Question 6

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

Preproduction:

We learned the different camera angles available to consider using when making our two-minute opening. We also learnt why they would be used and what effect they would have on the viewers. Angles such as low angle shots, these are used to show something is above something and are often used to show that the object in shot is above where the camera is angles from.

Also, a canted angle would be used to show something abnormally and give a un naturalistic view on the scene/shot in view.

Production:

During the actual production of our film we learned how to used the DVR HD Camcorders and the tripods.

We learned how to move around the camera itself, what it does as in the zoom, play, video and picture shots etc., how to rotate the camera screen to give better views when setting the camera up.

For the tripods we had to learn how to set up the tripod and tighten the legs, we learned how to adjust the leg lengths and create different angles; high, low, canted etc. by using the tripod. We also learned the safety of using the cameras and tripods so they didn’t get damaged or broken and so nobody got hurt during the production process.

Post-production:

We used Final Cut Express on the Apple Macs provided. We have used the Macs throughout the project but mainly used them for editing. We also used the Apple Macs in preproduction to write the scripts. We used google.docs to make the questionnaire in post-production for the audience feedback. We also used tumblr website in preproduction when learning all the different camera angles.

How we made decisions about the equipment we used:

We made the decision to use these because they were the only ones available. The Macs had already had the software installed so it was easier to use those than having to download it onto something else. DVR HD cameras were the only ones available to use apart from the Big HD cameras which there was only a few of so were not always available to use. We didn’t have a choice in using anything else apart from blogger, as it was a requirement. And google.doc was used because it is easy to access and provides easy feedback.

Successful:

We were able to successfully use the DVR HD camera even though we hadn’t used them before. We chose who used it by the group member who had the best knowledge of how to use the camera. But we all did the basics.

Unsuccessful:

When using final cut we took a while to learn how to use it and ended up having to help each other. We had to download our music and sound effects from free music download because we couldn’t sync with the Mac.

What we have learnt from the beginning to the end of the project:

We learned that making film is harder and a lot more time consuming then we expected. We found that a lot of preparation and concentration is needed and lots of detail needs to input to make it perfect.

In terms of filming, we noticed that we need good, well-planned schedule to plan before diving straight into the filming. We realised that a steady planned pace would work better than a misunderstood fast pace: as this would make it easier to make mistakes.