Evaluation Question 4

The advantages of using new technologies and Web 2.0 sites to low budget or no budget independent film makers are great. Thanks to cheap and even free software, affordable equipment and interactive sites such as Blogger and YouTube, film makers can now research, make, distribute and promote their own media texts. Without the technology of today, creating a film and marketing it would be significantly difficult.

When we were producing our horror trailer, the technologies of Web 2.0 were invaluable. For example, YouTube allowed us to put up our first draft of our trailer and that gave us the audience feedback necessary to learn from the mistakes we made and create our new film. People tend to give very honest feedback on YouTube and whilst this can be disappointing, at least we learnt what people really thought. When we uploaded our final trailer it reached a lot of viewers very quickly and we had some really positive feedback.

Blogger was also very important as it gave us multiple layouts and colour schemes to create our own blog about the trailer. It was easy to pick up and manipulate and therefore made the process of organising research and planning and sharing information as a group really easy. Uploading and writing descriptions on these sites (especially Blogger) is fast and smooth however organizing your images in the small composition text box is slightly difficult and limited. I learned how to better master this Web 2.0 technology with time and effort as well as spending time uploading and learning from mistakes.

The Sony camcorders we used . The camera and tripod is tricky to get use to, but thanks to one of our members, who was an expert, we learned how to use the camera and tripod, including several features, such as night vision mode and collapsibility of the legs respectively. We also learned how tapes are used and how to upload them onto advanced Macintosh computers whose software was compatible with a capture cable. The Macs are increasinly becoming more popular along side the PC. For one, the hard drive and CPU is located within the Mac, while the PC has it stored in a unit next to it. There are no specific advantages nor disadvantages while using Macs and PC desktops.

To conclude, these advanced Web 2.0 technologies and important equipment have made it possible to develop our creativity, skills and knowledge of this new art form. Without them then we could not have made our trailer or even uploaded it. It has helped to boost my skills by working with sites such as Blogger and YouTube, using Macs has had an impact on how I edit and use film technology and finally knowledge of the fact that I now know that there are billions of people around the world who use this same interactive media.