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

Camera:

• Even though I wasn’t filming and not using the camera, I still picked up tips and skills on how to use the camera and its settings/buttons etc. I learnt that my partner Robert (the film editor) used the camera on manual mode as then we could manually use the settings and focus lens to our liking.

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• This especially helped us as most of our opening sequence is in a dark room with one photography light so we could manually adjust the settings to the appropriate surroundings which enhanced our film.

Tripod:

• Robert and I were lucky enough to use Roberts dads advanced tripod which was larger and smoother when adjusting the camera mounted on top. Using a tripod makes it easier to keep the footage shaky free and in level so it’s not dropping side to side.

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• A spirit level metre is built into the tripod which is very handy of making sure the camera is level so the footage is perfectly in line. Overall the tripod made the footage way less shaky, more accurate and took the weight of the camera off our hands.

Microphone:

• Another piece of equipment we were very lucky to use was again Roberts’s dads over the shoulder professional microphone (which I used as I was in charge of the sound). This microphones audio input lead would usually be inserted the AUX slot on the camera however the microphone didn’t have an Aux lead.

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• so we separately recorded the audio on the microphones mp3 radio device which had an micro SD inserted so it could be easily transferred to a computer then onto the Adobe Premiere Pro editing software.

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• As the audio was recorded separately from the camera recording, I had to press the record button on the microphone at precisely the same time as when Robert started recording the camera so the audio synced with the video when we began to edit it on the computers.

Editing:

• Although I wasn’t in charge of the editing, I learnt many techniques and effects from workshops like Sian Roe coming in to teach us title effects and also just ourselves in our groups developing our skills. Robert and i found out ourselves how to get the typewriter effect for the titles at the end of our opening sequence which looked brilliant.

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• Also I learnt how to import footage , how to use after effects , how to cross cut , how to insert sound effects and hot to edit clips to create a fast paced atmosphere for our film.

Backup

• As me, Robert, and the two actors were filming in the drama studio for several hours, this meant the equipment was getting a really good use so the batteries in the microphone and camera were really getting worn out. Especially the camera, which was running out of charge quickly all the time.

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• So I learnt how important it is to not keep the camera on when not using it and to make sure it’s fully charged before filming. Also from this experience of filming, I learnt that it is so important as well to make sure you have a spare memory card and camera just in case any technology goes wrong or gets filled up with memory.

Sound:

• As I was in charge of the sound, I have learnt a lot throughout the experience of creating the sound for our opening sequence. One problem we had was that when we were transferring the mp3 files over to the computer, we heard little radio signal backing sounds in the background noise of the sound files which was really annoying as it was really noticeable.

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• So what I did was I went onto an audio editing programme called Audacity, imported the mp3 files over and removed the high frequency radio wave sounds from each sound file we wanted to include in our opening sequence.

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• After the removing of the unwanted sound was done, I then easily imported the improved files back into adobe premiere and added them in sync to the video. I also learnt how to insert sound effects for the violent punching in our film which enhanced the action scenes and made them sound more believable.

Learning from my mistakes:

• As our editing files were several gigabytes large, at times, the computers at school found it a struggle to cope with the editing we wanted to produce so the computers resulted in freezing and crashing which ended up in our work being lost or damaged/corrupted.

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• This made me learn the importance of constantly saving my work after every five minutes just to make sure my work was safely stored on the computer. I also stored a copy of the edited piece on my memory stick so I could edit the work on other computers.