TASK 4: A DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY ON HOW I USED NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES

Digital Technology is new media technology, where the technology is based on digital storage and communication of data, using 0 and 1 code to compress the data into tiny packets, which give greater speed, quality and huge amounts more of storage space for data. This is far better than the analogue system of communication and data storage that proceeded digital. Digital technology underpins computers, mobile phones, modern video and still cameras, editing, the Internet, MP3 and I Phones, modern radios, modern movie projectors and most technological equipment ranging from in hospitals to schools and transport.




Technology is becoming more and more advanced as the years progress and in such a competitive and demanding market, it’s advancement is vital. For our media project we used the reasonably new technology of the internet to a vast extent in helping us organise the video. A problem helped thanks to the internet was the location of our shoot. We wanted to gain access to a place that we could trash and that was preferably abandoned with lots of items in which the actors in our video could vandalise. We found a place not too far away after shortly searching on the internet. It was on a website designed for finding locations with specific needs, such as the one we found. We thought this place was perfect and rang up the website. They didn’t mind letting us use it so we believed we had a deal. Without the internet, we would have had to of got out a phone directory book and search for hours through numbers while ringing them up and asking if they had a suitable place while it took a matter of minutes thanks to the internet. A problem occurred as after we researched further into the location and realised it was falling apart and that it was a general safety hazard working there. We realised that there would be a problem with people turning up wanting to be in our shoot as well. Luke described a problem that occurred with him in a similar situation when people kept on turning up and trying to get in the shots, causing a general inconvenience to the running of the shoot. Using the internet we researched for more places in which we could film our video but came up with nothing nearly as potentially good as our first find. Eventually, Luke suggested we used the back of the boarding house Beatrice Webb to film our video as there was a disused scrap yard there with lots of things that we could destroy. After taking a look at it we decided it was perfect and we settled with using that location.




On the day of the shoot, we came up with the idea that we wanted our gang members to display different gang hand gestures to flash to the camera and help make them look more genuine. We got ideas of gang signs we could via the internet after simply typing into Google, ‘gang hand gesture’. It came up with lots of different suggestions and it was simple of us to collect a few, work out how you do them and fit them into our piece. We even decided to select a more masculine symbol and a more feminine symbol, gender being assigned by how much the symbol looked like either male or female sexual organs. This helped create the divide between the two gangs in the video and helped establish more of a difference between them.
Once we had finished filming, we had to start with the editing. Before certain technologies came about, film had to be edited by a literal exercise of getting the film and cutting it, with scissors and gluing it where you wanted it to be in relation to the other shots. As you could imagine this is a lengthy process and could take days on end to gain the right precision. Nowadays the technology exists so that film can be easily cut and rearranged at will using computer programmes such as Final Cut Pro, the programme we used to cut the video. It was a reasonably simple process thanks to the programme and it was much easier than it would have been before such technology.




In conclusion, technology such as the internet and Final Cut Pro has helped the production of the video vastly and it would have been difficult without. Technology continues to improve and producing a film will become a much more different and easier task. New media technology, based on binary code underpinned all the five stages of the production, including research and development, pre production, the shoot, post production and distribution and made each stage easier, much quicker and gave a much higher quality to the final production than we could of done without.

EDITING

We edited for two afternoons a week over a four week period, taking it in turns with JJ being the director and driving force.
The aim was to sell the DJ as a charismatic character of the street with street cred and a brand that will appeal. The other aim was to bring the gang to life as potentially violent and perhaps dangerous.



Because we had a big ratio of shots filmed to shots needed there was a lot of choice in what we used. We tried to use varied shots, moving from long shot, to mid shot, to close up, to big close up as Negus says in his list of conventions. This meant we kept changing the excitment of the story with shots not lasting much longer than two to three seconds and cutting to the beat.
We colour graded using adobe after effects in order to give the whole piece a seedy and gritty feel. Most of the piece used a mixture of continuity and discontinuity editing on final cut pro. One shot that was especially effective was the close up of a match being lit and a cigarette with burning ash, with the main character of the gang in the background signalling the danger that was to follow. We cut a shot of the main character in close up from side angles before and after the ash shot for greatened effect.



Another shot that was effective was the way we cut to a burning car as the music 'drop' ended and then we began again. This emphasized the drama of the burning car along with the sparks and the flames flickering.