Evaluation – Question 6

Evaluation – Question 6

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

The camera:

• A Cannon XAHI camera used to film the footage
• The camera could then be attached to the tripod (libec LS800), which I had to learn how to use effectively whilst filming. It gave us a wider range of shots, such as more movement, different angles and distances, it also held the camera steady and in place
•  This variety of shots enabled us to make our opening sequence more interesting.
• The lighting in the location chose was too dark so a tall lamp was used to focus on the main protagonist.
• Tracks
• Boom pole
• Clapper board
• Windshield system
• Sennheiser headphones
• Sennheiser microphone

Editing:

·         Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 was the main programme used to do the editing.

·         We also used After Effects and Photoshop to design the titles/credits that we placed throughout the sequence. The newspaper articles and images featured in places of our opening were also done on these programmes, we cropped each letter and pasted together to make our names and roles e.g. (sound and continuity Alex King)

       

     Sound:

·         A sennheiser microphone was used-we also used the windshield in order to block out breathing being hear due to the sensitivity of the mic (I also learnt however that microphones often pick up unwanted sound and camera sound)

·         We recorded a voice over as group, all having a go at different accents and impersonations of news reporters.

·         We had headphones attached to the camera so that the sound technician, allocated to someone in our group, could check the sound whilst filming shots.

      Overall my skill in the programmes that we used throughout the project developed hugely and I learnt that you can improve a lot of things and solve a lot of problems using these technologies.

Techniques:

During filming, the hardware we were using meant we could record sound effectively without it being unclear. We also could include camera movement such as pans and tilts as we had the tripod. We could also play with lighting what we were trying to make it look as professional as possible. During editing we could use techniques such as capturing footage, rendering clips, adjusting speed and duration, cutting up clips, adding audio (soundtrack) and also including visual and audio effects and transitions.(blur/black and white)

      As well as technologies from shooting and editing, I learnt other things such as how to use Blog as I hadn’t used this before. I learnt a lot about these techniques and realised that these technologies really add to the final piece and can help gain a lot more marks.  Adobe Premier for our preliminary task, to its functions I was able to digitise the rushes quickly and efficiently due to our previous experience. We did this was by making a connection between the camera and the computer hard drive with a firewire lead. All the shots we digitised were saved onto a 80GB LaCie drive, which served the same use as a USB.