Evaluation Question 6 - Technologies

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

Recording Hardware 

To create our product, we used:


DSLR Camera:

Before I started media I had never had any experience with a proper recording camera therefore I had to learn different aspects it. Trial and error during the preliminary task and swede was the fundamental way I improved my skills. By using a DSLR camera it enabled me to take more professional shots with a higher quality.


SD Card:

Again I had never transferred content from an SD card to a computer so this was another thing that i learned so this was also a recent but straightforward experience. After being taught the correct method I became self assured which made it quick and easy to transfer data, therefore it was generally more efficient.






Tripod:

As I hadn't had any experience with the DSLR camera the tripod was something I also hadn't handled before. Nevertheless, this was very easy to get to grips with and once I had it was very simple. It was a critical piece of equipment to ensure our shots were steady and smooth. If we didn't use a tripod our shots would  mainly have had to be filmed handheld which would have lead to shaky and unclear shots. By using the tripod it assisted the professional look of the shots and reduced the amount of editing to remove and steady the movement.



Boom Microphone:

This was the first time I had used a shotgun mic so I had to be educated on how to use it. Once in production it was down to trial and error in order to get the perfect sound. The first time I tried to record the dialogue I figured that the microphone was to far away from the mouth. So after working out the best way to record the sound i decided to have the microphone closer to the mouth underneath the person directional to their mouth. Whilst holding the shot gun mic for long periods of time I found that it became tiring so i rested it over the back of my shoulders. This also helped with the steadiness and made sure no movement interfered with the sound or got in the picture.

Garage Band: 

Music wasn't actually my role in the production of our product so I didn't get as much time to get to grips with software. This is  because I hadn't has any technical experience with this in the past. Tom created our soundtrack for the film so I understood more as I closely observed him. here is Toms experience with Garage band:
"This is the software we used to create our soundtrack for our film. Previously I had only played around with garageband but had never created a final product. Generally garage band is very complex and takes time to adjust to this complexity. At first I found garage band very difficult and couldn't quite get to grips with it. I began by using basic tools such as the trim tool, position tool, blade tool etc.. Our film required a rather complex soundtrack due to the situation. We thought that the music is a major aspect to our particular film as it creates certain types of emotion to the viewer. Our soundtrack involved remixing the song 'to build a home'. In order to do this more complex tool had to be applied. We had to change the bpm (beats per minute) in order for the two different beats to mix and run smoothly. The beats per minute could be changed on the top bar. Another complex but convenient tool that I learnt to apply was the flex tool. This allowed me to change the bpm without changing the pitch.This was vital when mixing the two beats into each other. The beat that was mixed into the song was a loop found. Loops are short looping sequences of beats/sounds. These were very simple to use. the whole point in mixing these two contrasting beats is that in our film opening there is a jump between two characters and their situation/environment. We wanted a slow, slightly depressing sound overplaying Michaels situation as we wanted to create a upsetting mood. We then tried to replicate a more grime sound whilst overplaying Kieran. This software has been extremely useful in the making of our film opening as it provided us with a large variety of pre-recorded music, meaning we didn't have to record our own music. This saved us a huge amount of time."
Source- http://www.atkostudios.blogspot.co.uk



Final Cut Pro X:

Simple tools with shortcuts

Final Cut Pro X is the software we used to edit our film. Before studying media I dint have any knowledge on editing a file so it took some time in order to understand this complex piece of software. The blade and select tools were the basic editing tools that I started off using. Soon after this i learned that there were shortcut i.e The key 'B' moved you to the blade tool and the key 'A' was for the select tool. This enabled me to edit things quicker generally making the process more efficient. 

More complexed tools

After grasping the basic tools i then went on to learn the more complexed tools e.g altering the speed. We used this in our film in order to create a time lapse. By understanding more competed tools like this it enabled us to to speed up the footage quickly and easily. I also used Final Cut Pro X to create suitable titles in our opening. First of all I went to the tool bar and selected the text icon which then brought up a variety of different styles of titles/text. I chose a title under the category 'Build in/Build out in order to create the effect of appearing and disappearing which was heavily influenced by 'The Guvnors' opening titles. I believed that the one we chose best replicated this and suited our film greatly. Once I had decided on a style of title I used the select tool to drag the title on top of the other layers. I Then used the select tool again to drag the actual title to the correct place on the screen, this is because there was a variation in where our titles appeared. From this it was down to me to pick a suitable font. I reviewed the type of font that was used for the tiles of 'The Guvnors' and used 'Font Book' on the Mac to preview and select relevant fonts. After narrowing it down to several San serif fonts I finally chose the Helvetica font as it was the closest following to my influence. The main things that i changed from the standard title was the size, positioning, font and spacing of the title. I looked at different ways of spacing the letters and found that they looked best when they are slightly more spaced out. I did this using the advanced setting by changing the tracking. As I had had some experience previously creating titles using this software I already knew the basics. But when it came to the titles for our film opening it became more challenging as it is highly important to make sure the titles suit the opening. Once I became more used to the text tools it became more straight forward to pick and create relevant titles 



Our use of technology helped us to:

Share posts:

As we all had different roles in the production of our film we created individual blog posts. Following this we wanted to make sure we shared our blogging onto each others blogs. We did this by simply copying and pasting the post and providing a link to the source of the post. This made sharing our work quick and easy ensuring we all had the relevant posts on our blog. 

This is an example of the method we used.

Feedback :

We received feedback generally through email and the comments on our blogposts. With frequent feedback it enabled us to constantly make improvements in attempt to make produce a high standard of work. Overall, I thought that this method of feedback was very useful. 

Youtube:

Youtube simply allows us to uploads our rough cuts so they can be seen publicly. This way they can be easily embedded into our blogs. This speeds up the process of uploading the video rather than having to transfer files using a memory stick.

Blogger:

This was the first time any of us had used Blogger to it was all very unfamiliar. Blogger was very straightforward to use allowing to store all of our work regarding pre-production, production and post production. I found the Blogger was very good enabling us to organise our blogs generally making the process more efficient. Blogger allowed us to:

• Include photos and videos from our desktop or even directly from Youtube. 

• Add lables relating to the post making them easy to find.

• Organise our work using link lists.

• Change the size, font and colour of texts making the posts more clear and easy to understand. By changing the colour of the text it also enabled us to highlight our key terminology.