Teaching Elementary Students About Endangered Species
Untitled presendkkdmmtation
1. Task 6
What have I learnt from technologies from
the process of making my film?
2. From the first lesson in media making my preliminary, to the
last bit of footage I filmed for my final construction, I
think my understanding and the way I use technology has
really developed. I now think that I have a clear
understanding of how to use all of the elements that create a
film, such as the way it is filmed and the tools used create
great scenes and the way it is edited and the software used.
3. Editing
So I did not take media in year 10 & 11 therefore I was not
familiar with software such as Premier Pro and After Effects.
I found that Premier Pro, with a little practice, was the
perfect editing software for someone like me who’s had no
previous experience but wanted to a make a professional
looking film. I started off not knowing how to put clips into
the film bin, to changing the volume levels on second long
clips in order to hear the voice over above the music.
4. I used Premiere Pro to order my shots into the right position and I’d watch how the
clips fit together and change them around if I was not happy with them. Being a
beginner, I left learning all the technical stuff like adjusting levels and adding
continuous transitions right until the end (or more like the night before the deadline)
which I hugely regret. I think if I watched more tutorials on how to master the
technicalities earlier on in the editing process the my film would’ve flowed better and
transitions between shots would look more seamless. Trying out different transitions
such as dissolve, iris, slide, page peel, 3D motion, and wipe transitions was a hard job
because I felt that most of them made the film look more like a presentation. So I
mostly used film dissolve and cross dissolve to help shots flow together as I didn't
like the harshness of how shots changed so abruptly. As I was limited on how many shots
after filming was done, it was too late to refilm certain clips if they had something
visible that was not supposed to be seen, this is where the crop tool came in. I found
this tool useful on clips that I could not cut, however I didn’t like how I had to
adjust how the whole shot looked as I could only zoom in to crop things out, and this
doesn’t always make the shot look better. Another feature of Premiere Pro which I found
really helpful was being able to speed up the voice over, admittedly the initial
voiceover didn’t fit the character very well as it was quite high pitched, so slowing it
down made it deeper and this helped in making it more appropriate to the crime genre.
5. Camera - Canon 450d digital SLR
This is the camera that I used to film with.
I have not had much experience in photography
or film apart from on my phone, despite
having a similar camera myself. I would only
ever take pictures and videos on my phone,
but not for anything like this. I felt like
this camera was fairly easy to use, that
being said I do not think that I used all
elements of the camera so I can not say that
everything about this camera is easy to use.
I really enjoyed using this camera because
for a beginner i think that i produced some
really professional shots using zoom, focus
and the flash.
6. I felt like the camera mic was really not very helpful as it picked up too
much background noises and it was very sensitive to unneeded noises. This is
partly why we decided to record the narrative separately because the mic just
didn't work for me and is the reason why I had to refilm some clips multiple
times. Despite this I found that the camera was easy to use due to it being
lightweight and maneuverable, this allowed us to find perfect positions to
film in anot not having to settle to less than perfect angles due to worrying
that the camera would fall off the tripod because it was too heavy. Alongside
the camera I used a tripod which was really helpful in creating a steady shot
and stopped the camera from wobbling when it was being moved around in
different angles. I think that the tripod was a big help in making the film so
professional looking and there were few jolty shots or wobbles that would put
the audience off. The tripod meant that we could use good lighting, as it
would be to heavy to hold a steady shot with the lights attached to the
camera. The lights slotted in perfectly to the top of the camera and were very
secure.
7. Conclusion
From using the technologies I have talked about, I found that
the thing I have learnt most is how to edit shots and put a
film together using Premier Pro. I thought that although
there was many, many features I didn’t get the chance to
learn about, what I did use was excellent in making my film
look professional. I think my skills in editing and using
software such as Premier Pro have excelled hugely and I found
it rewarding to see the finished film, knowing that I started
off with zero skills in editing!