Evaluation Activity 6

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

Admittedly, at the start of the process I knew absolutely nothing about the technology we needed to use to create our film, in particular, the editing software - Adobe Premiere Elements. This could have been seen as a downfall as this software was instrumental in our post-production process, yet we didn’t really know how to use it. Similarly, due to our inexperience, this software was the only choice we had when it came to editing, whereas other more experienced groups often had software which was to a higher standard of their own. Despite this, I believe we made the most out of a combination of our lack of ability and the software, which enabled us to produce a film of a reasonably high standard. This software gave us all the basic components required to successfully edit our film – it allowed us to cut and match the footage, as well as edit and mix the audio and had the application of titles and credits. The editing tools were especially efficient which helped greatly as it allowed the titles to look professional and sophisticated. I think that this was one of the key factors in raising the standard of our film, and I think the titles are probably my favourite aspect to our opening. Whilst this was very useful in the post-production process, it did not have colour correct or grading in the way that we needed to produce a fully professional looking film. Due to the overexposure of the camera and the inability to focus manually, some of the scenes, despite being filmed at the same time, appeared to be a different colour. This was a downfall in both the editing equipment and the camera as it meant that even when the scenes were cut exactly to match, which should have produced an effortless movement between the two shots, they looked mismatched because of the change in colour. Similarly, there were also problems relating to the computer rather than the software such as difficulties when saving and uploading, and also with rendering which in turn made it difficult to edit correctly. Although this led to a very stressful process as scenes often had the tendency to disappear, we eventually managed to construct our final piece.

The camera we decided to use of our opening scene was a Fujifilm with 1080 HD movie recording, however I have discussed in a previous post which should hopefully cover the basics of the camera. In a similar way to the editing software, we encountered a few minor difficulties with the camera, but it still provided us with all the basic needs to produce a successful opening scene. Again, due to our inexperience within this industry, our choice of camera was limited due to the available resources; however luckily, it was of quite a high standard. For this reason, we did not choose our camera based on its skills, which could have been a mistake but we had little choice. As the camera was Laura’s, she was already aware of many of its features, however as mentioned previously, we were unable to manually focus it which limited our ability to incorporate creative depths of field which is something we would have liked to experiment with. Similarly, it didn’t have a stabilisation feature which meant we needed to employ the use of a tri-pod. This was not necessarily a downfall as although it was very static, which may have made the audience feel like they were watching the action rather than taking part, in turn slightly preventing them from fully engaging with the film, it allowed us to create steady shots which were better quality than without a tri-pod.

Through the use of these two technologies, and the tri-pod which we used for stabilisation, we did not feel the need to employ the use of any other technology, be it software or hardware. Through the use of these two technologies we massively developed our knowledge, and became slightly more confident in the technical side of the film making process, although we still have a lot more to learn. Hopefully, we have opened up wider opportunities for any future products, which will undoubtedly come in handy if we carry on media next year. If this is the case, we will need to explore more techniques and features to further increase our knowledge and ability.