QUESTION 6

Research - Understanding our GenrePart of the main learning process came from our research. From looking into similar genres to editing techniques, researching into title sequence conventions gave us the knowledge that we needed to create our outcome in the first place. Pitching also comes under research as it gave us feedback for our main idea and gave us a chance to research certain aspects of our film that we might have missed.

Blogging Blogging was a large part of our research as it gave us the opportunity to store all of our pre-production in one area so we could easily access it during production or post production. This helped us organise our time and order my work so that we could find everthing in one place.

Technologies - Gathering Equipment Our equipment was one of the very first things that we picked up on in our prelim. We didn’t necessarily use the same camera or techniques but the tripod remained consistent and we still had to be conscious of our lighting and sound.

TripodI was used to the tripod as I did photography, so composing shots using the tripod - composition, rule of thirds and depth of field all come naturally to me when using a tripod and bringing a shot together. However, panning, tracking and tilting was new to me as a photographer as movement was never really a traditional part of photography. This showed me how movement can draw your audience in and change the meaning of a shot by adding movement to create a more dynamic atmosphere.

MarantzThe Marantz microphone is a device that the microphone actually attaches to with a cord. To record dialogue we used a boom that the cord would attach to, meaning we could get the mic as close to the characters as possible. However shooting in windy conditions meant that we picked up feedback from the wind - we used a deadcat microphone to shield our mic from the wind to pick up better audio.

CameraThe camera that we used to film is a Canon DSLR 650D with a Tamron 18-270mm wide angle lens. I’ve had this camera for 10 months so I was used to where the settings were, and understood the right exposure for our shots. This helped our product come together as the filming process was quicker and more effective because of my knowledge of cameras.

Process - Refining our MediaAfter research and pre-production, we moved onto technologies, then we moved onto post-production, which is also known as the process. This is where we learnt editing techniques, transitions, how to create our own logos and so on. Watching our footage back was our first step, then we began to make a rough cut.

Photoshop/IllustratorAs a photographer, I understand the elements of photoshop as I have been working with the software for a few years now, so when I was creating the logo and title, I could spend more time on different editing softwares such as After Effects and Premiere Pro - for editing our footage.

Premiere/After EffectsOur time was organised poorly when it came to editing and creating titles for our film. We had spent too much time on transitions and not enough time on our titles, meaning that they came out very basic. To improve this we are going to add transitions to our titles and use a more conventional font - something that correlates with action and sci-fi.

Construction - Putting it all togetherUploading our video and sound was an easy process, however it was difficult to organise some of our sound as the soundtrack was the baseline and would sometimes overwrite our ambient sounds. This is why we ended our music abruptly so that it wouldn’t overpower our dialogue. The transitions would take longer to render affecting the video is it would be cut short, so some clips had to be uploaded more than once. I now have a better understanding of Premiere and next year I will focus on using my skills in other Adobe products. Colour grading and looking at our levels of sound were all things that we could have overlooked in the past but we made sure that we understood how to control these elements of our film, creating a polished final outcome.