G321 - Evaluation - Question 6

What I have learnt about technologies from the process of making my product

Tripod

In the making of my media project I first learnt the importance of a tripod, and of course how to use it properly. After getting used to it from doing my preliminary task I got introduced to a tripod and learnt fairly fast from there. The tripod was good for keeping the camera still which gave me professional and clear film footage. There is a basic crank which can be used to get a super high shot which can be good for making something look small and insignificant. There's the handle which you can use to make a successful pan, you can also tighten a bol which makes can make the pan shot you do slower or faster. Each leg of the tripod can extend to just over 3 times the length of how it is originally, which can be useful when doing very high angle shots such as a high angle shot looking up over a wall or a fence. 

Camera
The second piece of technology that I learnt greatly from was the camera, the device that captured all of our footage. All we needed to learn is how the pause, play, stop and zoom buttons worked which was pretty straight forward. Learning all the basics was very important because we used all of them whilst making our project. The second thing I learnt is that you must maintain a loud and clear voice, otherwise the camera just won't pick it up very well, and you'll end up with low quality sound.

 The final thing I learnt about using the camera is the playback option which you can use to check the footage you've just filmed and see if it looks alright. This is very useful and can be used to avoid trips back to your set and re-film something which had an error when to use it. We made the mistake of ignoring the playback option and going straight to edit which meant when we did spot out errors we had wasted time.



Using Coral
Once I collected my footage using the camera and tripod, I was then able to upload it the the computer hard drive and open it with the software editing programme Corel VideoStudio Pro X3. This programme enabled me to edit, cut and stick pieces of film together. This came pretty natural to me and I soon found myself to enjoy using the programme to put all of our footage together and create something much more amazing. The programme itself helped me learn how to cut and stick together shots which helped created good flowing match on actions and reverse shots.

Whilst filming the hanging scene to our film opening we found it difficult and came across a few problems. The was the we weren't sure how we were going to get the flickering lightbulb effect as there wasn't anything useful and effective on Corel. We solves this problem by borrowing a photographers light and switched it on an off causing the flickering effect we wanted. The second problem was that I needed to hold the rope up that was hanging my partner whilst doing the light flickering which was extremely difficult. We thought quickly on the spot and decided to do the hanging scene without the flickering and then to a seperate shot with the flickering. We would then go forward to merge the footage together on corel, combining the two turned out to be a great success and we were very pleased with ourselves.

I learnt from Corel how to cut and stick footage together smoothly to create perfect match on actions and reverse shots which created a good effect and seemed professional. Match on actions and reverse shots were learnt during our preliminary task which made this easier for me.

After throwing all our clips together and making sure timings were to some standard, it was time to add in some extra effects. Firstly we had to add in some sound effects, specifically a lighbulb humming throughout the entire two minutes, up intil the very end where it would die out during the hanging scene. We got this sound and a few others which were a lightbulb turning on and some electric sounds from www.freesound.org , so there was no copyright issues involved. We changed the playback speeds and volume to fit in comfortably with our footage and to not disrupt the dialogue taking place in our film.



During some of the Inspectors dialogue scenes, the window behind the inspector stops letting light through because of the clouds and dulls the light levels therefore causing some of his facial details to dissapear. I used a colour corrector and increated the brightness levels on Corel to fix this problem and the Inspector's facial features can now be seen much more clear.




Adding text to my film was one of the final things I needed to do to add that extra touch for my film opening. I opened the 'Text' tab on Corel and chose some creepy gothic font which would be used in my title and credits. I changed the size depending on the shot and dragged it to the place it looked best in during the certain clip. I added effect to these credits using a fade effect on it giving it a more creepy feeling.

From trial and error and previous knowledge gained during my preliminary task, I was able to cerrect the low quality scenes.
I have managed to merge and transform scenes using Corel and managed to add in suitable sound clips. Finally, I have also learnt how to add in titles and credits without disturbing the mood of the film opening sequence.

I have learnt that you must be extremely delicate whilst using the tripod as a single disturbance could upset your entire scene. I have also learnt that panning is quite difficult and wasn't needed really anyway, according to my teacher they don't look that great. The final thing I've learnt about tripods is that they're very helpful, you'd be struggling much more without them and we wouldn't have much of a movie otherwise.