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

First and foremost, the iMovie application software was utilised the most as it allowed us to edit our film on budget cost, coming preinstalled on the Mac. Without the increase in applications software like this at low costs, we would have had no way to edit our film. It allowed to import footage, edit the length and size of a piece of footage and also implement sound effects separate audio effects. It also allowed us to add visual filters to footage, allowing us to lower the saturation and change the exposure, creating a different stylish look to the film.

Photoshop enabled us to create our ancillary tasks, giving an image editing suite that enabled us to create a convincing movie poster and film review that could actually appear in a magazine. Once again, without these software packages, we would not have been able to achieve any of these goals. Photoshop gave us the ability to crop our images, add text and also non-destructive editing (meaning the original file won't be changed).

Web 2.0 also was utilised when producing our short film, as it allowed us to upload our rough cut of a short film to a website called Youtube, which boasts a huge membership and viewing audience. We uploaded our film to a Youtube account and allow the whole the world to view it. If given the right amount of time, we would have been able to accumulate views and also audience feedback, as Youtube allows members to comment on a video. It also gives members the option to "Like" or "Dislike" a video, which shows whether the community who watched likes or dislikes it overall.

Web 2.0 also helped in the research phase of our product, as we could research films online through sites such as IndieMovies, which allows viewers to watch public made films. It also allowed us to look at directors websites, an example being Shane Meadows (the director of This Is England), which had interviews with the director on directing films like This Is England, which gave us an insight on how he wrote the script for This Is England.

The biggest utilisation of Web 2.0 however, was the use of Blogger, which gave us the ability to present our work in a digital format instead of on paper. This gave us the opportunity to follow each others 'blogs' and keep up to date about film schedules and group activity. We could sites like Scribd and SlideShare, which enables users to upload presentations and word processor documents to their website. It also has the feature of being able to 'embed' documents on websites. For us, this meant that we could place a SlideShare document on our Blogger and allow people to view it. It also allowed interactivity on our blog as these embedded documents allow users to interact with the document, like giving it a rating and sharing it.