Evaluation - Q6.

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

Whilst constructing our film opening, we had to learn a variety of new technical skills in order for our film to be a success, including:

Equipment:

• It took us some practice with the DSLR camera for us to figure out how to use it, however by the end of our shooting period we were all able camera users. 
• We also found that the use of a tripod helps greatly when trying to achieve a steady shot, such as the scene where our victim descends down the staircase and into the basement, as an unsteady shot would’ve killed the tension. 
• We  also learnt that making sure the camera is fully charged with enough battery is extremely important, as we ran out of battery halfway through our first day of filming. However, luckily we had another battery pack, and so we could continue filming without any major problems. 

Upon filming our opening, we had originally planned to use the victim’s torch as the only source of light in the house. However, after trying this out, we realised that it was in fact too dark, as the camera could not see anything. We therefore had to increase the lighting slightly by using a lamp and a mobile phone aimed at the subjects being filmed, and we found that this created a good effect as the film still looked dark enough to resemble the power being cut off. 

Also, the torch which we used to film the first few scenes with ended up breaking. In our film, our victim drops her torch down the staircase as she is dragged up into the hatch which, after capturing the shot, we realised the fall actually shattered our torch. We then had to use a spare torch which another group member had with him to film the rest of the scenes, and our little mishap ended up going unnoticed. 

It was also the first time any member in our group had used the Macs, and so it took us several lessons to get used to the new controls. Our group also had to learn how to use new software such as Final Cut Express, which was the editing program we used. We learnt how to edit our film using the ‘cut’ tool, which we found was the most important tool when editing our clips together. We also learnt how to insert credits into our film, as well as deciding which font to use and where to position them onto the shot, which was very important as without credits our film would not have looked like an actual film opening. We also made use of being able to insert sound effects into our film, and we used several including a child’s laughter and ghostly breathing .We had to learn how to adjust the volume of these sound effects, however, as in the scene where our victim opens a door that was slammed behind her, the diegetic sound in our film overpowered the sound effects, and they could not be heard at all. We overcame this by reducing the volume of the character’s own breaths and then increased the non-diegetic breathing sound effect, making it heard.