Seema Chumber

In relation to the research and planning process, I used a series of technologies to help me along the way.Listed below is all of the technolgies I used:

JVC/Cannon Digital/Video camera

iMac

iMovie HD

Laptop

Internet

MP3 player

Printer scanner

Some Advert 2

photo shots

Some photo shots from our sponsorship advert

I used the internet during my research of the ASA (Advertising Standards Agency) and for analysing a wide range of real media adverts on YouTube for my textual research. This was the easiest way to observe and analyse adverts, because it is more accessible, there are larger quantities of them available on the internet and they are easier to pause/play/rewind/skip. Whereas if I had done it using a television, it would become impractical as it would cause a lot of hassle, for example waiting for adverts to come on, missing important parts while jotting down notes, not being able to rewind and play the clip again (with the exception of Sky plus and any other TV box that comes with these features), also it would have caused a nuisance for siblings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdSNamSH4Wg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen

Examples of real media texts I analysed, to enhance creativity in my adverts.

Nevertheless, if I were to use other media forms, such as newspapers, magazines, books, etc. it would be extremely difficult to carry out my research on the ASA as it would be time consuming to find the relevant text, therefore the internet was the most efficient platform for me to carry out my research on the ASA. Moreover, the easiest way for me to transport the storyboards was to scan the documents using a printer scanner; this was the quickest and hassle-free method of uploading it onto my blog.

During the actual film shooting we used a light weight portable JVC/Cannon video camera which was provided by the school, this device made it practical to film as it was light, decent quality, it was a video/photo camera and it was small. This enabled us to carry the item safely to our chosen film locations. We used the digital camera to film all of our adverts, to take photos of our storyboards and photo shots in our adverts. In reference to recording our radio advert the camera was excellent in picking up the voice, the voice was clear and pristine, making our radio advert of a good sound quality. Furthermore, importing files from the camera and onto the iMacs was a straightforward task.

The radio advert which is of great sound quality

However the disadvantages of using the camera was that they were not of highest quality - some of our adverts were slightly blurred, they were sometimes not great at picking up sounds and the tripods were quite big. Therefore, there was a safety hazard when carrying it to our film location e.g. we travelled on a bus and if we had not taken care of the tripod someone could have easily been hit with the stand .Furthermore the tripods were stiff , which was not great as we had to re -film quite a lot , due some of the scenes being unsteady which in effect was time consuming and caused a lot of continuity errors which could not be put right, therefore in some particular scenes there were inevitably bits of the advert which were not of a professional standard.

An example of an unsteady shot in advert 2 - due to the stiff tripod

The programme that we used for editing was iMovie HD this was a programme which was sufficient for our editing process, as it had a wide range of features such as transitions, sound effect, splitting tools etc. In essence it was vital for us to make our adverts run smoothly , we did this by cutting useless scenes and we added transitions and effects to make the film clip run smoothly and to make sense, without having these features available to us in iMovie HD, it would be very difficult to make our adverts of a great quality.

Here is an example of one of our adverts that flowed well

However , despite the benefits from using iMovie HD, we also

had a lot of complications during the editing process. Firstly, we had a lot of technical faults, some of the problems we were faced with was we were unable to add certain transitions between clips due to wrong error messages, sometimes our work would not save and on soem occasions we had to start editing from scratch and also the iMacs would freezea.Consequently, due to some of the machines being faulty we had to share the computers with other peers in my media class and as a result we had to use up a lot of our free time to edit out of lesson times.

In particular, advert one had to be adjusted because of stiffness of the tripods and in effect made some shots quite jumpy

Although, the issue within the iMacs and iMovie HD, did not allow my group to reach its full potential in what we wanted to produce, all of our adverts were to some degree professional. Inevitably, using technology will always have its issues, however the main focus is to work efficiently with what technologies you have and to work as a team to overcome issues that you may be faced with.