Evaluation Question 6

Throughout this project I have learnt many things regarding the technology we have used. One of the first things we learnt was how to use Blogger. I had not previously used a blog before so this was a new experience. It proved to be fairly easy to manage, however, and had no problems with it throughout the process. I will now separate what I have learnt into different sections.


Theory

I have learnt a lot about continuity in film and all of the main rules. These included:

• Match on action


• Shot reverse shot


• 180 degree rule
  

These all proved to be really helpful when filming our sequence as it made it look much more professional. I also learnt the invaluable benefit of preparing all of the necessary paperwork before going out on a shoot. The storyboards and shooting scripts that we drew up proved to make the filming process run smoothly.

Filming


I learnt new techniques regarding the camera including how to do a smooth pan and other camera movements such as tilts and arcs. I also learnt about the equipment itself, such as how long it takes to charge a battery for our Canon Mini HD camera and how to correctly assemble the studio lighting kit. I had lots of fun adjusting the strength of the light and testing different filters. In the end we settled for blue which reminded us of moonlight. To make the audio perfect in our shots, whoever was taking the shot wore a pair of headphones to hear exactly what would be heard on the film. This reduced the risk of a re shoot.

Location

Arguably the biggest lesson I learnt was to make sure you have all of the factors secured before committing to an idea. This was sadly the downfall of our first idea, 'The Streets Run Red', which was going to be filmed at a location that was unfortunately unavailable. This is why we chose to play it safe and shoot at Nick's house for 'The Case'.





Editing and Software


While non-linear editing on the program Adobe Premiere Pro I learnt how to :

• Cut shots into segments using the razor tool


• How to use a vast majority of the audio and visual effects, i.e the three way colour corrector which I used to adjust brightness, contrast and saturation.

To create the logo for our production company we used Fireworks which is part of the Adobe CS3 package. I also learnt how to take a font from the Internet and install it onto the computer. We made our titles with this font and made them move across the screen using the motion keyframes on our timeline. This meant that we could accurately decide how far they were to fade.

Overall I have learnt a lot about the technology surrounding producing a film over the past couple of months.