Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During filming, I found that there were many shots which didn’t go to plan as we did not have a tripod during our practise shoot. There is great importance in having the correct equipment as if you do not, the filming will look extremely amateur. When filming supposedly still shots by hand held camera, we found it was very hard to get a good shot so in the end we had to re film those shots when we had the right equipment. When using the tripod we found it much easier to get a very smooth shot, the panning shots were very effective using this method. When experimenting with the point of view shots, we decided that they looked much more realistic when using a hand held camera rather than a tripod.

When filming we had some issues with lighting as we were not able to see most of the footage from our practise shoot, we had attempted to film with dimmed lights yet it was not enough light to see the shot when it came to uploading it to the software on the computer. We resolved this issue by re filming the shots in ‘half lighting’ rather than full or dimmed which we found to be the perfect balance and we were able to view the footage perfectly.

When we started filming we used my own video camera, however after filming we found it was not compatible with the schools system, although this was not an issue as our footage was too dark to use in our final cut. We used the schools camera to film the rest of the footage which was very easy to work and had a tripod which it fitted into. The effects on the camera were not difficult to use however we decided to film all of the shots in full colour and edit them on the computer instead of filming some shots in black and white, just in case we decided to change our idea slightly, we needed all of the shots to be as versatile as possible so we could edit them as we wished.

During filming there were some issues with availability of the actress (Lucy Tyson) and myself as I live over an hour away from both Lucy and Kirsty (the second group member) and Lucy was very busy during the time we were shooting, a combination of these meant we had very little time to film but we managed to complete the filming in time to complete our edit. We never had any communication issues and we would always be in contact if there was something not up to standard with either the planning or the shoot and I think we corresponded very well as a team.

When capturing the film on premier elements we did not have many troubles, some of our footage was deleted from the tape where the rest of our footage was stored but we had that footage on a memory stick so we were able to upload it just after we had captured the footage.

We had some instruction when adding sound and titles as we were not able to work out how to do so, but once shown it was very easy to continue and finish the job on our own. Premier elements has taught me many things about technology which I would not have known if I had not used the program, it has made me confident with editing footage.

Using blogspot to upload my work is very interesting and has made me much more aware of different forms of media such as websites and videos. I have learnt how to use the internet to aid my research into certain aspects of the course and I have used a number of media programs such as Photopeach and prezi to complete my evaluation questions.