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:- |
Camera Mic or Separate Sound?? Part 2
Article by Mike in Audio, Location Recording, Technical & Practice on September 2nd, 2009
So when should you use the ‘on-board’ microphone on your camcorder and when should you use a sound recordist with audio sound mixer and ‘separate’ sound?
It all comes down to thinking forward to the final finished item and how you’re going to use not just the sound, but also the footage itself.
The most important sound item you’ll record is speech. Obviously use of the camera mic, unless you can get the camera with a few feet of the person speaking is going to be practically useless. Now the simple way around this is the use of Radio Mics. These have seen a huge increase in use over the last years as Sound Recordists are dropped as unnecessary from the crew and Producers seem……………………………
Storyboarding And The Creative Process
Article by Caroline in Production & Artistic on August 20th, 2009
When I worked as an actor in television, I was always fascinated by the matchstick drawings that I observed on the reverse side of director’s scripts. This was accompanied by camera angles and a strange abbreviated language, enabling the director to see how the shots would cut together.
Now that I am a director myself, passionate about drama, I fully comprehend both the language and importance of storyboarding. But is this production process always necessary, and how should students be best encouraged to master its art?
It really depends on the genre. ENG (electronic news gathering) has to be produced at great speed, as the news is breaking, and therefore provides no time to storyboard. The art of telling the story is……………………………
Video vs Stills
Article by Mike in Cameras & Lighting, Photography on July 27th, 2009
Video technology has moved on so quickly, today you can even record video on your mobile phone. It’s revolutionalised journalism, with reports and news video footage from places that would have normally been impossible even 5 years ago. Just think about the protests recently after the Iranian elections and how little would have been reported world wide had it not been for mobile phone video and chat rooms!
So is having a video capability on a stills camera just a marketing gimmick? Or could you use a stills camera to shoot your video? Whilst the use of mobile phone footage on the news has very much seen the case of content being much more important than the actual quality, you couldn’t really……………………………
The Open at Turnberry
Article by Mike in Location Recording, Technical & Practice on July 22nd, 2009
I’ve just comeback from working on ‘The Open’ at Turnberry, a large media BBC event with other tv channels from America and Japan. So how do you cover such a large event with lots of things going on at once?
My job was ‘Greens and Tees’. We had over 80 microphones covering the 18 holes, set microphones covering Greens and Tees and 18 people with radio packs and gun microphones walking the fairways – all out in strong winds, rain and sun! Everything had to be kept going (even in the rain), brought in each night and put out again before play the next morning.
Also covering just the course were 52 cameras!
This output constituted the ‘International mix’, basically coverage of all the action going……………………………
Death by Transition
Article by Julie in Post & Editing, Production & Artistic on July 6th, 2009
Will somebody please warn students about this nasty disease that seems to be prevalent amongst media students?
In my travels around the country, I see many students’ short films/videos and often cringe at whizzy transitions between shots, which add nothing to the film but often distracts from what otherwise could be a very good piece of work.
SPECIAL TRANSITIONAL EFFECTS should be used appropriately and for a particular purpose, otherwise they may detract from the director's intent.
A film transition is a technique by which shots are joined together to make a scene. Most films will include selective use of transitions, usually to convey a tone or mood, suggest the passage of time, or separate parts of the story.
The simplest transition between shots……………………………
Mac or PC??????
Article by Mike in Education & Teaching, Post & Editing, Technical & Practice on July 2nd, 2009
It’s the age old question fervently fought over by passionate enthusiasts on either side!!
It pits one man against another - well two in particular!!!
So which man do you believe in then??? Which one has the better machine for a multimedia based education platform?
The only thing to do is weight up each platform, so let’s start by looking at the equipment provided by Mr. Gates:-
- The PC’s main advantage is that it’s cheap.
- You can build it from cheap parts if you require a specific type of machine.
- It’s completely customizable, build the machine to suit its use, install the custom software you require.
- As well as hardware there’s a myriad of software available for it.
- Everyone has one, the world uses it, so it’s……………………………
Size does matter!
