FIRECLOUD EVALUATION OF NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES

What is ‘new’ media technology

New Media Technology is a 21st Century term used to define all that is related to the internet and the interplay between technology, images and sound.

The definition of new media changes daily, and will continue to do so. New media evolves and morphs continuously.

Definitions of today’s new media Wikipedia defines new media as:

“a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content anytime, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community formation around the media content.” –

– This means the ‘term’ new media has developed recently and very quickly. Not necessarily the idea. You can share media, with an ever growing audience (globally) as well as from a variety of platforms (cross-platform convergence).

New Media for Research

Trailer

We looked at different trailers to get an idea of what we needed to include in our trailer.

We used search engines such as Google, to get into websites such as YouTube and IMDd to find out more about trailer creations.

Our research was based on our specific genre.

New media has made information global . We can access all this media information from anywhere.

Advantages of Search Engines

We could search our genre very easily and quickly.

Search engines give a lot of options to browse collaborative works.

We stumbled across ideas of poster layouts for example, that we were perhaps not thinking of beforehand.

We were able to follow links when clicking an image to its origin website. This was often a review webpage.

We could also filter our search to be more specific, in terms of genre, actors + producers.

New media is collaborative and interactive

Advantages of Search Engines

Film websites enabled us to search out our genre, and connected the films whole portfolio of posters, cast, trailers and more together.

A key advantage was the huge body of work that was able to be accessed on different devices for free!

We could use an advanced filter during our search to be more specific, in terms of genre, actors + producers, plots and tittles.

New media is often free media and therefore democratic

Advantages of Search Engines

• On YouTube we were able to search for ‘movies’. This then gave us a dropdown menu with tittles corresponding to the particular genre.

• Also the recommendations section was useful as it calculated our recent searches and gave us options of further videos we may be interested in.

This feature is very typical of the convergence seen in new media as all kinds of films are now widely available on one website.

Disadvantages of Search Engines

The accessibility of information makes it harder to be original. Most students will carry out a basic Google search and come up with the same hits.

Increasing accessibility and collaboaration sounds like a good thing, but is new media making us all think the same? How much of the potential information are we actually accessing? Does the volume intimidate rather than widen our minds?

Disadvantages of Search Engines

Despite filters and advanced searches, it is not always easy to find what you want. For example, we tried hard to research ‘who watches action films?’ without real success. We eventually found this information through BFI statistics, which were pointed out to us, but would never have found them through an internet search alone.

Volume of information makes any real cataloguing and filtering almost impossible.

Disadvantages of Search Engines

The unregulated nature of the internet means that you can never be sure exactly what you are watching. These three different YouTube videos all claim to be the ‘official’ version of the Fast and Furious trailer.

New media is changing the concept of ownership over media products. We are increasingly all producers and consumers (prosumers) and it is harder and harder for institutions to control and ‘own’ their own products.

New Media for Planning

Animated storyboard

Storyboards still tend to be drawn by storyboard artists – this is very old media and shows we are still in a transitional phase.

Photos of drawn up storyboard were imported into Final Cut

LiveType was used to remind us of what the dialogue of that shot would be

We cut the photos in the approximate time we wanted the shots to run in

Advantages of Animated Storyboard

It gave us a guideline as to what our trailer might look like

It allowed us to imagine how long each shot should last

It ensured that our trailer would make sense to us

It was quick and simple to use

We could easily manipulate the image

Disadvantages of Animated Storyboard

It was time-consuming taking photos and importing the photos we wanted on to Final Cut

As Schumm claims “ technology can only benefit the competent”. This could be seen as the case as it was difficult to use the camera as it was at times producing images that were blurry.

Additionally, if you are unable to use Final Cut effectively, it would be time consuming trying to figure out how to use it.

We tended to refer back to the drawn storyboard during filming anyway.

Sometimes people still prefer old media ways as they are familiar and still useful

PosterLooking at posters on Google images inspired us on some features to include in ours.

Creating mock up posters helped give us feedback, which helped us improve on our real poster.

Using our own photos in our poster planning helped us see what type of filter worked best.

Constant audience feedback can be gained through new media

Planning magazine covers

We looked at magazines and their texts from different websites sure as Total film and Empire.

Planning magazines helped us realise the conventional fonts and colour used by magazines.

