Whilst making this project we used a lot of technology and as we have progressed through the stages of our project, I feel my technical knowledge improved. We used different equipment for different parts of our project, for example we only used a camera, microphone, tripod and headphones whilst shooting whereas we only used Premier Pro and the Apple MAC whilst editing. This meant that there was a lot of learning that had to be done throughout the project in order for us to be able to use the technology effectively.
As we had used the camera and tripod before we found it fairly easy to use and therefore it gave us the confidence to experiment a lot more. The camera enabled us to shoot in digital and therefore once we had finished our project we were able to import it onto a DVD. Although the camera had automatic settings on to enable us to shoot more quickly and easily, we sometimes found this more of a problem. When going quickly from a dark room to a light room we found that the auto-focus did not work fast enough which ruined some of our shots as they went blurry. If we were to re-do this project, I would have liked to have gained the knowledge on using the manual settings as this may have benefited us a few times and it would be challenging to learn something new.
The microphone and headphones were a brand new thing for us so every shoot that we used them was a learning curve for us. It allowed us to have crystal clear sound but also allowed us to hear exactly what sound could be heard in the shot and what could not. Whilst using these things we found the microphone picked up a lot of background noise that we thought would go unnoticed so therefore as we worked through our shoots we found the best way to be as efficient as possible was to keep as quiet as possible.
Adobe Premiere Pro is software that is specifically installed onto the computers for the purpose of editing footage together to form sequences. As we had already had the opportunity to use this programme before we found it straightforward to use and gained lots more confidence when using it. We used this to edit our footage together and to add in a sound track and titles. We edited our footage together using parallel editing. We have used this process in past projects therefore it was fairly easy. We learned that if you do this its far easier to find shots and re-order them later on in the project making it less confusing.
When shooting we shot all our footage onto one continuous tape so when it came to editing we had to somehow split the clips up. We did this using the ‘Capture’ tool that captures each individual shot and saves them separately. This made making the process of editing our sequence together easier and more efficient as we had all the shots ready, we just needed to put them in the correct order. It also made deciding what shots to use a lot easier as we did not have to keep watching through the whole tape, we could just pick certain clips.
When cutting down clips we could do this in one of two ways. We found the easiest way to do it was to use the ‘Razoring’ tool. We learnt that if you did it this way you could get a lot more of an accurate cutting point on the clip and if anything did go wrong you could easily undo it, making the process of experimenting simpler.
The soundtrack, called ‘In The Mist’ we found off the Internet on a website specialising in free music downloads. We downloaded the music and added it to our sequence via a USB pen and Adobe Premiere Pro. We have never edited to a soundtrack before so we found that the easiest way to create an atmosphere was to edit our sequence to the music, as you can change the sequence but you cannot change the music.
In order for us to achieve the titles we wanted we first of all found a font on the internet then created our titles on the Apple MAC on a programme called Live Type. It was quite tricky to master at first as we had never used something as advanced before but the more we used it the better and more comfortable we got with it.
In the professional film industry, when making films they use far more lighting equipment in order to get the ideal lighting. They have more than one camera so that shooting scenes for continuity would not be as time consuming and they have far more microphones so that the sound can be crystal clear. Their editing equipment is also far more advanced than ours, letting them add in extreme special effects and really playing around with their footage. This is understandable though because they have far more money to spend on their project and the equipment is therefore more readily available.
When using these different technologies there are lots of problems that we can encounter and therefore have to overcome. When we were making our project we found that the technology was the thing that set us back most in making our footage, as it could sometimes be so unreliable. One of the problems we encountered was when trying the capture our footage on Premier Pro it would only let us capture a small section and then refuse to capture the rest. This therefore made it extremely difficult when it came to choosing our shots as it meant that the choice was very limited. Another problem we had to overcome was the fact that when we were out shooting we did not have any batteries for the camera that meant that we had to shoot an entire section of our footage with the camera plugged into the mains. This was very annoying as it meant that we could not go outside or have as much freedom to move around the house. Despite this though we still managed to get all the footage we needed. A problem that we found very difficult to overcome was the camera whir when we were playing back our footage on Premier Pro. Whenever the shot changed, despite the visual continuity of the shot being perfect, the sound continuity was not due to the whir. We overcame this, however, by lowering the treble on Adobe Premiere Pro, which was fairly easy to do and made a huge difference to our final piece.
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