Article by Simon in Cameras & Lighting, Photography on July 2nd, 2009
The retail trade would have us believe that increases in mega pixel numbers (mB) i.e. the number of pixels on the photographic chip, are directly proportional to getting better images from any new camera, whether video or stills.
This is in fact not completely true!!!
Another major attribute that affects picture quality is the actual physical size of that CCD chip (i.e. the actual size of each individual pixel), image quality is not just about the number of pixels.
My first Digital SLR camera was a Fuji Finepix S1 pro which proudly announced itself as having a 3.4 mega pixel. My mobile phone, a Nokia N95, boasts a 5 mega pixel camera. So I wandered into my garden this morning and took a picture with……………………………
Does Quality matter?
Article by Mike in Audio, Production & Artistic, Technical & Practice on June 30th, 2009
Better quality can give you better exam results! Yes it can, it’s a fact!!
Think of your favourite piece of music. Imagine it being played on a small radio in the kitchen – tinny and echoy.
Then imagine again, the experience of hearing it being played on a very expensive Hi-fi system – It’s as if you were there!
A question – Which experience did you enjoy the most? The obvious answer has to be the Hi-fi system, but that then creates another question - ‘Why?’
Of course the instant answer is ‘because the Hi-fi system is better quality’.
But think about this for a second, ‘Better Quality’ is actually only an observation of the difference; it’s not the answer as to why your emotional response……………………………
Hearing Ain’t That Simple
Article by Mike in Audio, Technical & Practice on June 29th, 2009
Your ears are one of the most under valued of our senses. The human race is so visually orientated, we totally underestimate our hearings ability. Our ears collect and process a huge amount of subliminal information of which we remain blissfully unaware.
Imagine being at a Party or in a busy restaurant. Your Partners conversation becomes boring and you find yourself listening to a couple on a table 10 metres away, ever done that??? How do you do it? Then obviously your Partner mentions your name, your brain kicks into gear and suddenly they have your full attention again!!!!
Your hearing has an amazing ability to process all the complex information involved in volume, phase, time of arrival, tone, character……………………………
Planning Versus Creative Spontaneity
Article by Caroline in Production & Artistic on June 29th, 2009
Anyone involved in professional media production, be that corporate, radio, television, film or multimedia, will have a horror story of a production that went wildly pear-shaped due to lack of planning. So is planning always necessary, and does it stifle creativity and spontaneity?
When I was working as an actor, and I played various roles in a training film about social workers. It was so poorly planned and structured, that we were forced to re-write the script during the actual filming. It was amazing that the job ever got finished and didn’t end in absolute anarchy! What it lacked was good production planning, and the leadership to see it through.
On the other hand, I have also been involved in a project……………………………
Tape is Dead : Long Live Tape!
Article by Simon in Cameras & Lighting on June 23rd, 2009
We have come a long way since cave painting was used as a means of documenting or telling a story, but in the last century the rate of change has been dramatic, and over the last twenty-five years that progress has been exponential.
Moving picture recording of any quality used to take a pantechnicon full of wire and associated hardware, is now available on a mobile phone.
For the first three quarters of the 20th century, Film ruled supreme, then in the late 1970s and early ‘80s; tape came snapping at its heels. Film inheritently had its own archiving in the form of the negatives, which were storable for years and new prints could be struck with no fear of obsolescence.
Film was beautiful,……………………………
The Contentious Issue of Copyright!
Article by Julie in Education & Teaching on June 23rd, 2009
Do you use recordings of television and radio programmes in the classroom? Does your limited budget mean that you cannot afford to buy resources? Instead, do you download music and film clips from the web, copy DVDs or photocopy texts? Do you file share with colleagues in other schools/institutions/countries? Do your students use Internet material in their project work?
Many normal activities both inside and outside the classroom depend on the use of literature, music, film and art, in their many manifestations. Often these works are protected by copyright, and those who created them are dependent upon being paid for the use of their works for their livelihood. After all, the creative industries make a valuable contribution to the economy of our country and employ a……………………………
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