Planning teaser text we found it is needed to stand out and often in bright colours. We decided to use text fonts from Photoshop instead of LiveType because we could change them more easily

New media blurs the boundary between professional and amateur.

Presenting planning on Blogger

The blogs enables anyone to see it and also comment on it.

Blogging is very ‘new media’, it encourages interactivity with different people, accessibility, democracy and collaborative working.

Blogging is Sharing

Style of Blog Posts

Uploaded PowerPoint presentations to slide share, embedding them in blog

E.g. Promotional Campaign

Embedding videos of recorded video;

E.g. Presentation of Storyboard

We focused on creating posts that made use of new media technologies and the blog’s multimedia format illustrating new media’s relationship with technological convergence.

Style of Blog Posts; Text and Image

Being able to put text and images in to the pots meant that we could present all platforms used for our work in one place

We were also able to create a media reality and were able to construct the way in which we wanted the examiners to view us – as capable, experienced media students

This new media technology also allowed for greater exposure and because of technological convergence, the old way of presenting work on paper and DVD was not used and, all the work could be found in the same place, the internet

Accessible to All

Easy for group members to create and publish posts

Accessible to everyone of the internet

Posts can be created and uploaded at any time by group members,

making use of the labels tool

Anyone can view the pages as it is a worldwide blog

Blogging is a very new media tool – collaborative, easily shared, democratic, allows for us to represent ourselves

Work In Progress

The blog is also an easy way to clearly show the progress of our work throughout the course

Features that we chose to display in the blogs settings such as• Date• Time• Label• Title

All showed what had been done and when, to show progress and for ease of access when needing to refer back to pots

Work In Progress

We have been able to keep an accurate and chronological log of the progress of our work, making working in a group easier and encouraging constant reflection.

Viewing Work

The sharing capacity of new media technology allows work to shared quicker to enable a greater level of creativity with ease of access to other blogs as well as our own

However, this can allow for plagiarism as post can be easily found all over the web through the use of other new media technologies such as Google Search

Comments function Allowed for anyone anywhere in

the world to comment on our posts

Coincides with the fact that new media technology have allowed for globalization, creating greater accessibility and interactivity

This especially worked well for us when we received feedback comments for another school, where people who we had never met gave us points that we could improve on our products

New media is associated with online communities

Promotional Campaign - Facebook

Having a Facebook page will help boost our films awareness. It also creates interest and give consumers more information

New media has made promotional tools such as available to firms and more importantly, free to consumers.

A lot of our planned campaign needed the use of social networking sites

Promotional campaign – Twitter

Twitter is a very new media tool – instant, constantly updated, accessible anywhere.

If really promoting our film, we would make use of Twitter to ensure a constant drip feed of intriguing information.

It is the two-way nature of Twitter (receiving and creating . Redistributing info) that makes it so appealing and successful. It is a classic new media tool.

New Media for Construction

Photoshop

We used this graphics editing/creation software to construct our production company logo, movie poster and magazine cover.

A lot of new media technology revolves around commercially available digital packages and sites. Photoshop is not cheap and is therefore not a good example of new media increasing democracy.

Production Company Logo

The production company logo was made using Photoshop, using the basic tools like the custom shape tool, line tool and the text tool.

This use of tools with new media is referred to by Manovitch as a new kind of creativity – a “creativity of selection”.

Magazine Cover

We used lots of layering in our magazine cover, to achieve a sense of depth and create a dramatic image. Also the use of layering helped with organizing our work which helped speed up the construction process.

The use of effects like drop shadow and colour overlay, helped us to create a similar theme across all our products. Also this made us create a better product as it was common elements found in real media industry.

Poster

Photoshop allowed us to think about our product in layers, so we were able to break down the poster to individual components which made editing easier.

Photoshop came with ready made filters and styles ,We used a lot of different layer styles to build up the overall effect to merge different components together.

New media is creating new ways of thinking – thinking in layers is one of them.

We took the photographs using hard lighting, we edited the photo initially using Apple photo editor to reduce the exposure and contrast.

Then used Photoshop to reduce the temperature and then de saturated it to create a cold sinister effect which was common in action movie posters.

Manipulating Images

Manipulating Images

Used the burn tool to darken of the side of the character into the poster so it looks like it’s faded into the background.

