Evaluation Question 6

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

Throughout this coursework project I have developed my skills using both hardware and software used to make films.

Hardware:

• Video Camera
• Tripod
• Pag Light
• Microphone
• Headphones

Software:

• Adobe Premiere Pro
• Adobe After Affects
• LiveType

Having already used Adobe Premier Pro during my GCSE course, I felt that this time I got more of a chance to edit personally, as we were working in smaller groups and the finished product was longer.

I progressed in my use of sound equalising and non-linear editing and also learnt how to effectively colour grade using ProCamp and Three-Way Colour Corrector which was definitely the biggest challenge, as we were only really using trial and error and we weren’t really sure what colouring we had in mind which made it difficult to know what to do.
Here is a video to demonstrate the kinds of effects we tried on our sequence before deciding on the final setting:

We also put in a high-pass sound effect for when Ava removes her headphones to make it sound as realistic as possible before the music stops completely.

Another important tool we used was the Degrainer in Adobe After Effects, as some of our shots were quite grainy due to low light, so that taught us a valuable lesson to always use the Pag Light even if the shot seems to look okay on the small camera screen.

BEFORE

AFTER

One thing that I think really improved our film opening was using the manual settings on our video camera. We especially liked to use the manual focus, and tried to incorporate several focus pulls into our sequence to give it that cinematic touch.

Here is a video of us practicing using focus pulls:

Certain shots are a little shaky so in hindsight I think we should have made sure to use to tripod whenever possible, because we weren’t intending a handheld effect.

In the future I would like to work on a film with more sound and dialogue, as we didn’t get a chance to do much with the microphone and experiment with settings as our film didn’t require dialogue so all the sound recording was quite straightforward.