Media 4 education is an interactive information resource designed specifically for people who use multimedia within education, whether you actually teach or lecture in media studies or Creative Arts or simply want to use multimedia more effectively within the educational environment. Media4ed.net is run by dedicated media Industry Professionals, highly experienced within their own fields, who can provide you with the best professional advice available on how to improve, use and teach multimedia within education. The use of multimedia within education is currently under going something of an explosion! Media4ed.net is here to offer you the resource to push the boundaries forward, ask questions of professionals and give you the opportunities to get the best from your efforts to educate. Click titles to see the full text of these recent articles:- |
LED lighting
Article by Mike Bird in Cameras & Lighting, Education & Teaching, Technical & Practice on May 26th, 2010
Health and safety are obviously major considerations in the practice of media within education, be it trying to get some naive student to simply think about where they’re going to set up a tripod (i.e. not in the road) or perhaps to consider the risk level of a particular location we’ve chosen to shoot in (swimming pool??).
Of all the Health and safety considerations the equipment that causes the most concern and risk must be lighting. 240v, live cables trailing everywhere to trip over, those cables attached to heavy lights high on stands to tip over and finally that’s not taking into account a few thousand kilowatts of heat to burn hands and set things on fire!
Taking into account these concerns……………………………
Creating Character Creates Confidence
Article by Caroline in Education & Teaching, Production & Artistic on March 25th, 2010
Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's 'Alice In Wonderland'
YouTube is full of fantastic amateur films, where people invent stories or portray outlandish spoofs of seminal TV or cinema moments. What it reveals is that digital technology is extremely democratic, and that playing a ‘character’ is hugely liberating.
Having run numerous camera and drama workshops for students and adults, I know that using digital technology creatively, can unlock certain individuals and reveal a confidence that was previously lacking. So how can we use audio-visual equipment not only to create and share information, but also to build confidence and communication skills?
Perhaps the answer lies in ‘character’, in not having to be oneself. From the moment we master language, we make……………………………
Canon 5D firmware Upgrade for Audio and Movies
Article by Mike Bird in Technical & Practice on March 21st, 2010
All those who’ve just upgraded their 5D’s to 2.0.3, need to read this and upgrade again as soon as it’s available if you want to record movies and sound.
http://web.canon.jp/imaging/eosd/firm-e/eos5dmk2/firmware.html
The rise and rise of the DSLR
Article by Mike Bird in Audio, Cameras & Lighting, Photography, Production & Artistic, Technical & Practice on March 5th, 2010
The DSLR in the last six months has begun to make huge changes in the way we shoot video. The film like quality of the resulting video, the huge jump in quality SLR lens give over video camcorders, it all makes the format perfect for shooting artist material.
Have a look at the Canon promotional Video by Vincent LaForet below to see what can be achieved.
Click the HD icon to see a higher definition picture - do pause the other one first! Remember what you're seeing is, even in the higher quality version, only a compressed version of the 1080 line original.
They are many striking examples of the artistic medium given life by the digital SLR, but if you browse the net……………………………
What your eyes hear!
Article by Mike Bird in Audio, Production & Artistic, Technical & Practice on November 26th, 2009
What we see in front of us on the screen will dictate what we expect to hear. Over the years I’ve worked in numerous areas of broadcasting, one job I do for a long time was sound dubbing for the Nature History Unit in Bristol. Most footage is shot on either a very long lens or in tiny macro and is actually mute - i.e. there was no recorded ‘live’ sound. Everything you see was dubbed on using sound effects, live spot effects (me) and wild track atmosphere……………………………
To record in Stereo or Mono - that is the question?
Article by Mike in Audio, Post & Editing, Technical & Practice on November 26th, 2009
Most domestic and semi-professional video cameras have a stereo ‘internal’ microphone set into the front of the camera. We’ve all seen the ‘home’ videos were you can hear the person with the camera breathing heavily rather than what’s on the pictures.Well you’ll be surprised to know that professional cameras don’t have this microphone! Although they have the capability to record in stereo (they have two audio tracks), the microphone attached the front (which can be unattached or replaced) is a single mono microphone, which is much more directional than the stereo version.
