Evaluation Q6

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

 RUN was filmed with an industry standard Cannon video camera, today its outdated and no longer an industry standard camera, so the quality is not up to scratch with the latest technology but I was still able to film some good high quality shots which of course is essential for making a horror film. I realised the sound quality on the camera was not too great so I was lucky that the opening contains no dialog because I would have had to purchase a microphone, it did still manage to pick up some good ambient sound in the forest, apart from that I had to mute most of the sound and add sound in I was able to become familiar with the camera very fast.

I used tripod which was very useful and important in the films production, the tripod allowed me to take steady shots at different heights, the tripod also had a handle that allows the camera to turn all the way around, this was good for establishing shots and tracking shots. With the tripod I was able to shoot smooth shots, however this took some practice. I felt that the tripod was really useful when it came to close up shots because close ups need to be the most steady. A tripod is standard equipment; a Steadi cam would have been a lot better allowing me to shoot more skilled and steady shots. I used hand held equipment for a lot of the production as well because I wouldn’t of been able to film a lot of the shots with the tripod because they were quite complicated, for example running behind the actors shoulder had to be done hand held also when the camera was up close to the actors and moving around them. Filming it hand held did not look bad at all; I think it adds to the realism and suspense, similar to the Blair Witch Project however there were scenes that needed to be still here and a Steadi-cam would have helped. The tripod was mainly used in the woods to create the smooth establishing shots and close up shots using a tripod in the woods was a bit complicated as the ground is un even meaning I had longer to set up the shot and had to spend some time making it level, I even had to use a steady effect on some shots in my editing

 I did use professional lights but a nice effect happened with a simple iPhone torch, this is the shot where a dart hits the wall next to Amy (see below) as you can see the shadow of the dart seems stretched across the wall from the iPhone torch, this shot was carefully designed and took a lot of takes to get it exactly how I wanted it to look and the result is this very effective shadow effect,

We learnt about software called Adobe premiere pro, this is industry standard editing software that I used to edit my production, this software was the most important technology in making my production because without decent editing it could not have been done, and I now know how important editing is in a film and its significant role in media productions. I was unfamiliar with the software at first and needed some help with it and its layout but it didn’t take too long for it all to click. The editing software allowed me to….

·         Change shots to black and white

·         Make shots run fluently together (match on action)

·         Put in sound tracks

·         Edit sound and use audio transitions where sound jumped between shots

·         Slow some shots down

·         Add a strobe effect to the title

I used Photoshop to create my title, first I downloaded a font that I thought would suit the film best then uploaded it onto Photoshop, I then played around with colour schemes, at first I thought red on black but I thought I would keep it more simple and do white on black because it looked clean and sharp. Having white font allowed me to add blood splatter into the letters; this was just another layer in Photoshop. Once the Title was made I uploaded it to premier pro and added a strobe effect to the title and added a sound effect as it popped up which worked really well. All my audio was from Premiumbeat.com which is a website full of royalty free sound effects that I could purchase and manipulate in premier pro. These sounds where very high quality and industry standard, much better then sound effects on YouTube. I learnt how to conduct online surveys using survey monkey, this broke down my results in statistical data as well as yes/no answers. Finally I used Blogger to create this blog, all the preparation, planning, and research has been uploaded onto this blog as well as my final product. I think it’s extremely important to use a big range of technologies because it’s the key to producing a successful product, it allows access to many different ways of creating it and makes it easier.