Evaluation question 6

Evaluation Question 6

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

How to use the camera

It is clearly shown that when I first used a camera in my preliminary task I had a lack of skills and understanding. There is a clear difference in the quality of my camera skills between the preliminary task and our final film.

For our final film we used a tripod as much as possible to give steady shots throughout our film. Also running with a camera in your hands keeping it steady is very difficult so we learnt that if we strapped the camera to the body of the runner it would give us a more steady shot.

Filming

We learned that keeping a plan is extremely important, and keeping the camera steady is a lot more important to the final product that you think. When we first filmed, a lot of our shots were shaky, so when we put them together it just looked messy and unprofessional. On top of this, we didn't get all the shots we needed, there were too many messy zooms which made it look like a home video rather than the more executed feel that we wanted, and there were little mistakes throughout our piece that we needed to change. We ended up re-filming, but we planned out in detail beforehand, so we knew what shots we needed to have and what things to look out for.

Editing

Having the change from Imovie to Final cut Pro was a huge aid for the editing process improving our film hugely. Using the Mac was not too difficult as it is similar to any other computer and final cut pro was very quick to learn. Researching some key things that were needed in our film made the process of learning a lot easier. However in some clips a lot of editing had to be done with sound effects and lighting and sound level. This was the most challenging to edit but with some research I managed to edit the clip so that we could use it in our film.

We also used adobe illustrator for our intro to our film. Again doing research before and some guidance from a graphics student meant that I could create a logo for our film which we all like.

My skills using the mac, final cut pro and illustrator have improved hugely due to the fact that before I had never used any of these technologies before and I can now film, edit and produce a film.

Editing the Bag Out

In the last scene of our film, the kidnapper is seen to be wearing a shoulder bag which has not been present in any other scenes and is a big continuity mistake. We needed to remove the bag from the scene, but could not re-film again it as Oscar who played the kidnapper, had to go back to boarding school and was no longer available.

So we had to experiment with different ways of editing. At first we tried covering the back through effects, by making the video really grainy, however this didn't match with the rest of our film and we decided against it. Later we found out you could Photoshop videos, so we spent three hours going frame by frame and editing the bag out. Unfortunately we couldn't find a way to upload the photoshopped video onto Final Cut Pro, which was the editing software we were using at the time. Despite seeking advice from multiple sources we just were unable to find a way, so had to leave the bag in.

Through that we learned how to use Photoshop and Final Cut Pro for editing, however for next year we should make sure we find out if it's possible to put Photoshopped videos into Final Cut Pro as we could use it without wasting time.

Editing the Bag Out - Before

Editing the Bag Out - Process

Editing the Bag Out - After