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

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

Technological Equipment 

Dolly Tracking pod

The Dolly tracking pod was a piece of equipment we borrowed form sixth form, we used it for mainly shots in the underground when Amy's character was walking to the underground and then the tracking shot that lead to her meet up with the 'Gang'.

It was useful in being a general place to put our tripod on and be able to use easier to move it around and was useful in the planning of how to film the scene even though we didn't end up using it in the end due to technical issues.

Unfortunately when actually being used practically we didn't use the tracking pod for generally what it was meant to be used for, we found that when tracking Amy walking because of the floor in the underground being uneven and bumpy the effect of the tracking pod didn't work how we hoped it would. The product footage of using the dolly tracking pod was very bumpy and shaky, not smooth and clean how we hoped it would turn out; To over come this in the end the group made the decision to use the small hand held camera to track Amy walking with instead, which was more smooth and able to keep up with her walking pace more as the tracking pod didn't keep up very well. 

Tripod

One of the main pieces of technology we used was the tripod, which was a key essential for our filming and a piece of equipment we used every time filming, we often brought 2 tripods as we had 3 camera's and two of them would be on tripods.

Tripods are very good at holding the camera still and keeping sure that they won't move around and will be able to achieve a still shot, with them we were able to achieve still shots when running, in the underground as well as achieving smooth tilt shots and slight pans in two separate scenes of the opener. It was useful when two of use were acting at one point as it meant that we didn't need to do after starting to record apart from telling them about the framing of where they stand and directing them through the camera lens.

There weren't many problems with using the tripods in our opener, they were very easy to use although we kept tripping over them due to not watching where we were going. The only limitation is that they aren't as free to use as hand holding a camera, but the pro's usually outweigh this with a really good still shot.

We had 2 canon camera around the same make/model

Throughout our opener we mainly used two Canon camera's that were generally the same make, only my one had a pop out screen and a few more features being slightly newer. 

Generally all the filming was done throughout the DSLR camera's and mostly on these two canon camera's and was used for a large portion of the opener. These camera were very useful as they both had HD filming on and therefore made our whole film look better with the same quality throughout, they were both very easy to use and fitted on the tripods well, all round being a straight forward piece of technology.

A few problems we had were that because of the size and weight of the camera's they weren't extremely practical for hand held filming and they didn't have automatic filming focus, which made it harder to hand held film something. We overcame this problem by using the camera below, which was a hand held sony camera making filming a lot easier as the camera was small and compact to use for self filming, tracking and running. 



handheld camera

The handheld camera was actually very useful for times when the big DSLR camera's weren't very viable to use, we used this camera in the underwater looking shot with the bowl and also when there was a tracking shot with Amy's character in the underground walking. 

It was very useful as when we found it difficult with the bigger cameras the smaller one was good to use for hand held things and moving scenes, such as in the underground tracking. The camera was efficient easy to handle and easy to use so therefore was a pro when filming all day. 

The limitation of using this camera was even though it was very easy to use and was actively good, there seemed to be a slight difference in quality of footage after watching it back on the iMac's, it looked slightly less quality than the DSLR's which were both HD filming. We found that this was only an issue in one shot of the 180º rule in the underground where it switched form a DSLR camera to the small hand held camera, and in the end we decided to remove it form the sequences as the difference in quality looked out of balance.

We used the monopod in our research before we started filming, when we had the idea of handheld filming and a possible running scene with the runner holding the camera themselves.

The monopod was useful in filming Amy walking for the underground scene, we used the small digital camera attaching it onto the monopod so we could walk with it easier and be able to hold it better in the squabble/pushing scene. The monopod allowed us to film a close up of the angry/pushing scene without getting too much into it that we ruined the scene by intruding.

There wasn't really a limitation of using the monopod, but we found that when I tried to run whilst holding the camera on the monopod myself it didn't work as well as we wanted so we decided to scrap that in our story board and come up with the new idea of the corridor trippy scene.

 

Online and Computer Programs

Youtube was the platform we would use to share our opener and upload it onto and share our video so we could get feedback easier.

This site was useful in the way of it being a platform to upload the film on in good quality and also ways of getting good feedback from multiple people without having to get them into sixth form or  show them on a memory stick, it was quick, easy and efficient to use.

iMovie 8.0/9.0 was used in editing a huge majority of our opener, it was the main editing software we used and was where we completed the project of our film 'Paranoia' in. Available at school we used this software to upload content, select footage, sequence it, edit it all together and finally complete our opener on.

This software was useful for the edition effects it had as well as the sound effects and music to create the suspenseful atmosphere for our opener.

This is actually a different iMovie from the gold badged iMovie above, it is the newer edition of iMovie, its slightly more advanced so there is more you're able to do with the footage on this edition. I asked the group if I could take home some of the footage from the last scene in the corridor to edit when I was at home, as I have this version on my iMac. 

It was useful in allowing me to be able to do certain things we couldn't do at school but really wanted in our opener finale, I was able with cut away tool (on this version) to use a green/blue screen selection enabling there to appear there were two people in the same same corridor at one shot (below). 

There wasn't any limitations of using this version of iMovie only pro's as it could do a bit extra than the ones at school.

One of the times this version of iMovie was useful, was the double vision

Using blogger was the online platform for writing our coursework on to be able to blog and document our journey as we formed new ideas, filming, planning and editing our work together for the opener. 

This app/site was good at me being able to express my thought and the processes of thinking I had as well as my group in the post production of the opener, also in the the documenting of editing and how we got to where we are in the opener.

The app/site was generally very easy to execute and was an efficient in being able to write my coursework on.

The messenger app was the platform we used for all of our planning we did leading up to our film, on here we would send pictures of our work, share/form ideas as well as plan days to work on filming and editing at school. This was our organisation means for post production.

This app was extremely useful in being able to have a way to contact everyone at once and be able to organise things efficiently and effectively so we didn't waste any planning, filming or editing time. We used this as a way of communication throughout most of the opener as well as texting sometimes and speaking in sixth form, it  was very handy and easy to use.

There weren't really any limitations apart from some group chat spam with Emoji's *sigh*.