This document discusses the various technologies the student learned while constructing their media product for a coursework assignment. The student gained skills in editing video with Final Cut Pro, creating titles with Motion, filming with cameras and tripods, and composing original music and soundtracks with Logic Pro. While some of the technologies like Blogger, Final Cut Pro, and Logic Pro were challenging to learn initially, with practice over months the student was able to become proficient in using the software and technologies to complete their coursework.

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

2. This coursework taught me a lot about technology and how different programmes work and their charasteristics. I
picked up many skills such as making a short film on Final Cut Pro, how to edit titles with motions on Motion, how to film
correctly with cameras and tripods and how to make my own song/soundtrack on Logic Pro.
The film opening went up on Blogger because that is how our teachers marked it.
This technology allowed me to achieve a tidy, labelled and organized
coursework. It helped me build my work and include all the details needed.
Initially, I wasn’t able to use Blogger and was new to the website but as I practiced
more and more I picked u a few skills. It has different really useful features. In
blogger we can embed videos, write notes, make posts, make links and we can
even import videos, images and sounds. The embed feature I think was one of the
most useful features Blogger has due to how i can share my work that i did on
other websites such as Prezi, Slideshare YouTube videos and Powtoon, therefore i
can do my work on different websites but then share all of them in one. It makes
everything way easier and convenient because everyone can just click on the
embedded post and a new tab will open which will make them view it. In addition,
the fact that I can change the date of a post to move it around is an advantage
for me due to how there will be a much clearer order of the steps I took to create
my whole coursework. I learnt how to used Blogger fully just after one month of
using it because I think it is an easy and straight forward website to use.
Here we can see all the posts in order and organised.
This is how i embed. I copy and paste the
embedded link in the «HTML» page.
Here it turns into a youtube video once
it is on the «compose» page.
Changing the date
of the posts.

3. Final Cut Pro was fundamental for editing our film opening. This programme is known and
used to edit videos and make short/long films and helped me achieve my 2 minute film
opening with titles, logo and sound. When i was first introduced to the programme I found it
hard to understand and use due to the diffferent tools and feautures it has. The easiest thing
to do was importing and exporting the videos but the hardest part was getting the black
fade and inserting the titles from Motion. Importing all the scenes we filmed took quite a
long time because we had over 100 clips which needed to be imported onto Final Cut.
However, the fact that we could put all of them into one folder (for example all the scenes of
the locations went in the ‘location’ folder) made everything a lot easier and saved me a lot
of time due to how organised it was and we only needed to click on one folder to view all
the clips we wanted to edit. We chose to follow a specific narrative therefore the scenes had
to be in a specific order. We decided that we will start off with the locations and then alter
betweenthe actress and actor to emphasise the contast between them. This is called a
parallel edit. Getting the black fade into the beginning and end of the film opening was
hard because we had no idea how to do it, which mad us Google it. We then succedeed
and got the black fade effect. Importing the sounds was quite easy as it was an MP3 file and
we only clicked on ‘import audio’. Importing the titles was quite difficult as we firt made
them on Motion. That is why we had to Google it and learnt how to do it. It took me qute
some time to learn how to huse Final Cut Pro properly (about 2 months) because there are
so many features and editing was something I found quite challenging. I have learnt that
how complex editing can be and also that there are so many different elements to a video
edit. I think in the end I was succeful in using this programme and i hope to build a lot more
skilss next year. We had other difficultiessuch as the scenes that kept freezing as soon as we
played them. Solving that issue took us a week because we had to get all the clips and
move them onto the desktop and start editing all over again. However, it taught me even
more about the programme because if next year while doing my Media A2 coursework
something similar happens, I will be able to deal with it quickly and effectively.
These images are screengrabs of some of the
steps i took to edit in final cut.

4. Logic Pro was one of the most challenging programmes i’ve come across so
far. This is because i have never used something similar and I am not familiar
with composing any type of music or sound. With the support of the music
department we learnt how to compose a soundtrack with different
instruments. There were so many insturments I did not even know about such
as the Synthesizers and using Logic Pro not only taught me how to use the
programme but also about music and instruments. I learnt how to put music
loops and special effects to each sound which made it unique for my film
opening. The special effects allowed me to almost replicate the song
‘Radioactive’ by Imagine Dragons which is the song that I was inspired by.
The fact that we could import our video was really useful because that way
we could see the exact timing of each scene and use that to be as precised
as possible with the music. Precision was a must due to how we want to show
contrast between the two characters and the scene changes every 3 to 5
seconds from character to character. That means that the music also had to
change mood every to 5 seconds and the having the video right there on
top of the sceen playing each time we composed our soundtrack helped us
get the timings right. I am very proud of what i achieved on Logic Pro
although it was challenging I now am confident on making soundtracks.
Music Loops
Screengrab while
composing our
soundtrack. Yellow
lines rapresent the
length of each
note.
We’ve had issues with exporting the sound due to how the
video got saved with the actual audio. This lead to the
actual Logic Pro file to go missing and we thought we lost
our original sound. However eventually we managed to
export it to Final Cut pro to then add it to our final film
opening. It took me 2 weeks to finish the soundtrack and
Logic Pro made everything a lot quicker due to how
advanced it is.

5. Motion was a really useful programme to make the titles for our film because
we had over 100 fonts to choose from. At first, like the other programmes, it was
hard to use and I took 2 days to get my head around it. It did not take us too
long to make the title due to how it is roughly 3 to 4 lines. However we tok our
time and tried different types of fonts and behaviours. The programme is called
Motion probably because of its behaviours (motions). That was the main reason
we chose it: we wanted our titles to appear and dissapear with a motion and
have an unique font that matched our genre (romance). We wanted it to be
elegant and we achieved everything thanks to Motion. The challenges were
exporting the titles onto Final Cut Pro because we could not move them but
then we solves the problem and getting the writing to motve a certain way.
Sometimes the motion caused the title to tilt or rotate automatically which
affected the making of the titles due to how it took time to adjust each of word.
The final product turned out really good and of a good quality. Now i know
how to edit text and add motions, including exporting it to Final Cut Pro which
again, will help me with my coursework next year with A2. Overall using
software and new technologies was challenging because there were many
technical problems but I am pleased we overcame these.
Here i am
choosing the font
«Apple
Chansery».
Here i am choosing the
behaviour of the text. «scale in»
«Scale Out».

6. Cameras contributed to the process of constructing our media product. Without cameras we wouldn’t be
able to film scenes professionally and the shots wouldn’t be as steady. Tripods were needed to get the best
out of each shot due to how they hold the camera still. During the coursework I learnt how to hold a steady
shot and do pannings. There were some challenges that I had to overcome for example the memory card
kept running out of space and in order for me to film the rest I ad to delete all the other scenes. It was safe
because i saved all the scenes on the computer before hand. I had to think about shot distance and using a
range of shots.
Internet Sites: sites such as Prezi, Powtoon, Slideshare and Glogster also took a big part in the making of the
coursework (in research, panning and evaluation). They are easy to embed to Blogger which is why they
were worth using.
All these technologies allowed me to construct my media product and were all useful and convenient and i
developed a lt of skills in different areas, I think if i had more time i would get to experience more wth Final
Cut and that my camera could be better framed.