Evaluation Question 6

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

Throughout the project I have come in to contact with a lot of new technology, software and hardware. I have learnt a lot about different types of video camera’s as we had Sony Mini HDV and Cannon HDV camera’s available to us. Although the camera’s had auto-focus, I would like to learn how to use it manually as it’s possible to create some nice effects such as a focus shift. Moreover, all the equipment which goes hand in hand with the camera was new to me, such as tripods which made filming a lot steadier and controlled allowing for smooth pans and still shots. Also, the onboard mic and external mic which came with a boom pole and headphones made recording sound at a higher quality possible. I learnt that it’s important to listen for any background noise which you don’t want in the shot. The last set of equipment on the hardware front was the lighting kits. We had PAG lights and a studio lighting kit available to us which was really new to me as I had no idea just how powerful the lights could be and it helped us shoot outside during the night making everything we wanted really light and clear. It’s important to turn the lights off when you’re not using them as they can get really hot. Lighting was one of the strongest points of our product in my opinion and is also very important for our genre of film noir so we were very lucky we had such great equipment at hand.

During post-production we got to experience a lot of software that we had used and hadn’t used before. For example, Adobe Premiere CS3 the editing software was a program that I had used before, however, I developed my editing skills and learnt a lot throughout the project and became much more familiar with the program. Processes such as:

- Capturing
- Rendering
- Speed and duration
- Video and audio transitions
- Use of the razor tool
- Implementation of a soundtrack and Foley FX
- Key framing
- Titling
- A variety of brightness and contrast tools
- Pan and crop
- Working with a detailed timeline

All of these were skills which I developed while using Adobe Premiere CS3. Apart from the editing software we also used Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Fireworks to create titles and our production logo. These were all PC based programs and although we did have a lot of Mac software available to us, such as I-Movie and Soundtrack Pro we didn’t need to use them for our project. One of the main technologies we used right from the beginning of the project was blogger. It allowed us to present research and planning in detail and to an attractive high standard as well as serving as good communication between the group.