1. What have you learned about technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
In the process of constructing our production, I have learnt a number of new skills,
the main one being how to use Adobe Premier to create a film, though in the
process I have also developed my skills regarding the use of Tumblr, especially to
publish photos, links and learning how to embed, learnt how to use Youtube - which I had
previously only used to watch videos rather than publish them, and learnt how to use Scribd,
Slideshare and Prezi. Furthermore, my depth of knowledge has increased on how to use the
camera, lighting and sound equipment.
Prior to this task, I had no
experience with using Adobe
Premier Pro, however during the
process I learnt how to add non-
diegetic sound, fade it in and out
and layer it, speed up and render
the footage, add titles and
transitions, use the garbage matte
effect and finally export the film
once it was finished. These
techniques can be observed from
the screen shot to the
left. I think the
aspects which were most effective were the titles which we overlaid, as they were
consistent in font and size throughout (other than the final title ‘Accidental’, which
we identified as being unique and memorable by using a
contrasting font), the overlapping of sound between the
non-diegetic sound of the track ‘Engagement’ and the false though
diegetic sound of the car engine, and the application of a garbage matte.
Furthermore, I think one of the shot transitions worked effectively,
whereupon we used it to disguise a slight jolt when merging two fridge
shots together (as you can see from the screen shot on the left), though I
don’t think it worked so well
when using it in conjunction with
a zoom out from a close up of the
fridge magnets, since this is not
such a common transition and
made our title sequence look
slightly more amateur. However, our alteration of the speed
was not so successful – we were forced to increase the
speed in order to cut the length of the footage down
from 3.50 minutes to 2.20, though this has had
consequences regarding how realistic the film looks, as

2. it clearly looks as though it has been sped up to an unrealistic speed. The screenshots above show
how the sound was altered. Furthermore, the point where the main character is applying lipstick was
split into two clips with a small section removed to cut down on time, however when we sped up the
sequence the speed is slightly faster in one section than the other, resulting in a lack of consistency.
Also, our limited knowledge on the movement of titles meant we were forced to change our initial
plans on how to present some titles (such as creating the illusion that milk was being poured in the
shape of a title) and instead our titles were presented in either a much simpler straight
transformation, a still, or were incorporated them into the film – largely through the use of post-it
notes.
As mentioned above, throughout the course of the year I have learnt how to use the
camera, sound and lighting equipment effectively, though for our main task the knowledge of how
to use a camera and tripod was most beneficial, as we did not use the sound equipment (since we
relied on sounds provided by Youtube and Adobe Audition) nor the lighting equipment (since we
made use of the appropriate natural lighting). In our preliminary task, we
failed to use a wide variety of camera angles which had effects on our main
task as we were not experienced with using transitions such as ‘Crash Zoom’,
meaning many of our shots were out of focus, and jolty. However, after
reshooting these scenes we improved this, greatly losing the number of jumpy
and out-of-focus transitions. Furthermore, in our initial shoot we failed to use
the tripod sufficiently (due to wanting to track the main character (which we
did not think was possible whilst using the tripod) or positioning the camera in
positions unavailable when the tripod was attached), though this meant the
majority of our shots were shaky. However, after identifying this we re-shot
these scenes by improvising, for example, when tracking the central character
when walking outside, we used a convertible car and positioned the camera
and tripod inside, meaning the car could slowly follow the character and the
camera would remain still. I think this worked effectively, and was a vast improvement from our first
attempt, though there are still a few occasions where sudden movements occur.
However, I think the most technical skill we learnt was how to use an eight-point garbage
matte to cut out part of the top layer track, in order for the illusion to be created that the car was
pulling the title ‘Accidental’ along behind it. I found this particularly difficult as it required accurate
precision in order for the entire shot to be covered, to ensure that the garbage matte was not
exposed at any point. The screen shot below illustrates this.