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

For the editing of our film we used Georgia's macbook laptop, we also used her laptop for doing some research into our film and our films genre. The operating system of the laptop made it very easy and efficient for us to use which was very helpful. Also, because it was a laptop we could edit the film wherever and whenever we possibly could, which was mainly in our media lessons at school. We were all familiar with iMovie on macbooks before and it is a fairly simple programme to use so there wasn't a lot for us all to learn. Something that we learnt from using iMovie was how to detach a sound from each clip so we would be able have good sound continuity and no gaps in the editing. From using iMovie quite a lot we have realised that there are some things that may be able to be done better using a different programme, we were thinking that next time we could maybe use Final Cut Express as this would give us more opportunities for better effects in our film. We also think that it would be more appropriate and give our film a more professional feel as Final Cut is designed for more professional films whereas iMovie can be used by anyone.


We also used Georgia's Nikon D5100 to shoot our film opening. We used this camera as it was the highest quality camera that we were able to get hold of. I think that it was a really good choice to use this camera as it gave our film opening really high quality. It also was very easy to use and none of us had any problems with using the camera, it also fitted the tripod well.

During the filming of our opening we needed to keep our shots steady and stable. To do this we hired a tripod from school. It was very helpful during the filming as we could film everything without the worry of having shaky shots. It was also good as it helped us get a range of shots and angles as the tripods height was variable. We learnt how to change the length of the expendable legs and changed it to the angle that we wanted to use. When we wanted to create a low angle, we would make the back leg on the tripod smaller than the other two which made us able to keep the camera stable but as low to the ground as we possibly could. It did take us quite a while to get the mechanism of the tripod working properly but we soon got the hang of it and were able to construct as many angles as we liked.  As you can see in the shots above, we were using the tripod in nearly all of our shots, the only time that the tripod was not used was when we wanted to use a tracking shot of Abby, we decided to use a handheld shot which gave the feel that we were walking with her. By not using the tripod it allowed a steady grip on the camera and was easier to film the shot whilst walking in front of Georgia.

We created our production logo on a programme called 'LiveType' on Georgia's macbook. We used this to give the text an effect so that it would have motion when inserted into the beginning of our film. We decided to use a text effect called 'Barrel Jump', it is a simple effect but made our logo much more interesting and more professional. This was the first time we have used LiveType so it took a while for us to get the hang of using it but in the end we managed to create the text transition.