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

this was the line we used as our 180 line

The main technologies we first used were a video camera, tripod and mac. We first learnt to use these when doing our preliminary task and used very basic shots and learnt that it was important to take more that one shot of each shot you need as it is unlikely the first shot will be completely correct. We also found that the 180 degree rule was something very important for continuity. If the 180degree rule is not stuck to then things will be in the wrong place, e.g. if a conversation of two people doesn't use the 180 rule then the person will switch to the reverse side of the screen and look unprofessional.
The camera we used was Sony handy cam, it was very easy to use as the only buttons we used were the on and off switch, record button and the playback button, we have no problems using the camera technically. However we did learn that you must turn it off when not using it as the battery runs out fairly quickly.

The tripod was very helpful especially when using it for our thriller. It allowed us to change the angle of the shot whilst keeping it steady and we were also able to higher the camera on the tripod for an effective birds eye view shot of the candles around the board.

Lighting the camera is important too as better lighting means a better quality shot. The lighting of a shot can also be very effective e.g. shadows. The troubles we had with using the camera were the lighting conditions as it did not pick up the light in the way we had hoped, we had to over come this problem by adding candles and shining light in form outdoors by opening a door.

 When composing shots it is important to centre the middle around thing you want to focus on most. When framing a shot we learnt to use the golden mean which is a diagonal line with two points which draw attention to themselves. Another way of framing is to use a grid with 4 crosses, at each cross will be an area of interest.
We also used a regular digital camera to take pictures of our filming to post on our blogs.

For the editing process we used a variety of programmes:
imovie was the main one we used as it was where we imported all of our footage and placed it together in order. We then had to trim clips and make sure that match on action was accurate by splitting and deleting parts of the clip. Another thing we used Imovie for was to edit the clips and make them darker (this is done by adding exposure) with more contrast to make them more ominous and give them more atmosphere. The only transitions we used were fade to black as they made the shots flow better and the fact that it faded to black rather than white makes it seem darker. The constant fade to blacks in the last seconds almost create an effect that make the viewer feel as though they are blinking, this made tension build. We changed the time length of the transitions to a very short second to allow the pace to continue flowing. We also used imovie to put in a still of our own movie ident. We planned to use garage band to edit out soundtrack together however not all the sounds would load into the programme so we decided to also use imovie to put the sound together. 

This is our ident we put at the beginning of our thriller

This is our soudtrack made from layering sound effects in imovie 

This is the range of effects you can chose from to put on your clips, we chose hard light as it  made the contrast harsh and the colours bleak.

This is how we edited the length of trasitions

Final cut is another editing programme we learnt to use to create or title at the end of the opening. We placed one clip over another and made both slightly transparent to they were faded into each other by editing the opacity. It was quite complicated to use and it was difficult remembering to render every time you changed something, however the final outcome was worth it as it made our title look much more professional. Final cut is very good for  making effects and animation within a shot, where as imovie is limited to a few simple effects final cut is capable of high standard editing.

This is Final cut, you use the layer bars at the bottom to put the two sections side by side, we then reduced the opacity in both shots so they could both be seen through each other.

Photoshop was used to create our movie ident. First we downloaded an image form the internet, we then edited it to make it look colder and we changed the colour of the eyes to match our snake eye contacts. It was easy to use as I had previously used it so we knew where all the tools were.

Editing our ident in photoshop

Other technologies we learnt to used Blogger, google, powerpoint, youtube and wordle. Blogger was used to help us keep track of our planning and publish posts about how we were getting on.

We found google very helpful as it was good for researching all about conventions and mise en scene we would need for our thriller.

was used to present to others our 3 pitches, it was good as it helped to clearly put across our ideas and therefore get clear feedback on them.

Youtube was used as a means of sharing our preliminary and thriller, also to gain feedback.

Wordle was used to help make presentations of conventions in an exciting visual way.