Question 6

Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the production and editing phases of the intro I have learnt to use many new technologies: these range from the camera work itself, to the use of Blogger to record my progress, passing through the IMovie and FinalCut that we used to edit the production.

SOFTWARE:

·          Blogger was maybe the most used tool at our disposal, we used this free online blogging service to record our progress throughout the production. Every time we came up with an idea or we modified a previous one we would post it on our blogs. This was useful as it makes keeping track of progress much easier.

·        We used IMovie to edit all our production, it is easy to use and relatively user friendly: this means that we managed to use it without extensive knowledge of similar programs unlike programs like Sony Vegas Pro. With this software we learnt how to import film clips into the main directory and how to piece them together to form a coherent whole; moreover we learnt how to remove any diegetic sound that we didn’t want in the production and how to add non-diegetic sound to increase the tension of a particular shot or to emphasise an event in the production. We also learnt how to effectively insert transitions and effects throughout the intro, this was done to give the shot a mellower or sharper contour to emphasise the emotions or events portrayed.

·         FinalCut was used to create navigation menus inside our production to make it feel more polished and professional, in addition to that we used this software to burn our production onto a disk.

·         We used both YouTube and Vimeo to present our production to the public; we did this by uploading it and then promoting it on social networks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

EQUIPMENT

·          We used both the camera provided us by the school and a private one to film out production; to ensure that we managed to get the best quality shots and sequences we did more than one take.
Camera work is, as expected, the vital component in any production and so we decided to research anything that could potentially help us to deliver a better experience. To this end we tried to mix up the types of shots that we used in the intro. These ranged from simple straight cuts from one scene to another to pan shots that take into consideration the entire scene without interruption, passing through overhead or low down shots to emphasise the insignificance or the power of characters respectfully.

 

·          The tripod has been a staple in our field work since the preliminary task; we used this invaluable piece of equipment to take accurate and steady shots throughout the production as opposed to unstable, shaky hand-held shots. This makes the production look and feel much more professional.

·         Prior to us shooting the production we went to the sites where we were planning to shoot and took many pictures to give us an idea of the lighting and the best places to film in: this really helped with time management as when we actually got there to film the production we could do so without waiting to find the best place.