The relevance of new technology to my short film

In this post I am going to explore the ever advancing power of media technology and how the increasing availability of production tools influenced the creation of my short film ‘Solitude’. When in the production stage of my film, I will be using a Canon 60D camera and Final Cut Studio for editing, equipment that can be used for professional results, but available to a public audience. These are points that I will be covering in this post, whilst also relating back to my five-minute short film.
Technology is ever advancing, none more influential and apparent then that of the media industry.

The age of digital technology has arrived, we can watch films on computers, read papers, books, put anything we like on the world wide web, watch 3D HD TV on 90 inch screens from the comfort of our homes. In terms of film, the industry is still dominated by the classic 35mm film way of shooting, which although expensive, gives fantastic quality thus making it the industry standard camera. Low budget films would normally be filmed on tape, something that is fast becoming obsolete due to the recent introduction of DSLRs that can take glorious full HD film straight onto SD card for a very reasonable price. These are great for amateur and freelance filmmakers, but are they used in the professional field? Yes they are. A recent season finale to American hit TV program ‘House’ was filmed entirely on a Canon 5D Mark II, a top of the range stills camera which gives glorious quality footage with a wonderful shallow focus pull, no tape or film was used in the making of this particular episode. For instance, my coursework project last year was a horror film called ‘Wuthering Heights and Werewolves’ that was shot completely on Mini DV Tape. But now, only a year later I am filming in Full HD onto a SD Card instead of ‘low quality’ tape.

“The making of the new and the re-arranging of the old” (Bentley 1997). In this quote, Bentley says that in order to create a product that is fit for purpose you have to carefully research the conventions of existing media texts that are from a similar genre, and pitched at a similar target audience, to the product/products you intend to produce. But, if you’re re-arranging the old the technological advances are going to be quite different in my medium of film. In the short films that I analysed, such as ‘The Siren’ by Alex Nevill, were all shot on DSLR cameras, such as the Canon 7D giving the films a professional high quality and depth of field to match. I followed the conventions of these short films by also shooting on a DSLR, a mid range Canon 60D which puts the high quality footage straight onto SD card, giving fast, tape less recording. For my editing I used a program called Final Cut Studio, used to edited films such as ‘300’, ‘The Social Network’, ‘Jarhead’ and ‘X-Men’. This product is a simple to use, professional standard program which I personally brought before I began editing my film. A week or so after I spent money on this program, a totally new version came out, which puts into perspective the advancing technology in editing and the professional film industry. Most film editors don’t use Final Cut Pro, but use a program called Avid Media Composer, a more expensive and complicated film editing solution. This program has been around for longer than Final Cut; therefore, just like 35mm film, people still seem to use it as a professional grade way to edit their films. Putting these products at a relatively low price makes them available to the mass public, which is something that really benefited me in the making of my film.

Gauntlett (2007) says that new media (and new media technologies) erodes the boundary between producer and audience to the extent that it makes little sense to talk about media audiences at all anymore: “Conventional research methods are replaced—or at least supplemented by new methods which recognise and make use of people's own creativity, and brush aside the outmoded notions of 'receiver' audiences and elite 'producers'”. With the availability of professional grade products, what stops any of the general public being a filmmaker? Therefore your audiences are no longer ‘receivers’ but ‘producers’. In my opinion, this has impacted my film in a very positive way, because as a low budget filmmaker I can now make a professional grade product, without the Hollywood budget. Examples of these equipment are the rise in DSLR filming, Final Cut Pro and special effects tools like Adobe After Effects.

When new media technologies are concerned, distribution within the postproduction of the film industry is an interesting area. In this digital day and age, piracy is a huge problem; with a whole spectrum of illegally uploaded films available online, filmmakers need a plan to how they release their products on the market. When low budget film makers can’t get funding from media conglomerates or huge production companies, digital technology makes life easier for them to reach a wide audience, through websites such as the UK Film Council, the UK Media Desk, BBC Film Network and Big Film Shorts who can host films online and have a big influence over film festivals, therefore promoting low budget films and reaching a great audience. “A new generation of UK media power players are ditching the traditional gatekeepers and going straight to their audience via the web” (Plunkett 2008). This brings me to a big point, that of online distribution which is becoming a popular method of reaching the masses, not just in film, but also in all of the media, TV, papers and magazines. Films can be released online, uploaded and streamed from websites such as Youtube, Vimeo or Dailymotion or purchased from the iTunes store.
My film will be uploaded to sites like Vimeo, so that people can see what I have created, whilst also posting links to it on social networking sites to gain more interest. The use of social networking site such as Facebook also helped me to get my audience research when in the preproduction stages of creating my film, something I wouldn’t have been able to research into more than two years ago.

Even the methods of using files to research and present coursework have changed. For instance, my media coursework this year was all done digitally whereas only a year ago, the same media coursework was all done on paper format and submitted the traditional way. The reason that my recent coursework is laid out in a blog format is because of the ever-changing advancements in technology and the accessibility of being able to access and view my work from any computer.
The fact my work will be all online also creates less paper usage and whilst not doing damage to the environment, also creates less confusion searching through each sheet in a place that I know is secure and I won’t lose it.

Another important reason is that the media industry is so fast paced that to be part of it you really need to keep up with the different methods within the industry, and within the past five years, blogging has become more and more popular with more and more relevance to our subject.

To sum up, I feel that the advance in new media technologies really seems to work in my favour, as it has reduced the cost of products that would have been thousands of pounds a few years back, therefore making them more available to people such as me. With the use of this new technology being available, I believe I have created a professional grade film using cameras, online distribution and editing software.