Question 6

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

This project has given me an insight into Media in general and all the aspects of it; from research and planning to filming and editing.

Research

When researching into film openings and into genre of films it became apparent to us that there are a alot of different things we’d be able to do. We were able to attend a BMI conference on the art of film making. This allowed us to get a real insight into the art of film making and also allowed us to understand what the examiners were looking for. The experience was very interesting and enabled us to understand exactly what was expected of us. Also when researching into titles we were able to access a website calle www.artofthetitles.com This website was extremely useful when looking into the order of titles and the different ways that they would appear on the screen

Pre Production
the planning of our shoot was extremely helpful, it gave us a clear indication of what needed to be done and roughly the time it should take. Also what each shot would look like and what it would have in each shot.

Story boarding
when we produced our storyboard we were able to breakdown shot by shot that we wanted. We probably should have taken a little more care in including the detail into the storyboard as when we came to shooting we found that although we knew what we wanted, we found it hard to shoot. This definitely something we learnt from this project, because next time we would make sure that our story boards and shot lists are very detailed and we would ahve everything planned ready to prompt us, because it would allow us to avoid mistakes and it would be more efficient with time as we did not have long to film it.

Production

 Lighting
we were originally going to shoot the outside section in the morning, at around 5 o clock, because at this time there would have been a little light to make it look very early in the morning. But we thought about the limitations of this and decided to shoot her in the morning at 11 o clock. This meant that lighting did not restrict our filming, because the sun would be high and bright at this point of the day. We could not film throughout the day and not worry about changes in lighting affecting our sequence, because of her running outside and in each shot the lighting changes then it would lose the effect we wanted it to have on the audience.

However, lighting also proved to a problem. We found it difficult to get the lighting right for the interrogation scene. On our practice shoot, we thought that the light that was already was in there would work best as it was quite dull. However, after capturing and putting our sequence together we realized that this would not work. The lighting had to be much darker and there had to be a stronger contrast. When we re-shot we used a small LED light to achieve this contrast in light. I learnt about the importance of lighting to represent a certain genre – dark lighting is linked with an action/thriller. After this mistake I was able to learn how through the use of different technologies different feels can be achieved. After using the LED light we achieved a much better and more accurate representation of an action/thriller movie.

Camera

We got used to the grips with this hardware equipment during our preliminary exercise, because from the cameras that we were using we found out that it cuts off really quickly so we had to wait a couple of seconds before we stopped recording.
On our practice shoot we experimented a great deal. We wanted to give our self a lot of material to choose from. For example when we did the outside shot when we were looking in, filmed it loads if times from different angles and different lights. From doing so many different shots of the same shot we could see which one turned out the best and what would add to the effect on to the audience.
We tried:

·         Zooms

·         CUs from different angles

·         Different lighting

·         Different shots which were not originally storyboarded.

These worked really well; as some of the shots used in our final sequence were not initially story boarded but look good in our final piece and really add to it.

I learnt a lot more about the whole filming process and the difficulty of different shots. When recording a tracking shot I found it quite hard because it was difficult to maintain a steady pace while following the actor on screen, and keeping the camera still. CU and still shots were much easier as once they had been set up; no movement of the camera was involved so there was less room for error. Also I learnt that you cannot always film what you had planned out because sometimes your ideas do not work which means you have to think up different ideas or slightly different so it can be easy to film, or you think up really good ideas on the day which would make the scene fit better to the genre we have. 

When shooting we used the automatic setting on the camera, this sometimes meant that some of our shots were out of focus for a couple of seconds.  I know how to use the manual setting on the camera that we used but it does take a long time to get it into the right settings to find out how much you have to turn the lens too. If we had more timer to film then I would of changed to camera to manual to see how it looks and experiment with it.

Tripod
The whole filming process allowed me to learn about the fragility of some of the hardware equipment. When filming a tracking shot of Megan running the Tripod got damaged, to the put where it was no longer useable. This highlighted the need to look after the hardware properly because we were being cautious and it still got damaged. Luckily one of our group’s dad has a tripod that we could borrow, and we were extra careful when filming the tracking shots.

I learnt a lot from this project and feel much more confident if I had to use the hardware again. For anyone doing Media, I would advise them to practice using the camera and equipment prior to the shoot (The Preliminary Exercise helped me to familiarize myself with the equipment), because it does take a long time to understand how the camera your using works.

What worked well?

·         Capturing the footage

·         Using the razor tool and putting the sequence in order to create a narrative sequence

·         Adding effects such as a black fade.

·         Adding titles and using cuts to black

·         Linking and unlinking sounds to achieve continuity

·         Foley sounds

·         Using Adobe after effects to create to production logo.

Problems that arose and how we solved them

·         We had trouble with filming the phone shot where we saw the message pop up. However this did not work so we filmed it from a different angle and used it in a different way to make it work.

·         We finished filming; however it was not long enough. To solve it we worked out another day of filming and planned out everything again to what was going to happen and we had to film more, which would be really good for our genre signifiers.

·         Music was very hard to find because when we looked at some on YouTube they were all very dramatic and we only wanted subtle music that would keep the audience interested but does not make them focus on that. Also we could not find any music for the interrogation scene so we ended up not having any because it looked a lot better.

·         Finding a place for our main title was hard because there was a shot at the end which was perfect for the main title, however, it made our sequence look like a film trailer. To solve that we filmed more to put after it so we could have the title in that place.

What we have learnt

·         We have learnt how to carry out all of the processes of editing listed in the what worked well section

·         We have learnt that editing is extremely time consuming and takes patients and effort. We worked well as a team. We both cooperated and we all put in maximum effort. This was essential in turning out a good project.

Editing

When we began editing we knew nothing about the software or how to use it. We had never done Media before. Luckily we used the software when we did our preliminary, so we knew the very basics of it, but we wanted to know some of the techniques to see if we could make our sequence better, so we watched some tutorials on YouTube to get more of a feel to it.   I found this very helpful, as none of us knew how to use it. I am now much more familiar with all aspects of editing from capturing the footage to adding music and sound effects. With editing it is something that takes time and patients, there are always things to improve and work on. There are also many different effects which can be used such as a dissolve and fades. The editing time allowed us as a group to experiment and explore the many different creative possibilities and choose the one that worked the best. I enjoyed working as a team as everyone’s input was valid and taken into account. The hardest part of editing was adding the foley sounds because we had to get the timings just right for it to look it was the actual sound. We recorded some of our own sound effects for example the door opening, dropping the bracelet and the shoe hitting the floor. This gave us a good experience with creating sounds that we had to record our selves because it means that we can experiment and find out what actions work out the best.  

The pieces of technology that I used frequently

Blogging

Blogging was a technology that I used on a daily basis, because I uploaded all the research and the things I learnt in class up on my blog. This was really useful as I could always look at it anywhere I was, which meant that I could easily access my work.

Internet

This played a massive part in my film opening, because all of my research was based around this it was how I got to look at different film openings that I did not have on DVD. It allowed me to upload the opening on to face book to get feedback from other users. Which was really helpful as I got different opinions.