Evaluation Question 6

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

Blogger.com – This was very useful for displaying our progress, planning, constructing and evaluation.

YouTube.com – We used this to research thriller openings, which helped inspire us. It was also used to display our preliminary task and our final piece.

Google.com – Arguably one of the most useful forms of technology, as it allowed us to search for and access images, music, and information about similar films for our research section.

Final Cut Pro X – This was used to construct our film, our recce and preliminary task, and also to edit them using things such as filters, titles, colour balancing, and sound balancing that were available with the software. For example, we used an expander to make sections of our dialogue clearer, and we used frame matching to equilibrilize the colour of certain shots. It also had a built-in automatic save feature, meaning that our work was less easily lost.

Apple Macintosh iMac desktop – I found this computer extremely easy to use, and the display was very clear, making editing easier, as we could see problem areas that required correcting.

Sony HD Camera – We used this to film our piece and our recce. We learnt how to use it whilst shooting our recce, and I found it easy to manipulate in order to achieve the necessary shots.

Tripods – We used this to steady the camera, and this in turn helped achieve key shots, such as the wide-angle opening shots of Tower Bridge and the surrounding areas.

Microphone – These were most definitely essential, as even though we had minimal dialogue, the lines that we did choose to include were very important for the audience to hear, therefore we used microphones.

Kaiser Video lights – We decided to include these, as some of our locations were badly lit and therefore required lights, but we also used them in naturally well-lit shots, as it created a better atmosphere, and helped reduce graininess.

Imdb – This was used a great deal to acquire information about directors, films, and production companies, it therefore contributed the most to the research and planning sections of our piece.

DaFont – We found the font that we chose to use in all our titles and the main title of our piece from this website, it was called ‘Bank Gothic’ and we felt it was distinguished from any of the fonts that could be found, both on Microsoft Word and Final Cut Pro X.

Free play music – We obtained the majority of our sound from this website, most importantly, our main music track, called ‘Ascension from the well’ by Peter John Ross. It was useful because it had a wide range of copyright free music.

I feel as though the thing that I have learnt the most about the technologies that we included is how to manipulate them in order to achieve the desired effect. In some cases, such as with Final Cut Pro X, I found it slightly harder to be fully confident with using it, but once I was competent enough, I felt as though it was a lot easier to create the final product that we had envisaged.