Media Question 6

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

We have learnt that the cost of producing a film is massive. Especially if you want to make a good one. The technology that we were using to create our opening sequence was a digital video camera and a tripod. Obviously as a school group we did not have the backed up funding to use special affects and next generation computer editing. However lots of good films such as This Is England (by Warp Films) have been created using digital cameras and we should certainly not under estimate the quality of product that a digital camera can produce.

Secondly we have used a editing tool called iMovie to edit our film. This is by far the best software to use for the editing as it is a predecessor of Final Cut Studio and therefore is incredibly intuitive and easy to use. From iMovie we edited all the scenes and effects as well as opening credits as well as ambient, diegetic and non diegetic music. After this through iMovie we uploaded our movie onto YouTube.

Overall we have learnt that using digital cameras for filming as well as a tripod and iMovie for editing can be very easy. Once you no how to use them, however we found that using a digital camera required allot of nurturing. For instance we had to re record allot of scenes as they either would not film, or upload we also had problems with battery life on the video camera. Once had uploaded our movie on to iMovie we had no outstanding problems with editing and we found that the editing process was quite simple and quick.

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Especially at the start of the filming we had allot of problems with sound. At the bottom of this road you can see the road. And unfortunately on the day of our filming this road was quite busy and the camera picked up all the noise. Our group felt that this would ruin the eerie scene that we were trying to create. I mentioned previously in research how using ambient noises can help to add to the scene. And for some of the editing we had to add diegetic ambient noises to the scene and mute the real sound that we recorded.

We also found that as we were recording the digital camera picked up allot of light in some scenes and not others. This made each scene very different with lighting and, mad it look like we had recorded the film at different times of day. So to combat this, whilst we were editing in iMovie, we had to add an effect to the scene to make the whole film look more like late evening. And because the specific genre we are trying to replicate is horror thriller we thought this added to the scene brilliantly.

This area was the hardest pointed we recorded at. This was because we shot two types of scene her. One was were we had to use the tripod to follow me as I ran down the hill. And the second was where we swung round my head with the camera. Bothe of these shots were very difficult because the ground is slanted. This made it almost impossible to keep the camera level for the whole shot. Fortunately after a while we got the hang of it and we managed to get some good shots. However when we looked at the shots in iMovie we still noticed some slight errors that did not match the filming quality of the rest of the sequence. To sort this out we used the camera smoothing tool smoothing the shots as much as possible.

Above is the most used area in the entire sequence. This was where we recorded Tony dying and Hugh trying to help him and find out what happened to him. As far as recording goes here the ground was level so we could easily use the tripod and the scene where Hugh sees somebody walking towards him was not a problem because we were trying to imitate the killer walking towards him. Unfortunately because we shot so many scenes here we had problems with continuity. We had to keep turning back on our shots because we noticed that we may have shot the same tree twice. To get around this we cut the shots more frequently in iMovie and also re shot the scne on sight.

If you look towards the bottom of the editing shots on this screen shot you can see a red squiggly line, this basically shows you where we have used the camera still and smoothing effect to combat any mistakes in this particularly hard shot to film.

You can also see blue boxes where we have added Introductory Credits, or added an effect to the scene. These could also show that we have muted or added sound to the scene. The grey blocks in-between each individual shot are cuts. You will notice that each one resembles an invisible cut apart from one. This is the first full cut you can see were we have added a blur effect to the cut Showing how the character in the scene may feel like.

In the above screen shot you cannot see much difference rom the previous screen shot. However in the bottom left hand box you can see the raw filming material. Below each shot you will see a yellow bar and this shows the material we have used in the actual movie from each shot. We decide what material to use depending on it’s quality in filming, lighting and sound. To the right of this box you can see the box that allows us to choose an effect to use in each cut or shot. Above in the top left hand box you can see a yellow ring around one of the shots. This shows the cut we are currently editing or trimming, and just to the left of this you can see a green bar below the shots. This shows were we have added ambient noise from iMovie, because we thought that the real noise did not work very well. The top right box gives us a small animation of the actual film that allows us to see what we have done with our editing.

Above you can see much similar to before, but I think her you can see much better how we have darkened the shot You cannot actually see this effect in the shots apart from a little black icon. But on the right hand side in the animation window you can see that the scene is much darker than it should be.

In this screen shot you can also see where we have added some more ambient noises to the scene. These are shown by the green bar below each shot. You may also notice that the cuts for this scene are quite often, this was to combat the continuity issues.

My last screenshot highlights the fact that we are uploading a video from the video camera. This took a while because we shot our video in HD and we had to carry out this same process to put our video on YouTube. In the animation box you can see part of the scene that we are inputting into iMovie. This is much brighter than the shot in the last screenshot. This is because we have not added the night time affect to it yet, this highlights some of the problems we had with lighting at some points whilst recording. One last thing you can see in this screen shot s the box that allows us to choose our font for the title of the movie. Once we have chosen the style we want we then input it into the scene and this can be scene on the shots box. You can see a black box with a blue bar above it. The blue bar indicates what we want written into the shot and the back shot shows the colour of the final shot in the film. The final shot in the film we did not record ourselves, we input it as a title from iMovie itself.