Evaluation Question 6

Question 6 – What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The technologies I used in the editing process were a Canon XHAI camera, battery, tripod, video tape, a lens cap, and a LaCie for storage. I learnt from the camera which was used, that you have to be very careful when carrying it around, and you always have to put down the LED screen before moving it anywhere as it can easily break if you happen to bang into something. So with this I had to be very careful when moving it anywhere. The camera is needed whilst filming as it helps you to see what you are actually filming, rather than relying on the actions of you actor/actress, as not watching them through the LED screen, would mean you would not be sure about what is actually going to show up on camera, so for this a camera is very important. Also there are zooming tools on the camera which is useful as well as the autofocus or manual focus. We used autofocus as it saved us time, as the amount of time we had was limited. What I learnt about the battery is that when taking it out of the camera you have to be very careful when doing it, as if you do not, it can just pop out and fall on the floor, which could damage it, and this would not be useful for your filming. The battery is needed when coming to filming, as it is what powers your camera and if you are not using a battery whilst actually moving around your camera your camera will not work as it will not turn on. What I learnt about a tripod is that it is useful for keeping your camera steady, it also helps you get low angle shots, high angle shots, and panning shots when filming. The spirit level on the tripod helps to focus the camera, keeping it steady, and if this is not fixed, when coming to watching back your film, you will see that the image that is there is not straight and out of place, so a tripod is helpful and needed for all of these reasons when filming. A video tape saves your work that you do when filming, and it can also be used when digitising your film onto the computer for editing, which is why it is needed. However, when putting in the tape you have to be careful not to damage it and same when taking it out as well. A lens cap is needed because it can help you not to get the actual lens of the camera dirty or broken, so it is useful in these areas, but when filming you have to take it off as if you do not all you will end up seeing is a black screen. And last of all the LaCie is the place where you save your video, and this is there so you can watch your film, because if it is not there you will not be able to see your film to edit it, which is a reason why it is needed.

The filming techniques I learnt and used whilst filming was the rule of thirds, which is when the screen is divided into nine parts and the four golden points is where you put the most important parts of the image, it is also the natural way to view an image. This was used in our production in the shot with the teddy in the foreground and the girl in the background blurred, making a more interesting shot. The 180 degree rule, which is where two people are having a conversation opposite each other, and when it comes to filming you have to make sure these people do not switch sides, and also that the camera stays on the same side of the line. This rule was used in our shot for when the girl was “reading a magazine” and the sister was checking on her. Continuity is used with match on action. Match on action is when something is happening in a shot, and a cut happens and the same thing has to be going on in another shot. This was used in our film when the girl was going to get her shoes from underneath her bed. We had to get the girl to walk away from the mirror, and then do it again for the next shot where she is nearer to the bed, this helps the continuity in a film, and continuity is where a film flows well despite the cuts. Action/reaction shots is when something happens and a reaction is given. So for example in our film the girl heard her sister coming so she had to jump into bed and her sister peeped through the door, for an action/reaction shot to happen we had to film the sister coming in and the girls reaction for the shot of the sister walking in and we had to repeat those same actions for the girls reaction to her sister coming in. Total shots is where the whole of a person is shown on camera. In our film we did this for the girl exercising. This was to show her ballet moves in detail. Different angles is when you film something in different angles, so for example in the film we did, we filmed her getting out the shoes from one angle, and then we did it from another angle. The second angle looked good and so did the first one, so we put them together and it gave a better effect, making it useful for us and good viewing for the audience. The weather can be a problem when filming no matter if sunny or rainy. The sun can ruin the lighting and the rain can spoil the camera and the tripod. Luckily for our film, on the outside shot it was good weather for filming, as it was not too sunny and it was not raining either. When it comes to changing in location, you have to be careful with the equipment, in our case we had to close the legs of the tripod, and close the LED screen on the camera to avoid them breaking if we banged into something, so doing that provided us from making any accidents, when changing location from the set to outside.

When actually constructing the media product we needed some editing software for the film to be complete and so used Adobe Premiere to help us. This is useful as I learnt that it has loads of tools to help you edit and make your film look great once completed. Some of the tools that we used were the razor tool for cutting up our film into pieces to be ready to edit. But before all this we had to digitize our film onto the computer, which was done by putting a usb into the computer connected to the camera, once this had been done, we had to then capture our film onto Adobe, and save it onto a LaCie drive. Once this had been done we were ready to edit our film. We did this by cutting our film into different sections with a razor tool, after this we found out best rushes and used the selection tool to drag and drop them to one side of the time line with the ones we did not need to the other side of the timeline, in case we decided to use them later. We then organised which order would look best to have our rushes in and the hand tool helped with this by letting us drag left and right. When finally in order, we then started cutting the film again with the razor tool to fix continuity etc. and the zooming tool helped with this, as it helped us cut at just the right moment to make the film look good. When all this was done and we decided that the best shots we had were used we deleted the ones that we did not need. After this we put in some transition effects, like dissolves to make the film have a better effect. When we completed this a soundtrack was put in, but before this was done free copyright free music had to be found. We found this on a website and we downloaded a couple from there trying the best ones. Eventually two were found, and we used them by fitting them into our timeline at the correct moments.

Problems that occurred whilst doing our filming were location problems, as we had to switch our location from a house, to a leisure room to a media studio. This was as the house could not be used due to work being done, so we re drafted the story to make it fit what we had available, which we thought was a leisure room, however, we had received incorrect information about this and it was not free when we needed it, so we ended up going back to our original story and we used the media studio and set it up like a bedroom instead, resolving our problem. Another problem we faced was when the sister was coming up the stairs, this was as the stairs that we had available looked like school stairs from a high shot, so instead, we used a lower shot but still from the top of the stairs, which helped. Trying not to see certain things in the mirror was another issue, because we had to close the curtains so we could not see the school chairs in the background, and also we had to make sure that the camera did not show up in the mirror. This problem was resolved by us standing to the corner of the mirror where it could not be seen, and doing a panning shot of the girls make up from there.

Overall, I have learnt a lot about technologies from the process of constructing this product, as I have found out valuable things when coming to film making. Also, I have faced problems which were resolved and this will help me to learn from them when coming to filming again.