was easy for us to move around and take quick snap shots of where we would be filming, which is ideal when we were not wanting to set it down and film for a longer period of time. We used a Sony HDV camera to record our footage. This was due to the higher quality of the camera, memory and sound/microphone located on/in the camera. The HDV camera gave us a clear sound and a very detailed image when we were filming. Although when using the Sony HDV camera, we experienced a few problems due to the settings being a bit difficult to understand but was overcome when we took a detailed look at the camera and it’s settings as we wanted to understand the mechanics of the camera. Since we were able to understand the camera fully we were able to use the camera a lot more efficiently and effectively: using the clearer settings gaining us a much clearer picture and sound than we were able to before.
During the construction of our production we used a programme on an Apple Mac computer called Final Cut. Final cut was used to view our footage and to construct our sequence. The programme was very useful, easy to understand and highly organised: we were able to arrange our footage into separate files into the days we filmed. Before we began putting together a sequence I renamed the shots to label what the shot contained e.g. hoses unrolling. When it came to filming we found it highly useful when locating a shot and its relevance, we were able to easily choose and replay shots that we needed as they were easily identifiable.
When producing my poster, I used a programme called Photoshop to get the desired effect. The programme was highly useful and developed my creativity to such an extent that I never believed possible. It did this by the amount of options and effects it has to ‘play with’ and use at the individuals disposal. It was highly useful and very fun to use. By using Photoshop I was able to expand my knowledge, understanding and skills in the area usually associated with photography. It was enjoyable delving into a new area of the media and experiencing how their technologies work.
Our second media product, our radio trailer, was created, we used a programme on the Apple Macs we were using called garage band. This programme was also enjoyable to use and very easy to understand. We have fun when making our radio trailer as we were able to change many things about the characters voices: tone, pitch, volume ect. This progressed our creativity as we were able to enjoy the individuals voices, applying the different options to the voices including a certain programme that made the individual sound as if they were on helium, but we did not apply this as it would seem unprofessional and was the opposite effect as to what we were trying to project to the audience.