Evaluation - Question 6

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

By doing this task we feel that we have developed a lot of skills and a better understanding of the basic technologies in the film industry that are used by creating our film opening. We didn't use much equipment for our film opening because of money purposes and time. Therefore, our film opening didn't look of the quality of a block buster film. However, with what we had I think the film opening turned out really well in terms of quality in the frame and sound. We used equipment such as a Canon camera, a monopod, a tripod, and computers with software. We were considering to use a mic for under the tunnel when filming as the diegetic sound was quite echoed however once we filmed the shots the sound was clear enough to understand and didn't sound too bad. I found that using the equipment was quite difficult due to it being heavy to hold which is why we tried to use as less as possible when filming. This aspect however did effect the quality of the final product in terms of stabilisation.

Camera

We decided to use this camera for our film opening because form doing our preliminary task we noticed that the camera quality can give a big effect on the look of a film. Therefore, for good quality we used a HD camera to make the film appear more cinematic. Advantages of using this camera were that it was easy to function, we had clear shots in our image and it had a built-in mic so it would record our diegetic sound. However, there were some disadvantages for using this camera such as the fact that it was heavy, the sound recorded a lot of background noise, and sometimes it would be out of focus so the shots looked blurry. We were considering to use an iPhone 6S for filming because its light, easy to handle & function, and you can still get good quality footage from it. However we could get even better quality from the camera so we chose to use it. We stored the footage onto an SD card so it was easily accessible. We were concerned about the lighting in the tunnel when filming because we were planning on filming when it became dark so we thought it might give an effect on the quality of the image. Yet the footage came out better than expected so this wasn't a problem. The main problem towards the camera we used was the focus for it. We struggled to always get the focus correct on some of the shots, especially the close-up shots, as when the actors moved the camera would go out of focus. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to film these shots again but its not a big problem as most of the shots a really clear. Overall I think it was definitely worth using this camera because the quality of the footage makes it much more like an actual film for people to watch and the audience are going to want to be able to see the image clearly.

Research and Planning

Blogger

Using blogger as a tool to plan and research made this task much easier to organise what we needed to do. As it is an online service, we could access it on any device making it easy to look back at what we have done. And it was also useful that our posts were all kept in the same place so it was easy to find and access. By doing the research and planning I think it made our film opening a lot better because we were more prepared and we looked at every aspect for our piece to make it the best it could be for example from content like the mise and shots to target audience and genre to help decide our narrative. Many of our ideas changed along the way due to not being able to use them and thinking of better ones. But overall this definitely helped us improve our work.

Computers
We used the internet and computers to help us research and plan. The internet allowed us access to lots of online resources like facts and figures and services such as YouTube and survey monkey for our questionnaire. By doing all our work on a computer, it made it quicker and easier to complete and easily accessible.

Construction

Monopod

When doing previous filming tasks, we noticed that an important aspect we needed to consider was stabilization for our footage. We thought that by using a monopod it would help us with stabilization when filming shots that involved movement of the camera. It did help us to reduce the shaky footage, however it didn't fully prevent this because by using the monopod and the camera we chose, it made the equipment heavy and more awkward to hold and keep still. Yet this only occurs during a small amount of the shots and isn't completely noticeable. Using the monopod did make filming a lot easier because it gave us more support to hold the camera. To help prevent the shaky footage we could have used other equipment such as a dolly however with not much of a budget and not much time we couldn't get or create one to use. On the other hand, we could have tried out holding the camera in different ways to give it more support and to prevent the shaking more.

Tripod

For some of the shots we did use a tripod as we were struggling with stabilisation for our shots, however we could only use it for still shots as the tripod is for fixed movement. Therefore, we used it for theses shots and it really made a difference to the stabilisation of the footage as it looked a lot better. Due to it being heavy and having too much equipment to carry, we stopped using the tripod and used the monopod instead for still shots by stretching it out to reach the ground and holding it to support it. We didn't find a tripod completely necessary for our film opening as we didn't use many shots necessary for it, however we still found it use full and we can understand it purpose for filming in the filming industry. 

Computers and Software

The editing software we used for our filming tasks were Sony Vegas Pro 13. Earlier on in the task we were struggling with creating our cuts because the computers we used weren't functioning properly. This caused a lot of issues with time because we lost some work that we had to redo. However, the computer was then replaced which was a lot faster and better at processing. The software was Alex's so I hadn't used it before but by doing this task I learnt a lot of aspects on how to use it and its functions. For example, when I made the transition where Pete walks from the car park to the park between the shots which I had never done before but I researched on how to do it and it came out successfully. I think that this software was really useful for our piece because it allowed us to use many ideas create much from it. We used this same software for creating our director's commentaries for our evaluation as well.

Transition:

To animate our introductions that included our institutional logo and film title, we used a program called Cinema 4D. Animating was quite hard as we needed to choose the right clips and pictures that we felt would be best to move around on screen. We had to edit, pan and crop all the pictures frame by frame to ensure the best quality came out. We edited it in 60 FPS for the best smoothness and movement of the intro. We then rendered it in 24 FPS which is standard film frame recording so it would match the rest of our film which is also rendered in 24 FPS that was made on Sony Vegas Pro 13.

Evaluation

Blue Yeti White Edition Microphone
For our director's commentaries, we needed to record a voice over which we did by using a microphone. This allowed us to record our voices then add them non-diegetically on top of the video. The mic we used was of high quality so our voices sound clear making it easier to listen to for our videos. Alongside this we used computers and the software 'Sony Vegas Pro 13' to create our director's commentaries.

Conclusion

We encountered many issues throughout this task with same that we did solve and some that we didn't. However, our film opening turned out well and I think we did well to direct the film at the right audience we created our film for and make the genre of our film obvious. We learnt a lot from doing this task and developed many skills and experience so we know what it really takes to create a film opening and how much there is to it. We learnt skills like using editing and animation software's, using camera equipment and we can now learn from the mistakes we made and improve on them for the future.