Media Studies Coursework (film opening) Evaluation - Task 6

1. Media Evaluation – Task 6: What have
you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?

2. The equipment
Camera
The camera we used was ….. and it was the most important piece of equipment used to capture our project.
Before our prelim task I was unsure how to use it as I had had no previous experience using cameras to film
before starting Media at the beginning of this year. I gradually got the hang of it and I was able to learn how to
capture certain shot types including close ups and panning shots. By the time we had finished filming I was
confident with using the camera to achieve any type of shot. If I was asked to now use the camera, I would be
confident and comfortable to, I would be able to set up the camera ready for filming and be able to achieve any
shot type required. I was also able to upload all of the clips correctly onto the Mac and import it to the Final Cut
Pro programme.
Tripod
To start with the tripod was quite difficult to use, especially when attaching and detaching the camera from it,
as you had to hold multiple things at once and it can only be attached if you put it in a certain way. Although,
once I got the hang of it, it was easy equipment to use. Adjusting the height and titling the tripod was an easy
task and so was compacting it down into the bag.
Mac
Before starting the media studies course, I had never use a Mac before, so using it
took a lot of time to get use to. Now that we have been using the Mac for a couple
of months now, I am confident and comfortable with using them. I have learnt that
you have to be patient when loading up the computer as it takes a bit more time to
load up the programmes than other computers I have used previously.

3. Applications
YouTube
Mahara
Final Cut Pro
Youtube was the large contributor to our project. Not only did we upload our prelim, rough cut
and final project to YouTube, we also used it as research. This is because we could gain access
to a large amount of media projects of all different genres and gain ideas for our psychological
thriller. We also had access a lot of video demonstrations which helped with how to annotate
our final project for evaluation task 5.
Marhara was where we documented all of the research, planning, editing
sessions and our evaluation. This is so we were able to do work during class, but
also at home and so that we could work at our own pace. This was a very useful
programme as it was able to hold and embed multiple platforms of different
medias including YouTube videos, Prezi and Slideshare, therefore it was easy to
store all work in the same place, making it easy to access and locate.
Final Cut Pro was the programme we used to bring together all of the clips we shot to make our final
project. We combined them with different sounds as well as colour filters that we used on all of the dark
room shots and titles to make sure that our film opening contains as many conventions as a real media
project. The software includes diegetic sound as well as title options. We used the diegetic sound of a
doorbell, even though there were a lot more options with sound, we felt as if we had enough and the
titles the programme offered did not fit with the style of our film opening. Instead we used DAFONT
DA FONT
DAFONT is the website we used to download the font of our title for out film
opening. It was a very easy site to use, as you enter in the text first, so that
you can get a preview of how each font will look and then you simply
download the font you want and add it to Final Cut software.