Evaluation - Question 6

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

Before we started filming (in preproduction) none of us knew what to expect in terms of technology. This is because none of us had done media studies before therefore had no experience in any form of camera work. The only experience we had was the fact that i'd been on a film set once due to the fact I was helping out a friend and even then I was only a runner therefore had no job that required me to us any form of technology other than a kettle! So in preproduction we only had the guidance of the tutor about some of the technologies to use and other than that it was a use what is available kind of job. But we had no idea what to expect or what to do. However the research part of it we already knew about using modern technologies such as the internet and blogger to research an publish what we researched. But using blogger taught us a lot of how to present our work online and it was very beneficial  In production it was a bit different as we sort of learnt as we went along. For example if a shot didn't look right we'd try again or try something different. But we were in a similar boat to the preproduction as we weren't experienced and didn't know what we were doing. However in postproduction we knew a lot more. Two of the group had previously edited on Final Cut. And I personally had a lot of experience on editing from iMovie to Adobe Premiere so I had an idea about what I was doing. But just because we knew what to do didn't affect the amount of work we did as we all made sure everyone did a bit of editing and camera work to gain experience so next time when we come to make a film we won't be sat here saying that we have no experience as we do have experience. Some of the decisions we did make though that affected the film were having the experienced people do the tricky shots and edits for example the green-screen was done by Darren as he had an idea about what to do and how to go about doing it but other than that we were all kind of in the deep end so we made the decision to all do everything together and equally that way it's fair.

We did everything in preproduction and post production on an Apple iMac. This was good as I have my own Apple Macbook therefore I already was experienced in using a mac so it was easy to research what I needed to and know what ways to navigate around the computer.

When researching for the film we used the internet and we used a mac to search the web and find out what we needed to know. And when presenting our research we used blogger. Personally I had never used blogger before and I found it was a very effective way of presenting my work, this is because blogger allows you to put several different media on it from videos to links to other websites which made everything so much easier to show and explain.





When filming our film we used a Sony Handicam which we had never used before, therefore didn't know what to expect. One thing we did learn from using it is it isn't that good of a quality so next time we would prefer to use a camera that is much better quality and can do more in terms of the cinematography.



In post production to edit our film we used Final cut Express. This was because we didn't have any other software on the college computers, we only had this therefore our options were limited. But this wasn't a problem because it was very easy to use and navigate around. I had experience in using it therefore when I was editing I found it very easy to do so.







When I was creating the Title sequence for the film I was not in college therefore had no access to final cut express as I did not own it. So this was a problem. One thing I did have on my MacBook was Adobe
Premiere and I had used it before therefore it wasn't hard to create the title sequence. One problem we were concerned about was if it was possible for the two programs to work together and we found out it was so it was okay.




And finally when presenting my evaluation questions I used Microsoft powerpoint which I am very familiar with already so using it wasn't difficult.










Personally I feel editing on both pieces of software was very effective as it was much easier to do than I thought it was going to be. Especially creating the title sequence it was so easy to do and we ended up creating something that looked really good. using Final Cut was also very easy to use also and editing the film is one of the most important facts of about how successful it is so having these technologies it was very helpful. Also using blogger was very easy and made explaining things was much more better with the fact I was allowed to use different media formats to explain what i'm talking about. However there are a few things that were not successful with the new technology and this was the camera, I feel that it was too low of a quality and I feel that we could have done so much better with a better camera but then again we only had that camera to use and we had no other options.

So I have learnt an awful lot with preproduction about researching with blogger and the internet. I will definitely use blogger again when I do another film. Also I have learnt a lot more about editing on both final cut and Adobe Premiere that I will use next time.