Q.6 What have you learnt about technologies from the process of Constructing this product?
A key technology skill that I have learnt in the thriller project is the use of camera shots while using the video camera. This is because we have used some very good camera shots in our thriller which makes it more dramatic and involving. A good example is the close up shot which shows the emotion on people’s faces. I also learnt that all the different camera shots can be used in different ways in order for scenes in movies to be better. For example I have learned that an Aerial is usually used at the start of a film when they set the scene and show the location of where that certain scene is about to take place. In our thriller for example we used a long shot to establish the setting of the scene clearly for the audience as shown below.
When using the video camera the use of the tripod is also important. This is because a tripod is used to keep the video camera and the shot produced steady without any shake. This is important to for the audience to see the clips correctly without any wobble. When setting up a tripod you can expand 2 sets of lengths on each three of the legs. This allows movement so you can change the angle you shoot at. There is also a little spirit level on the tripod which will indicate when the tripod is at the right level to be straight and steady. We used the tripod well in our thriller as we always straightened out the legs appropriately and checked the spirit level to ensure it was stable. It is very important to use a tripod when somebody or some people are talking as you do not want the shot to be uneven so that the audience can see people’s emotions. This is something that we did in order for the audience to keep track of the thriller better.
Lighting is also important when filming because every time you are ready to film it is always important to check the lighting is appropriate for the specific scene you are filming. In our thriller I think are lighting was pretty good and we got all the footage we needed. Some of the lighting may have not been right but to solve this we just changed the colours on the i movie program to suite the rest of the thriller. We used the lighting well in order to keep the film opening looking like it was a thriller by including dark colours with little bright colours to add the sense of mystery.
Composition is something that we really needed to concentrate in our thriller because we wanted all the shots in our thriller to be relevant. One thing that helped our composition is the “golden mean” rule. This is when a line going diagonally across the shot divides the shot up. All features that are positioned across the line are features of importance. By using this rule we ensured that all the important factors in our thriller were in the middle of the shot on the line most of the time. This rule ensures that the audience can see the most important thing in the shot. An example of the use of the golden mean from our thriller is shown below. As you can see the most in portent thing is in the middle.
Another rule that helped with composition is the “rule of thirds”. The rule of thirds is when you place a grid 3x3 on the whole shot. This splits up the shot into the important factors. The lines across the shot show all the important features. An example of the “rule of thirds” from our thriller is shown below. The lines can identify characters, locations and props.
Throughout the whole creation of our thriller I have been introduced to many different technologies, especially in the editing of the thriller. This is because we used the apple Mac’s provided by the school. The main program we used was “I movie” as it was the best program for beginners in order to edit our thriller. Below is an image of the program “I movie” and how it is structured in order to edit correctly.
I movie contains lots of different features like transitions, clip editing, sound editing and more. An analysed still below shows some of the features that we used in our thriller using the i movie program. Please excuse the small writting.
When we started using “I movie” in our preliminary task I was new to the program so I did not know all the different features. After spending more time on the program though I now understand more of the program and can use some of the more difficult features in order to make our thriller more effective. An example of these new features is the transitions that we added to our thriller. The transitions in our thriller helped significantly in order to add a greater effect and meaning to the thriller. We used a few slow moving transitions like the cross dissolve and the cross blur to make our opening more dramatic instead of fast paced which would probably be used in action movies rather than thrillers. These slow paced transitions were especially used on the opening titles to slowly build up the opening of the thriller. We aimed to keep the pace of our thriller slow and dramatic so these transitions suited that style perfectly. Below is an image of some of the transitions we could have used of the program i movie. The ones we used the most were the cross dissolve and the cross blur. This is because these transitions suited the thriller genre and our thriller opening because they are slow moving and mysterious. We did not use many of the other transitions because the “spin in” transition for example is very fast and jumpy which would be used more in an action film or comic book.
An important skill that was used in our thriller is cutting. This skill helped us to cut down some of the footage in our thriller so that we only got the footage that we needed and wanted. On the day of our shoot we filmed more footage then we actually needed to ensure that we had enough just in case some scenes were wrong. So the cutting skill allowed us to cut clips down so that all the appropriate clips linked in correctly. This would help the continuity of the thriller opening.
Another important skill is adding sound/music onto our thriller. Throughout our thriller we created 4 pieces of sound to be added. One was a fire soundtrack, one a flashback sound, one the credits soundtrack and the other the main soundtrack. These all helped in making our thriller more effective. The sound added will create a more dramatic effect and a more mysterious thriller.
For our thriller we made sure that we used the continuity technology. This ensures that the thriller runs smoothly from one clip to another. This means that no jumps or cuts are involved in our thriller. To help the continuity we used the transitions of the i movie program. The transitions made the thriller opening look like one whole continuous scene rather than confusing individual scenes that are jumpy and not suitable to the thriller plot.
The editing technology helped our thriller a lot because it allowed us to change colours, transitions, cutting, audio levels and much more. For example editing would help if one of the clips we had were too bright due to the sunshine. Editing though would allow us to change the colour levels so that the clip suited the rest of the thriller by being quite dark and eery. Through editing the I movie program allowed us to put our thriller opening together appropriately ensuring that there is a good deal of continuity involved.
Another new technology skill that I have learned while creating the thriller opening is using the blog correctly in order to put all of my work onto. To create our blog we used the website www.blogger.com in which you can use this link in order to find it. This blog website was quite hard to use when I started media and I had trouble putting videos, photos, music and more onto the blog. Over time though I soon got the hang of the website and by the time the thriller project came about I was able to add work to my blog a lot easier. To get the images onto the blog I had to save them into my documents and then upload them from there. For the videos I had to do the same but my biggest obstacle was the music as I had to go on the apple Mac’s, take a blank picture of a red screen, put it in i movie and add the music from there. This was because the blog would not accept music files directly. Below is an example of the music files I created and put on my blog.
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