Q6
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?



Camera

In the process of constructing the product I learnt how to use and set up the canon XH-A1 camera, because I had never used this camera before throughout the construction of the product I developed my skills on how to use it properly. Also due to the research I did on the digital video cannon XH-A1 camera I learnt the pros and cons of it which help my group when we were shooting our sequence. For example when the lock button at the side of the camera is on the view finder will not show any imagery until the lock is taken off, my knowledge of this saved my group from having any problems on the filming day. I found out that there were two recording buttons on the camera one at the top of the camera and one hidden which the rewind, fast forward, play and stop buttons at the top of the camera.

Another skill that my group developed was our techniques on how to use the camera hand held to create the effects we wanted. For example if the camera is tilted from side to side slowly the view finder starts to blur the image, this made it more effective for us when adding the blur effect on adobe premium pro. We also knew that the camera had its own microphone so at times when the external microphone modular windshield system was not needed we used the camera’s microphone, however when we wanted to use the windshield which was connected to the boom pole we had to use the XLR cable to connect it to the camera.

Filming Techniques

The filming techniques that I learnt were the rule of thirds, how to frame our shots in order to show the audience what we want them to see first in the shot. As evidence in the third shot we see our character drop his phone, however before he drops it his phone is in the centre of the frame which is the first thing we see. This enabling us to see that he is calling Michelle. When he drops his phone on the floor it drops to the top right hand corner of the frame which allows the focus to be taken of the phone and onto the character legs and the carpet showing he is inside and sitting down.

Also we learnt how to use our cues correctly like action and making the person doing the actions start a second or two after so they may be a gap for us when editing making it easy to edit.

Lastly on the shooting day I was the director for my group and I learnt how to direct the camera man and sound engineer so that shots may come out the way I wanted them to. I made sure that we kept good continuity and had safety shots. I did this by filling out the continuity sheets relating back to the storyboard and coming up with new ideas on scene.
Editing

When editing we used a program called adobe premium pro to edit our product. To do this we needed:

• LaCie drive
We needed a LaCie drive in order to save our sequence on to it.
• Canon XH-A1
We needed the camera to be able to digitize all our shots to adobe premium pro’s
• Tape
We needed the tape in the camera because all of our recorded shot were placed on it.
• Fire wire
We needed the fire wire to connect the camera to the computer and adobe premium pro.


Editing Techniques

The editing techniques that I learnt from using Adobe premium Pro were firstly how to digitize all of our shots. This step of the process is only picking every good take or take we want from every shot, which saved us time and hassle when editing. I learnt that digitizing is only easy when a continuity sheet and cues like the clapper board are used wisely.

Shots can then be dragged into the source finder which shows the shot before you put it on the timeline. For example when my group was editing our sequence we had many good takes for each shot. So we used the source finder to pick our best take for the shots and where we wanted them to start and end before editing them on the timeline.
The next step was to assemble all our shots on to the timeline and dragging them into video one and audio one.
This was easy because they had all been named e.g. shot 1-10. For some of the shots we only needed the sound and not the image which became useful for our first shot of the off screen breathing sound. We then started cutting all our shots to make them look the way we wanted them to look. For example if a shot was too long we’d cut it to make it shorter or if a shot was to short we’d drag the end of the shot to expand the duration of it.

I have mostly developed my skills on how to use and add effects effectively to shots. For example I use a dip to white effect at the end of the sequence to create a flashback effect. I also increased the speed of the last few shots and the last shot I decreased the speed to make the flash back seem more real opposed to if everything was still going the same speed as the shots before.

Lastly when importing and editing sounds to audio one, two and three I learnt how to create a sound mix. By mixing various sounds from different soundtracks to create an ambiance that I wanted and felt would match our sequence.

Also while editing I was able to fade in and out each soundtrack when I wanted them to or I lowered volume and bypass level of the soundtracks in order to hear sounds that I wanted the audience to hear. For example when editing the first shot I could hear that the other two soundtracks I was using (in memoriam and fear factor) was louder than the heart beat and breathing that I wanted the audience to hear. So I lowered the volume of the other two soundtracks and levelled the heart beat soundtrack with the diegetic breathing to make it sound as if his heart was beating and he was beating heavily. To give a clue to the audience that something has just gone wrong and our character is scared. I was able to do this effectively by holding onto the Ctrl and + button to maximize the view on the timeline.