Evaluation Question 6: What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

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

Filming

In filming we used a combination of the Sony handy cam (3CCD) and the larger, heavier but better quality JVC pro HDC, also supporting 3CCD.



An example of a JVC pro HDC,
similar to the one used in our film

An example of a Sony handy-cam

  Though we filmed with both camera types, we primarily used the JVC pro (as seen to the left), in our filming. This was mainly due to its superiority in terms of function over the handy-cam. The JCV was more effective at long shots due to its better image quality and was also viable for shots that required us to change the point of focus, due to it having the ability to have its manual focus altered. This is something that it didn't share with its smaller handy-cam counterpart. You can see this in action in several of our shots, one such being the revelation of the corpse laying on the floor. At first we see the killer focused in the background of the shot, but when he goes out of focus the foreground becomes focused, revealing the bloody hand of the victim. Depth of field (the difference between the nearest and furthest objects in a shot) could also be altered via the JVC's manual focus. For example, in a later shot we see the killer staring at his own blood soaked hand, to which we zoomed in further to his hand. This changed the depth of field, as the area behind the hand was narrowed and brought into weaker focus, whilst the hand became clearer and as such more focused. The JVC was considerably more stable than the handy-cam and so this contributed to our preference of it. The primary bulk of our film (especially at the beginning) consisted of tracking shots of the killer, and so the added stability of the JVC's handle allowed for us to more easily follow our actors through the woods, without causing a disruptive shaky camera vibe, that could have very easily ruined our film.  



 


The handy cam was primarily brought into action due to a shortness of time on our hands to finish recording our footage. Although not as good as the JVC in terms of stability and quality, the handy cam was considerably more mobile, and as such allowed to film a multitude of footage with ease. The handy cam shun the most during the recording of our flashback sequence that we filmed on a separate day closer to the deadline than the rest of our footage. The flashback sequence was only a small number of shots that did not require the manual focus function of the JVC. The flashback was supposed to be surreal and because of this the handy-cams lack of stability was far less of an issue. Another feature that was not an issue was the handy-cams lower image quality than the JVC, due to us adding a directional blur to our flashback later in premier pro. All in all, whilst not as reliable as the JVC, the handy cam aloud for us to quickly film any remaining shots that we needed to get out of the way for sake of having enough time to thoroughly edit and finish our film

Though it played less of a role, we also used a voice recorder to record the dialogue that we used within our film. The recorder was a simple set up, that simply consisted of one button to begin recording and the same to stop. We found that the recorder was particularly sensitive to sound, which was both a blessing and a curse, as whilst it did clearly record our lines, it would also pick up lots of background noise, and as such we had to very often move around in order to find a quiet area. We chose with the sound that we recorded to make a confusing and cluttering effect with the lines, by overlaying portions of them on top of each other. We did consider adding a further echo to give a greater surreal feeling to our flashback sequence, but due to time constraints however, we were never able to do this. 

Software

The most common software that we found ourselves using was adobe premier pro, in order to edit our recorded footage of our film. The program aloud for us to import our recorded media cuts and then from there condense and alter them in order to produce our 3 minute film opening. Premier pros simple but efficient design allowed for us to do a multitude of different things to our footage, such as simple things like cutting clips to remove unnecessary segments for the sake of pacing or more complex things such as adding a darkened vignette around the boarder of our screen without being forced to use other more complex programs such as aftereffects or Photoshop.

On top of making cuts to condense our film, we also used premier pro's colour correction function in order to change our films tint. At first we were unsure of how to do this, but after some time and research via videos online we successfully learnt how to do it and added the dark blue tint (and yellow-brown tint for the flashback sequence) that you can see in our film to today. Through our research we learnt that simply clicking 2 buttons was responsible for this which further supports premier pro's ease of use for its users.





                        

We also decided that we wanted to add a darkened boarder to the edges of our film, known as a vignette, in order to give our film a darker, more edgy feel. We were familiar with how vignette's looked and felt within suspenseful movies, as we had seen many films including them, yet in truth we knew absolutely nothing about them. We had no idea how they were made, what their purpose was within a movie, and most importantly, how they could be successfully implemented within our film. It wasn't until our teacher explained to us how effective a darkened vignette would be within our movie, that we started to become drawn to idea of using one. After watching a few fairly brief YouTube videos, we worked out how we could add a vignette to our film, deciding that we would have the corners of the vignette the darkest, with sides of the screen a much more subtle fade.




Software Part II- After affects

Our run in with after affects was far more brief, as in truth we only used it to construct our company logo. After affects was relatively easy to understand and follow, and as such we were able to produce our logo in a very short allotted time. It also helps that our logo was a very simple design, consisting only of some writing over a jpg image that would fade in and out, and so it only took us a few attempts to perfect its intended design. I would talk about other things due to this being so brief, however this is honestly all that we did on after effects.

"Stock image of sun bear whilst
 I try to find my company logo"



"Stock image of sun bear whilst
 I try to find the picture of my logo"





 Research and planning

 As a tool to record our research and planning, we used Google's own blogging tool, blogger. Blogger allowed for us to continuously add more content on top of progressively improving the content of our research and planning from any location with an internet connection, due to its cloud data storage system. This was important as the process was over a long period and therefore the project was separated into different parts. Another feature of blogger is the ability to import photos and embed videos. This was useful as images helped assist us with our analysis of other media products and also helped to show our recce. With embedding videos, we were able to embed our preliminary task and also our main task. This is useful as it means that you do not have to leave the blog in order to access our media product.

For our location recce, we used the camera on our phones, due to us not needing high end equipment. This was to just give us an idea of what the location was like and any potential risks to put into the risk assessment, not in anyway something we intended to distribute.

Evaluation

For our evaluation, we made a video with the green screen for answering the question comparing what we had learned from the preliminary task to the main task.We then removed the green screen via the use of the ultra key in premier pro, which allowed us to play clips from our films to help with explaining our analysis. 

We shared the evaluation on the social media site Facebook, however we got little to no feedback, arguably making it a poor marketing decision, as we were unable to receive feedback. However the thought was still there at least.