Evaluation question 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

Equipment that we used to create our film opening:

The first piece of camera equipment we used was a standard quality camera to do our auditions and we also used it to record some background sounds (atmosphere) to give our opening an effect as if Tom and Ethan are running outside through a forest even though they aren't, this is basically the Foley effect. 

Panasonic SD camera

We also used a dolly to film a section of our opening, the dolly was used at the beginning of our opening where the camera pans around the corner and reveals Ethan sitting down playing with his toy truck on his own. The shot was a tracking shot around the door and shows Ethan sitting there. The dolly was good to use because it allowed us to do our tracking shot nice and steady and that's what mainstream companies aim for.

Dolly

We used this dolly in conjunction with a tripod, the tripod held the camera steady whilst the dolly allowed easy mobility of the camera. The tripod held our shots steady and was a lot better than doing our shots handheld because mainstream film institutions make their films really steady and clean. We used the tripod for nearly every shot because as we are a mainstream institution we want our film to be as clean and steady as possible and we didn't want the handheld camera effect. 

Tripod

We used a Panosonic HD camera that we used was very good, it had loads of cool features that made our life easier when we were filming. It had really good zoom, head tracking feature so that it focused well and tracked the head of the person that we were filming, the screen on the camera was touch screen which allowed easy use for us as we are part of a generation that knows how to use touchscreen devices and it was easy to navigate through the menu's and there was a remote control to use the camera from a distance so that we didn't cast shaddows when we were filming.

 Panansonic HD camera

The computer that we used to edit on was an Apple Mac, I found the computer ok to use but it was a little bit tedious at times because I really didn't like using the mouse, the editing software that we used was iMovie on the Mac, I think that this software was alright but not the best that I have used. The main reason was because if you wanted to put a file on the Mac, you have to convert the file before it went on there. I have learnt from editing that the actual editing takes longer than filming the film and there are a lot of things to take into consideration when editing such as the CC, sound and how the audience will feel when they are actually watching the film.

Apple Mac



There were some good effects on iMovie as we used a CC to emphasise certain bits in the opening, the CC that we used dimmed out the edges of the screen as we are making a psychological thriller and we wanted the opening to look mysterious.

iMovie







Things we could improve next time whern editing is not to leave shots to go on for ages,

Our group worked pretty well at times, when filming I feel that our communication and teamwork was excellent, when doing the blog work however there was a little bit of conflict because we were all getting stressed out because the deadline was fast approaching and we had to get everything done on time. Overall I feel that we have got through this as a strong team because we only had 3 people in our group so we had to work extra hard to get everything done as all of the other groups had 4 people in them.

I used blogger to log my individual and our group work, this was advised by the exam board and my teacher. I found blogger easy to use and a good way to upload work, the only downside to it I thought was the spellchecker as sometimes it was quite annoying. To get around this problem though for some of my posts I did them on Microsoft Word first so that I could get the correct spellings and format for my work.

In conclusion, to all of this I feel that the camera equipment was excellent, the editing software was bareable and our group work and blogger was good as well. I am happy with our finished product and hope we can improve upon it next year.