Unless you are recording a TV drama or film, professionally you would not tend to record in stereo on location. The use of stereo on location recordings complicate the……………………………
Documentaries - Can You Solve The Chicken & Egg Situation?
Article by Caroline in Production & Artistic on November 9th, 2009
Andrew Marr
Documentaries come under the category of ‘factual’ programmes, and as the title suggests, the content should be based on facts, an objective and balanced presentation of an issue or event. Documentaries by their very nature rely on capturing ‘spontaneous’ material, and this often means that the content cannot be scripted prior to filming. So how can we help students prepare effectively for making a documentary film? It’s a bit of a ‘chicken and egg’ situation.
Which comes first – script or filming? The answer of course, is neither. What should come first is research. Knowing the subject matter and the story you want to tell can only be achieved through thorough research.
Thankfully, there are numerous ways in which research can……………………………
Basic Microphone Patterns
Article by Mike in Audio, Technical & Practice on October 20th, 2009
It is just a simple volume driven instrument and next to the complexity of your ears it’s practically a prehistoric device!!! However scientists have managed to develop this little diaphragm to give us certain pick patterns to work with, this means making them directional.
If we look at a representation of a basic Omni-directional microphone pick up pattern it will give us an idea of how these patterns work.
If you walked around the circle drawn around the microphone head talking, it would pick your voice up at……………………………
Audio file formats - recording and storing
Article by Mike in Audio, Technical & Practice on September 30th, 2009
CD (Compact Disc), our first mass digital format, arrived with us over 25 years ago. It gave us clean digital sound in a way we hadn’t experienced before. There have been new HD audio disc formats introduced over the years (SACD), but CD was so well established they’ve become rare items.
In 1993, with the computer revolution well underway, MP3 was introduced to enable music to be stored relatively easily on a hard disc. A 3-minute CD track represented a raw ‘PCM’ file of about 60mB, whereas a MP3 file was only 3-5mB, allowing over 10 times the media to be stored.
So how does MP3 achieve this? As well as applying a mathematical formula to the raw PCM data to reduce its size, it applies……………………………
Exams - Are they worth it????
Article by Mike in Education & Teaching on September 21st, 2009
I made a poor start with the head of Media Studies at my local school. The school had only just achieved Technology and Media Arts Special status and the A level media studies course had not been running for long.
It was my first meeting with him and he obviously wanted to impress a Governor. I can’t remember the exact figures he gave me, but some of his very first words to me were his proud boast that last year they’d achieved an average exam score in the high 90’s percentage wise. He was a little taken aback by my instant lack of response and seeming lack of enthusiasm – he didn’t know quite how to take it, I think expecting me to break……………………………
Simple Lighting for Stills and Video
Article by Simon in Cameras & Lighting on September 17th, 2009
So what’s the big deal about lighting? Surely if you can see what your shooting, you just point and shoot and the camera takes care of the rest? And if it’s dark then cameras have their own light source, a built in flash for stills and video cameras can have a little ‘head light’ fitted, so what’s the problem? The mistake here is to assume that your camera is as good as your eyes, frankly they fall far short.
Then, even if you have sufficient light on your subject to render it visible, it can be the difference between an ordinary picture and creating a great image where the lighting is placed and controlled in such a way as to enhance……………………………
Camera Mic or Separate Sound?? Part 1
Article by Mike in Audio, Location Recording, Technical & Practice on September 2nd, 2009
Should you use the ‘on-board’ microphone on your camcorder or should you plug in a sound mixer with headphones and an alternative microphone to give you ‘separate’ sound?
During my years at the BBC, one of my responsibilities was as a Sound Recordist for National Radio Documentaries – the sort of full-blown documentary that used to go out on Radio 4, rather than the news driven programmes that now seem to proliferate today. Then, working with a Producer and probably a presenter, we’d go out on location and record interviews and material to edit and dub a programme together back in the studio on tape or computer. My responsibilities were both technical and artistic – not only was I responsible for the technical……………………………
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