Task 4 - How we used new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages.

A director’s commentary on how I used new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages.

New Media Technology is a whole new form of technology known as digital technology which uses binary code to compress and store files into minute packets. Digital technology is the modern world it exists within computers, cameras, mp3, mobile phones, the Internet, and most technology used in the world today.

New media technology was crucial at every stage of production, but especially so in the shoot and editing stage. There RATIO meant we could be very creative and this was caused entirely by the digital technology. Because of small and light cameras which are easy to light we were able to take over 200 shots and experiment. When we came to editing we had 200 shots to choose from and only used 35 of them in the final version. This meant our ratio was 6:1 which gave us a lot of choice to be creative.

As for the research and development of our pop video we required a great deal of help from the internet as we needed to understand exactly ‘what’ we wanted to included within it. This involved looking at pop videos on ‘www.youtube.com’ to understand how pop videos required a definitive performance and narrative within them. This helped us create our pop video by influencing our storyboard process. We also required the Internet to research the location of our pop video and what props / wardrobe we required and with great ease we were able to find exactly what we needed.

When it came to the planning of the pop video we used digital cameras to take photos of the location to make our storyboard, but then we needed to change our idea and thereby our storyboard. Yet, we did admit how effective it was to use the digital cameras to take the photos and assist in the storyboard as it was a lot easier than drawing them as none of our group members were excelling artists. We also used new media technology with the call sheet as we included a map from ‘www.google.com’ to show all the members of the team where to meet. We used Sony Z1 and DSRS7 cameras, which are digitally based.

The shoot itself included digital cameras as they allowed the a higher ratio of shots shot to shots used as we shot around 198 shots and used 59 which came to about a 2: 1 ratio. This allowed us to shoot more and thereby use more shots, as non-digital cameras would have a lower ratio due to their inferior ability to store information. We also used green screen to allow us to develop our layering effect, which would not have been possible with out digital media.

Post-production included a massive amount of new digital media technology, as we required to edit the film. With new media technology we were able to edit the film in a non-linear fashion, which made it quicker and easier to edit the film as we could make changes anywhere we wanted unlike analogue.