Evaluation Question 6

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

I used all of the above to help me produce, film and edit our final opening sequence, I would like to add, when we did our first shoot of our opening sequence we DID use a proper filming camera with a tripod which had a tape in it that we would later on put onto the computer and edit, we also used a handheld light to highlight moments where we used close ups to really see the expression on the characters face. We made use of a abandoned trolley we found to use as a makeshift tracker (which worked very well I must say) when filming in front of the character and moving with them as they walked along, but unfortunately we had a faulty tape which meant our footage was ruined and not worthy of submitting, so to prevent this from happening again and to really get the effect of the camera being a point of view shot, we used one of our groups own handheld Canon cameras to give the effect of the uneasy human movements.

For our media coursework instead it being handwritten and paper based, we had to upload blog entrys onto Blogger, I had personally never used this website before but I had used similar websites (such as Piczo, Myspace etc). I learnt how to embed links onto a post, upload photos and by using another website called Scribd (a website where you are able to upload powerpoints embed the link and post it on your blog) I was able to put my script and screenshots onto the post. I personally used Paint to help me make the mood boards just for this evaluation such as when I annotated the screen shot in Question 5 of the girl walking down the alley, I was not recommended to do this, but I have always fount this an easy way to do things such as annotate and make collages so I used my benefit of knowing this to help me. We also used Final Cut Pro on the Apple Mac computers (neither of which I have ever used before) I found the Mac very hard to work out how to use as to me it is back-to-front of a laptop or computer I use at home, I found it very frustrating and had to constantly get help from our Technician and fellow classmates to help me work out how to use it properly, but once I had run through it a few times I was ok. As for Final Cut Pro, although I had also never used this before, I fount this a lot easier as it was very clear on the screen what each part was for and what it did, and the tools were obvious as to what they did, once I had learned how to get our actual footage onto the computer and Final Cut Pro I found it very easy to maneuver.

I had never used a camera like the sony HVR-V1U pro HDV 1080p but I found it quite easy to work out as the buttons were labelled as to what they did. During the editing stage we found that there were problems with what we had filmed it kept skipping and the sound wasn't working we later on found that we had a dysfunctional tape and therefore had to film all over again in a short space of time, we tried to book another camera for the day we wished to shoot however there was none available at that time so therefore we had to result in using my camera which is a canon, we was very upset as we had put a lot of time and effort into our first shooting of our first sequence and we tried to edit the tape but it was beyond working with or fixing and we was advised to film again, we was going to send off our first attempt to show how hard we had worked but the tape just got worse the more it was played, personally I feel our first attempt was so good and I'm gutted it couldn't be used, but I am glad we come across this technical fault as this problem would be something genuine film producers, editors and directors would come across and have to get on with and overcome. And I believe we did this the best way we could, and instead of trying to copy our first sequence bit by bit, we used this opportunity as a chance to change what we did wrong in the first sequence and to shoot the sequence with a different approach.