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

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

Camera
From the first time ever using a camera for this type of product, I have progressed a lot from the first time use of preliminary task, to the first movie, to the final movie. We used a decent camera which could of been at higher quality since we needed a better pick up on light sources since we wanted to film in the dark. Also, the camera wouldn't focus on quick movements or changing from dark to light resulting in this; 

We used this to our advantage however it adds to the horror effect of being blurred and disorientated. We got more nicer flowing shots in the final production as we became more skilled with the camera and how it would look to audiences. The match on movements would be a smoother transition than the first match on action in the preliminary task. We also had a much better understanding of knowing exactly what we wanted to let the audience see and found the balance of mystery by keeping things away from the audience. As we became more skilled, it became quicker to take shots as I knew which angles I wanted and needed to portray a certain aspect of the movie and so it was much easier to direct the actors/actresses around on set.

Adobe Premier Pro

With never using Adobe editing software ever before making movies for media, we started from scratch. At first we didn't know how to add effects onto certain shots to make it look more like a horror movie and didn't know how to block out and unwanted reflections. By experimentation we learnt the Adobe Premier pro software quickly, being able to perform advanced editing skills such as blocking out the reflections in the kitchen windows and adding sound wherever we needed it, such as the footsteps heard when the Mother is on the phone. 

Adobe After Effects

Again, like Premier Pro, we had no previous experience with using this software. We managed to animate a still image from google by suiting the genre of the movie. We chose a skeleton to link with the conventions of horror. We faded in font of the production company 'Skeleton Productions' which made the film look more professional and made the viewers aware it belonged to a certain company which they may wish to look into if they enjoyed the movie as there might be similar movies which this company has released for instance. All movies started with the opening logo to sell the company of the movie. This made the sequence look more like an opening scene. 

Blogger

Like many of the software and equipment, I also have never used blogger before. I was unaware of the functions blogger was capable of such as embedding clips from YouTube and over embedding feature such as power points. This makes displaying information on the blog easier and gives more creative answers. By keeping all blog posts on one website, it made it easier to track progress of the film and see my own progress. 

Lighting

One thing I would like to focus more on next time I create movies would be lighting. Lighting is the main area of improvements I feel for the opening sequence. With better lighting or specific lighting, this would make the movie look more realistic and at a much better quality. Quality can put many audiences off the movie just because of lighting issues and visual issues. I would like to learn about lighting techniques further on in my media education and experiment more with horror movies and lighting.

Sound Effects

The sound quality on the camera wasn't as good as we liked it to be. The microphone picked up background noise more than actual dialogue. We decided to move the next movie indoors so the background noise was no issue. Also, we decided to add diegetic sound by making it non-diegetic. We recorded sounds such as some dialogue which would need to be edited per shot such as "I thought you were downstairs" and the footsteps. We added these on at editing stag as it was much more clear sound. We also added our own sound affects such as when you see the young ghost in the wardrobe we added a jump scare noise so audiences would know there was something "off" in this scene. We added music also to create tension throughout the opening scene at specific points to also show emotion in the characters such as shot 28, linking to confusion yet fear.