Evaluation question #6

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

Throughout my time on the course I have learnt a lot about quite a few different types of tech. The main ones being:
Photoshop
Final Cut
Camera/filming equipment

I used photoshop to create the freeze frames for each character, and it allowed me to find out quite a few things in terms of editing pictures of people. I used the poster edges tool to change each character into a comic-book style looking person, which allowed my film to acquire a certain theme. I also used the paint brush tool with a low opacity to add a smokey colour effect with each character, this also helped with the theme as it gave them their own connotations associated with each colour. I then went on and used the font for my film to give each character a title, this consistent theme helps gives my film a unique look, and helped me learn different things about positioning text and changing the colour of them.

Another programme I used to create my product was final cut. Before creating this product i had never used final cut before, so in doing this project i learned a lot about it. In order to make my mise-en-scene appropriate, i had to use a blue screen and the chroma keyer tool available to add a background. Without learning this tool, i would have struggled to make my mise-en-scene appropriate, resulting in me losing marks based on my main task. I also had to learn general editing techniques using the programme, I had to learn how to smoothly add clips together based on the narrative and direction. This was made easy after learning how to crop and move clips effectively, as it meant i could make the entirety of my film look smooth.

After completing the editing of my product I rendered it fully and put it into another final cut document. I then changed the aspect ratio to make it look more like a film, and colour corrected it to give it a slightly more professional look.

In order to film my final product, I went over a lot of youtube tutorials and practices to learn how to use a camera and filming equipment properly. I learned that filming each scene multiple times is a very good idea, because the small screen on the camera cannot be trusted in terms of focus. A  lot of the scenes i filmed in my earlier drafts were out of focus and would have lost me marks, so in my future attempts I filmed each thing multiple times and reviewed each clip. I also learned how to use a tripod effectively depending on the scene I was filming. In my earlier attempts i ended up having shaky scenes where they weren't needed, so in my last attempt I used a steady cam and tripod in most scenes.