We also used the sponge tool to lighten the characters face, as we didn't’t want to loose the emotion on the characters face

Does the reliance on pre-packaged tools provided by new media products reduce creativity? Or allow a wider range of people to be creative?

Final Cut Express

It is a video editing software suite by Apple, it is a ‘lite’ version of the professional tool Final Cut Pro. We used it for our film trailer. It is another expensive new media technology that few of us had access to outside of school.

Trimming, Layering, Ordering

We were able to use FCE to layer our footage and create more complex visual shots.

We were able to use FCE to trim our footage to make it the appropriate length and cut out the unwanted bits.

Mix different tracks and edit the sounds to go with the footage, this makes the overall trailer more better to view from an audience point of view.

Ability to return to original source material

One of the key benefits of FCE is that even after making changes to the footage, we can return to the original since FCE keeps the original footage which we imported into the program separate from the edited one. The imported files can then be easily dragged and dropped into the workspace, this allows a room for the change of mind and makes editing more easier.

Imported files

Workspace

Manipulation of sound

FCE allows to add effect by using its audio filters which we used to create a telephone effect/sinister voice to a characters speech.

With digital editing packages we our able to add cut reorder the sound, which would have been very difficult on traditional editing methods.

This shows the audio section of our trailer.

FCE also allowed use to cross fade between the two tracks we used, this allowed the transition between the high life and the action sequence.

Photoshop and Final Cut Have lots of different present filters

and effects which we were able to include in our product.

Have a help section which was beneficial as it helped to solve our problems

We were able to import new tools from the internet like new brushes which was made by third party.

User friendly interface

Lots of tutorials online which we were able to use since it is a popular editing package.

This package allowed for collaborative digital editing to take place – it is hard to imagine us producing the piece without the benefit of this technology.

Very costly so we could only use it at school, so it was hard to access to finish our products in our own free time.

Finding the right tool was hard since there was a lot of tools to choose from.

Unable to edit the fonts after it has been turned into a vector. This was time consuming since we had to go back to early stage.

Getting familiarized with the program was difficult as it had lots of different aspects.

New Media and Evaluation

The new media technologies and their benefits allowed for the evaluation of work to be made much easier

Comments Function on Blog

Allowing people to comment on the blog allowed for feedback

Comments can be made by anyone and seen by anyone

Excellent example of collaborative creativity that new media technology allows

This kind of feedback is the most helpful evaluative tool

Label Function

This allowed for us to easily find where our own work was, as you could select the label filter having tagged ourselves on our own posts This was useful in terms of being able to evaluate yourself as it provided great feedback of work completed

As we were able to construct our own reality / persona through the use of these technologies, the labels then helped to identify exactly what was our own to be able to show this off New media allows us to

create online identities

Allows choice of format: Edited Presentation

Edited presentations to discuss the ideas around the value of audience feed back

Flexible format – can combine discussion, images, text, moving image

Needed freedom of discussion as value of feedback debatable in many circumstances

Able to create a ‘fastforwardable’ version as viewer can skim through and use images and text to see how discussion is progressing

Allows choice of Format: Power Point Presentation

Sharing function – easy for the whole group to work on both separately and together

Allows for ease of collaboration

Contains a lot of visual evidence with relatively short text

Easily divided into clear sections using colour and image

Uploaded to Slide share and then linked to blog

However – visuals not as clear via Slide share and suggested solutions do not work as yet.

Not all new media technologies work efficiently 100% of time

Allows choice of Format: Contact Sheet

Creating this sheet on Photoshop showed one advantage of new media technology – the ability to gather information from many places and store it together in a relatively creative way.

Allows choice of Format: YouTube Tutorial

Creating this online tutorial allowed us to share professional expertise with an online community, something we had benefitted from ourselves.

Summary

New media is invaluable for producing media projects. The key benefits are:- Collaborative work- Sharing with a remote community- Digital technology’s ability to make us all producers- Availability of information.

Our question marks would be:- Availability – how available is it really from a global

perspective?- Use – how many of us are really taking advantage of it?- Creativity – can both enhance and limit this – you have to be

careful to stay creative- In development – old technology still has a place and at

times we found we preferred making old-fashioned lists and sketching on paper.