Q6

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

Digital video camera: for my thriller opening I tried out a few different types of cameras, looking between normal cameras that can take video, video cameras and mobile phone cameras, in order to see which would be the easiest to operate and have the best video quality.  I finally decided on using the IPhone 6 64 Gb phone’s 8 mega pixel camera, for its HD 1080p Quality video, digital stabilisation (automatically stabilises the video as you record), autofocusing with auto-exposure, to allow the right level of light and focus for the scene being captured, and that it was simple to operate with one touch video recording. Using this I learnt how it’s not always easy to use a tripod to keep the camera steady, so using your surroundings such as a branch or walk or even another person to steady yourself works just as well and any messy camera work can be fixed with stabilisation. I also learnt that with this camera even though you could zoom in the quality is a lot better if you just move the camera to the distance required, and it’s a lot steadier. Some shots however were hard to achieve such as the high angle shots, where I would have to position myself up higher in order to be able to film it. As we were only filming one person, the 180 degree rule didn’t apply and so we could film her at any angle and not ruin the continuity of the piece. I chose to film in the woods as I wanted a setting that would feel unnatural to the character and would provide a good level of lighting for shooting. I also wanted to use the weather, since it being autumn, there as a lot of rain and it was usually overcast however on the day it was a lot sunnier so I had to use that to my advantage with it seeming to contrast what was going on. I also used many close ups in order to create a sense of mystery with a lot of the scene being hidden from the audience so I would have to move close to whatever I was filming and sometimes crouch on the ground. I also tried to stick to the rules of thirds when framing so that it was aesthetically pleasing compositionally. I also had to do a lot of tracking and panning when following the character so the stabilisation on the camera was useful in keeping the video from becoming jittery.

Editing software: I chose to use IMovie 10.0.6 to edit as it was easier to use and had many more options than most other editing programmes I researched. I had to edit a lot of the footage so that it worked continuity wise and also with the close ups, keeping them frequent so that it was fast paced but also making sure the meanings I was trying to convey through the use of Mise en scene apparent. It was easy to import the footage as I was using a Mac air laptop, which is compatible with IPhones since they are both Apple products, so using the lead we transferred the videos straight to the hard drive and then to IMovie. I had to edit the footage so that it fit the structure of the narrative. For the most part I had the shots in chronological order on the phone so all I had to do was transfer them straight to the software and almost all the unedited footage was in the right order. Having it edited like this helped build up a tense atmosphere that was released at the climax. We sometimes slowed down areas to create better visual/sound effects, like in the last shot, where having it at normal speed wouldn’t work.  We used a lot of flash to white transitions in order to create the effect of transferring to a flashback shot. We also used a lot of visual effects like filters, like black and white to show that it’s a flashback or editing the filter to make the scene look more eerie and build suspense. We used mainly diegetic sound but we added non-diegetic sound effects at the end for the sound effect of the antagonist hitting the protagonist. Using this recent format of iMovie allowed us to create idents easily, that were individual to us. Exporting the final project was easy as we could upload it straight to YouTube without any problems.

I used other technologies to help with my work. The biggest help was the internet which is where I got most of my research, from a variety of websites which I don’t think I could’ve gotten from any other resources. I also used Facebook and its messenger to communicate with the rest of my group and coordinate what we were filming, editing etc.