Evaluation - Question 5

What have you learned from technologies in the construction of your product? 

Camera for filming

For our opening we used this camera. It is a standard DSLR that i own which is the NIKON D5100. It was very useful in the filming of the product due to it's HD filming setting but also good sound quality to ensure that the conversation between Emma and Harry was nice and clear when it came to the editing stages. Furthermore, by using this camera we were able to get all the shots which we needed such as the close ups as the lens of the camera has a good zoom on it. Due to it being a DSLR, we were able to make the opening look more professional by using the focus ring around the outer part of the lens effectively. This meant that we could focus on foreground, not background or vise versa. Especially during the vital conversation between Emma and Harry, the technique i used to film this was to place the tripod further away from the object you want to film (the characters) and then zoom using the lens which meant that it takes more for the camera to focus. This way it was a lot easier for me to focus on the person that was talking and blur out the character who was sitting facing away from the camera. This enabled the audience to focus more on the character who was talking as they have a higher importance at that time in order to hear the dialogue.

Tripod

The tripod was a very important piece of equipment used to make our opening. It allowed us to get the steadiness of clips spot on as it was able to take the weight of the camera without tilting in any way. There were some parts of the film which were easier to film without the tripod as it only extended to a certain height and for the section in the opening where Emma is walking into the train station and there is an arc to the right, this was easier to film by hand due to me having to stand on the wall to film. We found that it was very useful when it came to various camera shots and movement, one of the being the establishing tilt shot as Emma is walking through the entrance of the train station. It gave us a stable fluent movement, which require no editing what so ever on the mac. The fact that we could adjust the lengths of the poles around the outside meant that we could get the perfect height for each of our shots and ensure that there was a consistency and continuation in shots such as during the conversation: we had to make sure that the tripod help the camera at the same level throughout so that it was more realistic.




Music Download

One thing which was important in our opening was the choice of music. To make sure that we had the right music we spent a lot of time exploring indie songs on YouTube. The website which we used to then download this song was 'YouTube to MP3'. This allowed us to copy and paste the video link into the website for it to then convert the file into an MP3 format to open in iTunes ready to use on any media product we wanted. We used this website for the song at the very end of the opening, and we found that this website was very useful as it meant that we could download a song so easily and quickly. 

However, as our first song was by a small YouTuber, she didn't have the song on YouTube, only the acoustic version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDOtbjWkIpw) which wasn't clear enough and therefore would make our opening look a lot less professional. She did record the song and the only was of getting this song to use was via the website she provided. I also managed to get hold of Emily who recorded the song to ensure we had rights to using her song and she was very enthusiastic about us using the song in our opening. The website which her song was available on was 'band camp'. This is a small website which supports the smaller artists who are unsigned. We paid through paypal with a small cost of 79p. This made us aware of how we preferred this was of getting a song as we were make sure that the artist gets credit for their work as oppose to downloading a song for free.

Editing software

For our entire media opening we used imovie. This is probably the best editing software that we could use as it is as advanced as it needs to be but its so easy to work out and use. Imovie was so useful as it meant that we could perfect our opening, and it meant that we could afford to have some small problems with the film.
It allowed us to do the following things: 

1. Edit sound - voiceovers, volume of tracks, ducking, music
2. Stabilize clip motion
3. Change the colour, brightness, opacity, contrast etc 
4. split clips and add in transitions, crop the clip
5. create titles using a font that we simply downloaded

Evaluation - Question 4

Looking back on the preliminary task what do you think you have learnt in the progression from that to the actual production?

Camera Shots
Here i am going to talk about the improvement in camera shots, which includes positioning in the frame too. This is in order to conform to ideas of conventional mise en scene (in order to show off costume and make up which was intentionally placed in the opening). The preliminary task was very useful as it was the perfect test run to prevent us from making too many mistakes during the production of our opening. 

During the shots which show conversation between the two characters, we learnt a lot about the positioning of the camera for the conversation. Both of these shots are meant to be wide shots, which is not evident in the preliminary task. We found that due to not planning the shots for the preliminary task and not knowing the meaning behind the shots, we didn't frame them properly so they aren't technically a shot. The conversation is meant to be in the centre of the frame, which perfect from out film opening as we made sure the tripod matched the camera up with equal amounts of space either side of the bench. Where as in out preliminary task, the camera is placed too far to the left meaning that one of the characters is more centre than the other.

Another aspect of the conversation which was vital was the shot/reverse shots. I found that when looking back at the preliminary task we didn't use the correct level for the camera. So, what we did was we tended to have the camera higher up or closer to one person which meant that the camera showed them from the wast up and then on the other character it showed them from the knee up. This was inconsistent and should be shown to be level. However in our actual opening we made sure that we places 2 objects the same distance from each other which showed us where we would place the tripod. The tripod then ensured that the camera was pointing in the same direction at the same level meaning that we always got above the waste and below the shoulders.
The conversations also conformed to the 180 degree rule in that we made sure we had an imaginary line between the two characters which we switched between in order to get a sense of realism.

Long shots were not as effective in out preliminary task. We tended to forget about how much of the character that was supposed to be within the frame when filming it. Because of this we were a lot more aware when creating our actual opening. In the preliminary task we kept cropping out the feet which should have been included to show a full body and the action of walking into the classroom. Where as in out actual opening we made sure that we placed the camera way from the character as much as we needed due to the fact that you can always crop the image but you cannot add in any more image without re-filming. Our long shots were more effective. 

The 180 degree rule

Our preliminary task actually showed a great example of how to abide by the 180 degree rule. Due to our research into the 180 degree rule, we made sure that we did it perfectly in our preliminary task which then enabled us to do it just as well in our actual opening. Here is an example: 

Preliminary task:
in the preliminary task we imagined the line was through the centre of the door. This meant that we filmed only on the one side of the door allowing chlaryse to look as though she is walking in the same direction. The editing of this clip was also very handy as it was a straight cut and matched the action well. 
Our opening: 

We used the 180 degree rule in our opening during the montage. This was so that as an audience you could really see a sense of travel and direction in which Emma was walking.