Evaluation Question 6

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

During our production of our thriller opening we used a variety of technology in order to get the most effective opening as possible. Whilst producing our product we also were able to improve some aspects of our opening which helped it look more effective. Here are some of the technologies we had used;

Camera:

The camera we used to film our opening was my camera and it is Canon 1300D. I chose this camera over the school cameras because my camera had much higher quality, allowing us to get clear and crisp close up and extreme close ups of 'Lydia's' face and the props she was using, for example; her phone, her artwork etc. As it was higher quality it made the opening look more realistic and effective, the sound quality was also a high quality, meaning we were able to hear clearly what our characters were saying to each other, in order for the dialogue to make sense for the audience. In addition to this my camera is quite light for a DSLR this meant that it was portable, which made it easier to take it from location to location; The two different lenses, actual camera and leads all fit in my camera bag which was easy to carry around with me. Moreover, as it was my own camera I felt more comfortable using it as I knew how it worked and how to change the lenses. Throughout the filming of our opening I learnt that the use of different lenses made an effect on the quality of the shots, for example; when I filmed a shot in the park of 'Mia' walking towards ('Lydia') the camera I used the larger lens, this is because it was able to zoom in more onto 'Mia' as she is a further distance away. This was effective because it allowed the audience to have a better view of the 'mysterious dark figure' that is walking towards them (the camera).

Editing Software:

After filming our thriller opening we moved onto editing it, for this we used two software's which were IMovie and Final Cut Pro. IMovie was successful because we were able to insert clips, cut them and put them together to make them flow well. In addition to this IMovie also enabled us to insert our titles with a choice of different fonts and sizes, allowing a flexible choice for us. Moreover, IMovie also has a variety of different transitions where we were able to use a fade to black transition several times in order to go from scene to scene or location to location, we also used it to have a smooth transition between the final scene and the showing of the films title 'Deceptive'. Another way we used IMovie when editing our opening was to out our soundtracks to the opening, the soundtracks not only helped pull the whole opening together but they also add suspense, especially in the areas we feel are the most critical, and created a ominous feeling throughout. However when it came to editing the flashback we used Final Cut Pro as we wanted to fast cuts, flash and shaky effects. This is why Oliva edited the first flashback as home as Fast Cut Pro allowed us to achieve this and have the tension at its most critical. We all contributed to this part in order to get an clear idea of what we wanted and then we added a green effect over the top in order for it to be obvious it was a flashback.

YouTube:

Throughout our project YouTube has been helpful for us not only for uploading our products (preliminary and our thriller opening) but also for doing research. When our project began I did some research on YouTube where I watched previous AS Media thriller openings to give me inspiration for our own opening. Some ideas it gave me included unique shots and angles we could use in our project. In addition I also did research on different soundtracks that we could use for our opening through YouTube, there are many different movie soundtracks that I had the opportunity to listen to until we found the most effective ones; Gone Girl and The 5th Wave. 

Blogger:

Blogger has been a success in showing our groups plans, progress and final outcomes of our project. I was able to present my research, filming progress, editing progress, final outcomes etc. Moreover, I have used other medias to present my work and then uploaded them to blogger, for example; Prezi. This enabled me to present my work in a completely different way to just blogger.