Evaluation Questions- Question 6

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

Software

We used a Mac to construct our product. This is because of the aesthetics a Mac has, which are better than other computers or laptops. For example Macs have bigger screens and are more stylish in the fact that they look very modern which helps their marketing.

Premier Pro was the main software we used to produce our film. Before starting this task I had never heard of Premier Pro and didn't know how to use it but from using this software throughout the process I have learnt many things such as how to import footage and audio, edit footage and audio and different editing tools for example:
Track Select Tool which moves all the clips at the same time so you don't have to move them individually
Rate Stretch Tool which changes the duration of a clip, stretches it out and speeds it up. I have also learnt how to move clips around on the timeline to put them in the right place.

Rendering is another technique I learnt, which makes your footage run smoothly and make it a better quality. If there is a red bar above your edit it needs to be rendered.en it is rendered the bar goes green.This was one of the most important things I learnt because without this, the footage and sound would look and sound quite jumpy and wouldn't have smooth transitions from clip to clip. Because we wanted to create a very definite contrast between the scenes with the antagonist and the victim, we used effects on premier pro. We used a dark effect for the antagonist and bright effect for the victim because it shows the difference in their personalities (the antagonist has a dark, sinister personality and the victim has a pure and innocent personality.)

The last type of software we used is After Effects. We used After Effects to create our logo. We watched various videos on Youtube that showed you different examples of logos and chose the one we wanted to do ourself. We chose quite a simple one where the title comes in from the left side and just does a full 360 degree turn. This is because our title for the film is very simple (black background and white text) so we wanted to follow this theme. I followed the Youtube video step by step and just changed it where I needed to to make it the way we wanted it.

Due to some issues we faced with our sound, for example we talked over a lot of the clips, we had to mute the sound, meaning our footage was silent. Therefore we had to record some of the sound ourself using the voice recorder but we also used a website called www.freesound.org. Here we found sound clips of finger tapping, the sound of a chair moving out, smashing glass, police sirens (we obviously couldn't record the noise of sirens and glass ourself.) On this website there is a variety of clips to choose from which people have recorded themselves. Prior to the task of constructing our product I had never heard of this website, but I found it very useful and I can imagine me using it sometime in the future.

Filming

During our filming process we developed our knowledge on the use of camera's and voice recorders.
Due to the lady playing the police woman leaving before we recorded her speaking, we used the voice recorder and recorded our teacher instead. We also used it to record a voiceover of the girl talking about what happened to her and some non diegetic sound such as leaves rustling and running. I had never used a proper voice recorder before and would usually just use my phone so I learnt how they worked and what buttons to press. I also learnt that they are very sensitive and pick up noise very easily. We learnt this the hard way as we couldn't use the recordings of the running, and leaves rustling as the recorder picked up the wind more prominently and we couldn't hear what we actually wanted to record. We therefore used freesound.com for the non digetic sound. From the recording going wrong, it made us realise that when we filmed our voiceover of the teacher that we would have to go in a very quiet place to make sure the recorder didn't pick up any background noise. In the end we decided to film it in the music recording studio which was the most appropriate place to film as all sound from outside is blocked out.

I also learnt how to use the camera properly to its full potential. I learnt about different shot types and how to make that shot look effective. For one of our shots we needed to film an extreme close up of the actor's feet walking down the corridor. We didn't know how to do this without the camera looking shaky so one of us sat on a wheeling, office chair filming and the other pushed them along behind the actor. This proved to be quite difficult as the wheelings weren't rolling in a straight line and it made a lot of noise so you couldn't hear the footsteps, which was one the main features we were trying to show. After explaining this to our teacher she told us that we could of had a dolly which you can put the camera on and it moves smoothly. I had never heard of a dolly before but I now know for in the future if this situation comes up again.

Research and Planning

Before filming our product we had to research other products and analyse them. Furthermore we researched target audience and, conventions and representation of the thriller genre.

We planned our film itself using a variety of methods:

• Storyboards
• Script
• Production Schedule
• Filming Schedule
• Location Recce- here we went to our location prior to filming. We chose an area of the school that we thought looked most like a prison and then took photograph's of the different parts of the area, e.g the corridor and the 'interview room', using an iPhone 5S camera.
• Pitch- we created our pitch on Powerpoint and then uploaded it to a website called slideshare. 

We used blogger throughout the research and planning process and also the evaluation process. From using blogger I have learnt how to set up my own foundation portfolio and create blogposts within this portfolio. Also I learnt how to imbed videos or slideshare powerpoints into a blog post. Throughout the process I have created blogs about the planning of our film, research of the genre I am focusing in on (thriller) and the evaluation of our product.