Evaluation Question 6

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

Through making this product I have learnt loads about technologies. I have learnt how to use them, when they are effective and have enhanced our piece through their use.

Technologies used:

Equipment: Camera/Lighting/Tripod/ Shotgun Mic/ Headphones

IT: PC and Mac/ Premiere Pro/After Effects/Social Media/LiveType

What have I learnt?

I am not going to focus on all aspects of the different technologies I have used but the ones where I think I have learnt the most.

Lighting was a key learning point. I learnt how to use three-point lighting to create different moods and shadows, as well as to get rid of grain on the camera. This was very important for our project with all the shadows involved.

We used Adobe premiere pro on the PC to edit.

I learnt a lot of things on it, the most significant being:

Animatic: We learnt how we could successfully use an animatic to edit around to make sure our shots were all in the right place. However we didn’t use it throughout the whole process because our sequence had changed so much. Therefore this helped us to see how we should have updated the storyboard as we went along, but it still helped a lot. Here is a commentary explaining more on what we used the animatic for:

Cutting down clips:  We cut down clips and took the best bits from them so that shots didn’t linger and the continuity worked. For example the match-on-action shot of the man taking the glass was cut down both ways so that the character grabbed the glass as soon as his hands reached it in the previous shot. Similarly this was applicable with the shot-reverse shot of the man walking into his front room from the back and then the front.

Grading: I learnt how to make the colours of the film more blue, to seem colder. We used a clour wheel to achieve this.

Before and After (Blue Colour Grading)

ProCamp: We made the shots darker using this. It was especially useful for the shadow. This is shown in the split screen shot below.

We also used LiveType on the Apple Mac to create animated titles although the exporting took a while as the titles looked pixelated on Premiere which taught me it is important to leave time for technical issues such as this which luckily we did.  Similarly with After Effects I learnt how to create an effective blood splat our film. This is a great moment in the film which will hopefully get a great audience reaction.

We were able to watch our animatic on YouTube on our actual shoot to remind ourselves of what each shot was meant to look like which was very useful.

Would I do anything differently?

Labelled the captured shots more clearly as we had a few issues with these.

Some of the shots could be more still and the focus pull could be a little clearer.

Used the animatic more to help us while editing.

Used less unnecasary layers as it complicated the editing.

Used the headphones more to check what sound was being recorded.

To conclude I have learnt that these technologies are a vital part of film-making and have learnt how to use them to create a good film.