Jennifer Penaluna - Critical Evaluation - Q4

We initially set up a blog on Blogger of which all our media portfolio would be put on to enable us to use different types of media in one place throughout the making of the film. I was introduced to this last year and so had a years worth of experience with it at A2.

We were able to upload videos that we created on Final Cut Express onto YouTube and then embed them onto Blogger so they could be viewed directly on our blog. For this to happen, we had to create a YouTube account. We created a group account with the username ‘blankpagepro’ so that we could upload and manage our videos together.

Along with videos, we can upload photos to our blog which allows us to show our further ideas in picture format, making the blog a multi-media platform and interesting to view rather than just writing and essay structures.

Ebay helped us to be creative by allowing us to create a pretend selling page for our remote control prop in our film, making the intertextual link between the viral advert and selling page which were incorporated into the actual film.

We used the Macs for all of our media production process, which featured Celtx and Final Cut Express. We used Celtx to create the script and was very easy to use as it uses the correct format for a script. We used Final Cut Express for all of our editing throughout the filmmaking process including my Video Diary, the Viral Advert and the title sequence along with the finished film.

For the filming, we used a HD camera which I did not use last year so this was a development for my confidence in my camera skills. As I was in most of the film, I did not get chance to film much so my input to this was limited but I got to see and understand how to use the camera through observation. The sharpness of the image that this camera gave us made our film look a lot more professional than last year. For my video diary, I used the smaller handheld cameras as they were more portable but a less sharp image.

A voiceover was included in our film which meant that we had to use a Zoom recorder to record both mine and Joe’s voices. This was a new experience for all of us and we had to quickly learn how to use it. We missed a part of Joe’s speech and me and Jade had to re-record it whilst we were filming. We were also able to turn the sound level up when necessary on Final Cut Express due to one part being held further away from Joe and subsequently sounding naturally too quiet.

Final Cut Express enabled us to be creative with our film and incorporate the ‘rewind’ feature. We wanted to show the shots in reverse to fit with the theme of rewinding to make the effect of the remote more plausible. We were able to edit the shots to play backwards which was exactly what we anticipated. Some of our shots were the wrong colour due to filming on different days in different levels of natural sunlight and they weren’t continuous. We were able to edit the balance of light on Final cut, making our film look a lot better.

We also used Photoshop to create our poster in a professional looking way, which was a step up from last year. After every group member contributed a poster, we chose a favourite and used this to create in Photoshop so we knew exactly what we wanted it to look like so it was quite straightforward.

Along with other group members, I used Facebook to gain audience feedback which proved useful. Before we had fully finished the film and wanted some feedback on what was missing, I posted our film on Facebook to people directly asking for comments which we took on board, allowing our creativity to blossom further.