Question Six

1. Question Six - What have you learnt about
technologies from the process of
constructing the product?
By Katie Allison

2. • While making our opening sequence we have
learnt lots about the making of a film, including
the filming itself and the post-production. We also
learnt how to use a range of different filming
equipment.

3. Research
• When we began thinking about our opening sequence I
thought it was important to look into other opening
sequences, this included The Exorcist and Juno.
• I then also researched into the conventions of a horror film
to see what we should include, we also asked some people
what they think should be included in a horror film. When we
changed our genre to drama I then also looked into the
conventions of dramas.
• Looking into the drama film Juno I was able to see how
important it was to build the characterisation in drama films.

4. Planning
• From our other ideas we realised the importance of planning.
This included picking the perfect days to film on, it was
important that we had the right weather when filming our
protagonist walking down the street, this was so we could use
pathetic fallacy to portray the girls sadness.
• For one of our original ideas planning was extremely important
as we had to set barbies on fire, this meant we had to plan for
the right day, the right location and get ready to extinguish the
fire, this made sure everyone was safe.
• Planning was also important when it came to costume as we
had to make sure we were able to get a hold of a school shirt.

5. Equipment
• We used a lot of new equipment that we had never used before.
• The camera we used was a Nikon D50100 this was the first time we had used a
camera like this so it took a lot of practice in order to get the best results, this
included using different lenses, including zoom lenses.
• For some of our footage it was vital to use a tripod, this was especially when
we were filming our protagonist type on her phone, this is so we could get the
angle that we wanted and so the footage we filmed was not shaky or bad
quality.
• For one part of out opening sequence we had to film under some toilet doors,
for this we had to use a slider this was completely new equipment for us but it
was able to produce the best quality of film as it was able to flow unlike when
we attempted to film it a bit at a time.
• We also had to use a microphone to film the non-diegetic dialogue.

6. Editing
• We learnt a lot when it came to editing our opening sequence as we had never edited anything
before, the editing software we used was final cut pro.
• One editing technique we learnt to use and ended up using a few times was slow motion, we
thought that the slow motion was able to help us add to the fact our protagonist was depressed,
we added slow-mo to parts of our footage such as her walking to school.
• Another effect we learnt to add was the rain effect, we added this to make the idea of pathetic
fallacy really clear, the idea that the weather when she was walking to school was really dull
reflects her mood towards going to school.
• We were also able to edit our dialogue and sound, we added the echo effect to our dialogue to
produce the idea that our protagonist’s mums voice rings through her head.
• To add to the idea that our protagonist was getting cyber bullied we added text boxes that were
edited to look like text messages to show the kind of messages she was getting sent, to this we
also added the sound of typing and ringtones.
• We also learnt a lot about colour grading/matching, so we were able to make our work flow
together and look more professional, all the colour in our opening sequence.