Question 6 of our AS Media Studies evaluation

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

2. Camera For our filming we used a Sony DCR-HC51E Handycam. The camera allowed perfect precision when zooming in which was essential due to us using a lot of extreme close up shots. At the start of the filming process, filming at all was very daunting however this easy to use camera made filming simple.

3. Filming One of our main problems when filming was continuity, for example on our first filming attempt it was very dark in comparison to our second filming attempt, even though they were both filmed at the same time. We over came this by re-filming certain parts of the film, so the lighting was the same throughout.

4. Editing To edit our film we used Adobe Premiere Pro on an iMac. To start with using the software was a challenge because neither of us knew how to use it. But after lots of practice we finally got the hang of it and we are very happy with the end result.

5. Adobe Premiere Pro Firstly we learnt have to cut clips and move them around on the timeline. Secondly we learnt how to add transitions and how they have a big effect on the atmosphere of the film, for example using a ‘fade to black’ adds a very dark feel to the movie. Also we learnt how to layer our film, so we could have several clips playing in one scene.

6. Adobe Premiere Pro continued In addition we also worked out how to turn our film into black and white, this was essential because it intensified the mystery within the film. And finally we learnt how to import our non-diegetic backing music into our film, we also added fades to this so it started and ended the same time as our film.

7. Youtube We were able to research lots of different music for our thriller, and in the end we found the one that we used. By creating an account and uploading our film onto Youtube, we were then able to add annotations to the video meaning we could annotate it for other evaluation questions. Youtube also allows the whole of the Internet to not only be able to view our video but in addition they can leave comments on it as well.

8. Blogger Blogger allowed to accurately write a ‘diary’ about how the construction of the film was going, also allowing us to upload photos and videos. We could also talk in-depth about other thriller films which inspired us and how filming, editing etc was going.