Eval question 6

Technology

Overview

Overall, my understanding and ability to use media technologies has improved. Mainly my efficiency in using Adobe Premiere Pro has gotten better and I'm editing videos faster. I also have a better understanding of Cameras and Microphones and their use on the field since the beginning of the course.

HardwareIn terms of hardware, my ability to use each piece effectively greatly increased throughout the project as I had little to no knowledge on how to correctly use each piece before hand.For filming we used a Canon 600d with a stock lens. This wasn’t too bad and a quick youtube tutorial taught be all I needed to know to film with it. What I found difficult about using this piece of hardware was its lack of flexibility when shooting film. The DSLR camera was primarily designed for still images and this was evident by it’s clunky focus adjustments and limited options for filming. The use of a good mic provided by RODE was necessary for filming at the location as it was in the middle of a windy area, I also used a wind sock to reduce the noise of the wind further which produced no peaking or wind noises in our final piece. However, the use of mics could have been improved through the use of a boom stick or close proximity mics for each of my actors, I mention this as behind our camera/mic was a stream which was very loud and was picked up during filming.Finally to keep our camera steady we used a standard tripod. It wasn’t very hard to use but as for improvements, if we were to have a Steadicam available I would have felt a lot more comfortable with moving shots and not losing overall quality due to a shaky camera movement.

Software

The editing software I used was Adobe’s Premiere Pro CC version 6.0 and 7.0. For the most part I knew how to use the software rather well but what did improve was my ability in using the software to spot mistakes and correct them more quickly while working resulting in faster editing times.I used premiere pro to colour balance all my shots as well as control the peaking of the mic through gain control and obviously cut together all my shots and add audio tracks and sound effects. I also turned slightly into the use of Audacity, a freeware audio editing application in order to try and ‘fix’ some imperfections in my audio track.

Audio

As previously mentioned I used the RODE mic for on location audio and then the limited effects in Premiere Pro to tweak it, also tried implementing Audacity edited clips into my final piece with little success. I also used audio effects and music sourced from the internet. From previous involvement in creating videos for the online streaming service ‘Youtube’ I was familiar with the music I was able to use for my final piece locating my music and audio from copyright free, royalty free and creative commons enabled libraries. The main one I used was Youtube’s very own music library as I knew I could use all of the sounds effects and music tracks their without infringing on any copyright laws. I was even able to educate my class on what they could and couldn’t use from this library and how to use it correctly (metioning composers and original authors if it was required under the creative commons agreement.)

r

Conclusion

In conclusion I had to use almost every piece of technology available to effectively create my final piece and each bit was vitally important to my final construction. Together with the use of the more modern technology (DLSR Cameras/RODE mics/Premeire Pro 7) and the use of other more traditional media (storyboarding and scheduling sheets) the final piece came together better than expected considering it was the

first ever live action construction I had created.