Evaluation question 6.

1. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing
this product?
When filming our opening sequence we used various types of software and hardware that
we hadn’t used before, although some of which I had prior knowledge of e.g. YouTube.
Below I shall firstly outline the hardware we used, outline how we used them in process, the
advantages and disadvantages and explain what I have learnt, I shall then do this for the
software.
The hardware we used to film our opening sequence consisted of a Panasonic camcorder
and a Velbon tripod. The camcorder was easy to use and produced a relatively good quality
picture. The buttons were clear and connecting it to the computer was done with ease. We
learnt how to use it quickly, although at times when zooming in it often became blurry,
meaning we had to shoot these shots various times. The tripod had to be extended and the
camera had to be safely locked onto it, after learning how to do this we were able to use it
with ease. The tripod was most useful when reducing the amount of shaking the camera did
when handheld. Although it often wasn’t tall enough when doing establishing shots and was
hard to position when shooting at an angle, this meant that often we couldn’t use it,
resulting in some shaking throughout our film, although at times it the shaking did fit certain
conventions of the horror genre, helping to create an uneasy atmosphere. For example the
shot shown below of the iPhone was filmed at an angle, for this particular shot we had to
zoom in whilst hovering over the actor on a slight hill, we had to film it various different due
to the unsteady camera. We tried numerous ways to use the tripod although due to the
angle it was taken at it became very difficult meaning we had to film it handheld.

2. We also used various different types of software in the construction of our opening
sequence. The software that we used most was premier pro, we were all very new to this
software and had to do lots of research on how to use it due to it being very technical. We
used it to edit our main footage together cutting and cropping the different bits of footage
taken on filming day. After this we used premier pro to introduce the titles and sound into
the film. We also used premier pro to produce the logo. The main thing I have learnt from
using premier pro is that it is a lengthy process as due to our inexperience certain things
were very difficult to use. Although after the research we did we were able to gain a wider
understanding of the software and use it effectively to produce our film.
We also used YouTube and Tumblr to upload our main task/coursework. I learnt how to
upload different forms of media onto Tumblr due to the various different technologies we
used when producing our coursework. Due to never using Tumblr before I had to come to
grips with how it worked, although the simple layout and various information on the
internet helped me come to grips with it very quickly. We used YouTube to upload our
finished main task onto the internet, it was very easy to do although exporting our film
before uploading it took a very long time and was very technical.