2. Before studying AS Media
Studies, myself and my
group had never used any
technologies to film, other
than a video camera on a
mobile phone or a
computer webcam.
Therefore, throughout the
project we have learnt how
to use hardware
(camcorder) and software
computer programs to
produce our finished
project.
3.
4. To film both our Preliminary Task
and The Legacy we used a Sony
HD handycam camcorder. The
quality of the camera was really
important as it gave our film a
more professional finish.
Through the Preliminary Task
we mastered the use of the
camcorder and, as the others in
my group were participating
actors, I filmed all of The Legacy.
5. However, even though we knew how
to use the camcorder
effectively, we were not as familiar
with the frame size settings on the
camera.
We filmed on two separate occasions
and, unaware to us, the camcorder
was on two different frame size
settings and saved in two different
formats as you can see on the left.
We had never come across this
problem before and we only
realised the problem during the
editing stages.
6. As you can see from the
screenshots, in one scene of
our film the frame size
switches from a rectangular
view with black lines above
and below to a full square
frame.
As a group we thought that we
may be able to change the
settings when we came to
exporting the file, but there
was no option so
consequently, the size of the
frames change briefly.
7. In conjunction with the
camcorder, we used a plug-in
microphone.
Although we didn’t use most of the
sound in the clips and used a
track over the top we did keep
the running footsteps sounds as
this made the action seem more
real.
James’ voice over at the start and
end of our opening was recorded
using a voice recorder for a clear
sound. To further ensure that his
voice was clear, he recorded in a
quiet place.
8. The use of the tripod helped us
to film steady shots and
improved the professional
quality of our film. I used a
tripod at all times when filming
so there was no wobbling and
nothing would distract the
audience from being
engrossed in the narrative.
The only time we did not use a
tripod was when James held
the camera whilst running to
achieve a point of view shot.
9.
10. As known of my group (including me)
had ever used Premier Pro before this
was a learning curve for all of us.
After importing our filming, we had to
cut the clips down for it to make
sense as a narrative. We worked as a
team to do this to achieve the best
result.
A strength of Premier Pro is the wide
variety of editing functions to make
each film its own. I used the volume
changes to achieve continuity of the
sound of running footsteps over all
frames.
11. A weakness of Premier Pro, particularly to
novices like myself, was the difficulty of using
it. Often, my group and I had to resort to a
Google search to figure out how to edit our
filming. For example, fading in and out titles
in our sequence.
However, now we have used it fully, with
importing, editing and exporting we have a
better knowledge.
12. For our film, we needed a
copyright free music track and
we decided to search on Free
Music Archive. I have learnt
that looking for a track is a long
process and so as a group we
decided Jake and James should
take on the task.
We decided on ‘Near the End’ by
Syndrôm, after repeatedly
changing our mind on other
tracks, as it is upbeat and
modern which reflects our own
film
13. The new technology we used throughout
filming and editing The Legacy helped us gain
new skills and learn a lot through the process.
We learnt to adapt footage for different
situations. For example in one part of our film
James gets up from his seat much too slowly
for the context of the narrative so we
adapted by speeding up the clips rather than
re-filming.
