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

Throughout the making of our final product we used a lot of different technology types to fully construct our sequence, this included our research and planning and other aspects involved when finishing the coursework piece. 

When filming we used a Sony Handycam. this gave us a good resolution for our filming. We didn't use HD because there would be no point as not many people have HD software to view it on, plus it would make the file too big.

In the preliminary task we used the same the camera which allowed me to get used to it. From this I learned how to film a range of different shots with the camera such as close ups, mid shots, establishing shots and a few others. Without the practice i think that the final product wouldn't look as professional as it took a while to get used to the camera and how everything works on it. 

In the film a lot of the filming is in dark settings, meaning that additional light was needed as the camera couldn't provide this. We found this out because after we had filmed part of the product it was too dark and you couldn't really see what was going on. 

A tripod was also used during filming both the prelim task and the main task. It was used to steady the camera, give different angles and heights and to give the camera a good range, in addition to this whilst filming the opening sequence we used a dolly to steady the camera and keep it at the same height whilst we moved it. Unfortunately this didn't work because the video came out quite shaky so we had to film again.

Because the sound on the camera wasn't very good we decided to use a voice over for most of the sequence with only a small amount of actual dialogue at the end. We recorded the voiceover in a recording studio which was fairly easy to use, this took quite a long time but was worth it in the end and it was easy to add when editing. 

For all of the editing we used adobe premier on an apple mac. The mac was useful because it had everything we needed already downloaded onto it and due to the good quality of the screen which was quite big, it was easy to edit and it looked quite professional. Adobe premier and GarageBand are the two programs that were used for our editing. Adobe allowed us to edit all aspects of the film and GarageBand is what we used to choose and edit the music on, which we then added on to adobe premier. Overall both were quite easy to use. Adobe had a timeline in which we could order each clip to ensure continuity. It was also easy to upload the clips onto this software, once the clips were transferred from camera to mac which made everything a lot simpler.

Our blog and social media were both also used as part of our final project because we did the evaluation and a lot of the planning and research on the blog, in addition to this social media was used to share our sequence. Youtube was also used to research different film noir clips. After using these forms of the internet I feel a lot more confident when researching and sharing different forms of media. Blogger allowed us to record our progress throughout our coursework task. It was a good form of technology to use because it was online and accessible from anywhere not just the classroom or the sixth form. I could record my research, planning and other things from home or anywhere with the internet. It also allowed us to add pictures and Gif's which were very advantageous when showing examples of work.

Our main challenge when creating our film noir was recording the voiceover. We had written out the script and used a recording studio to record the monologue. However, we had never used this technology before and had nobody there to help us. It took us 2 hours to record a 40 second piece of dialogue due to our inexperience with our surroundings. This time wasted held us back whilst editing. However, Once recorded the media was easy to transfer onto the mac and easy to add into our product due to the high quality technology we used.