Evaluation Question 6: What Have You Learnt About Technologies From the Process of Constructing This Product?

Recording Equipment

DSLR Camera

In the production of our product we used a Sony DSLR camera and Canon 1200D, before I started the AS Media course I had not had any experience of using DSLR cameras. However, since I have learnt different cinematography techniques from the filming of our swede. One thing I learnt and experimented with was adjusting the depth of field. Adjusting the depth of field can give the film a much more authentic and professional element.

(not the exact model we used)

SD Cards

Other than using a USB memory stick I had never transferred information from one computer to another, at first I was wary of ejecting the SD card and the importance it had. But now I can confidently transfer files from my camera to Final Cut Pro X.

Garage Band

Garage band was another form of technology I had not encountered before until this year. I had experimented with a few things but hadn't created any credible soundtracks. Despite this I created the soundtrack to our film opening using the software (exceptions to the non-copyright music we discovered on Sound Cloud). I wanted to create an intense soundtrack using synths and percussion and Garage Band was great for this, especially once I had become familiar with the loop feature.

Final Cut Pro X

We used Final Cut Pro X as our main editing software for the film. Until I had edited the Prelim's and Swede, I had no experience with Final Cut before. I learnt how to use basic tools such as the 'blade' tool, the transitions menu and how to share my product to social media such as YouTube or to save it as a 'master file'. Once I had learnt how to use these tools and others, I also learnt the shortcuts to them so I could make my editing much more efficient. After I became comfortable with these simple editing tools, I started trying some of the the more complex tools that would further aid my efficiency or the quality of the product its self. For example, the 'snapping' tool allowed me to be much more accurate with my cuts while also speeding up the process of the cut. Once we had finished ordering our shots in Final Cut, we decided to colour correct each shot to make sure it looked authentic and real. We did this using the 'balance colour' tool. It was simple but it improved our product significantly.

Blade Tool

Transition Window

Sharing and Saving

Colour Correction

Snapping Tool

Blogger

Personally I had never blogged anything before or come into contact with any blogging site. However, Blogger was a crucial factor in our research development of the film and also all the information we needed for pre-production, post-production and evaluation. I developed skills such as:

• creating posts.
• tagging posts.
• creating link lists for people to navigate my blog easily.
• adjust the colour and font of my text in order to highlight important information faster.

We also took inspiration from our classmates blogs, we could gather more information much faster using the efficient Blogger.

YouTube

I had used YouTube frequently prior to starting this AS Media course, however, I had never posted a video to YouTube - only ever viewed videos. YouTube allowed us to have all of our Rough Cuts, Swedes and Prelims all documented in one place that easily accessible. A feature of YouTube I discovered and frequently used throughout production, was the ability to embed the video into a blog post. This made the process of watching the YouTube much easier when visiting the blog. Also it doesn't require opening another tab as a simple link would.