The student learned to use various technologies throughout the process of creating a film opening. They used Wikipedia for research, Blogger to document their progress, YouTube to find inspiration and source footage, Microsoft Word for planning documents, royalty free websites to find music, a digital camera to take photos as evidence, a camcorder to film, an SD card to store footage, Photoshop to create mockups and a logo, and iMovie to edit the final product together. While familiar with some technologies, the student became more proficient in technologies they were previously unfamiliar with, such as Blogger, royalty free websites, and iMovie, and learned the importance of technology in creating high quality media.

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

2. We constantly used technology to help the process of constructing our product. There were many different media formats which helped us to complete both the planning and processing of our film opening. This challenged each of our abilities as we embarked on new experiences using products we were unfamiliar with.....

3. Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia which gives you a lot of useful information. It is a media format that all three of us were familiar with and knew how it worked. This was our main source for research on ‘The fritzl’ event, as it gave us all the general information we needed to know about the case. Timelines and images were included which helped us to understand the event in a lot of detail.

4. Our media portfolio is presented on Blogger, therefore we recorded all of our information/production progress on our blogs. Blogger is a media format I was un-familiar with, therefore it took me a while to get to grips with how to use the website. After a few posts, I became more confident with it and eventually was able to use it to it’s full potential. I recorded my groups progress during production annotating particular clips which inspired us etc. This website was really helpful for the group, helping us to remember all the information we found, and each step of progression.

5. YouTube is a media format which all three of us were familiar with. We were all able to successfully search media using this website. We used YouTube to find inspiration for our product. E.g. We found a music video ‘Wolfen Children’ which we thought related to our theme and could be useful to us. We embedded the video’s code onto our blogs and presented our newest inspiration. We also used YouTube to find a relevant Austrian news report, which was burnt onto a DVD so we could use it during our opening. We embedded the code of this video onto our blogs too, explaining our latest find and how we planned to use it.

6. Microsoft word is a programme which allows you to create documents, myself and the group were all familiar with this programme and managed to use it throughout the process of constructing our product. We used Microsoft word constantly throughout our post-production stage. It helped us to record important plans e.g. the shooting plans and time schedules etc. We saved these documents in case any changes occurred. This way we would remember to mention the changes on our blogs to keep all of our progress up to date.

7. When trying to find music to fit the theme of our film, we searched many different Royalty Free Websites to prevent any copy-right. I had never used a website like this before, but it was relatively easy to adapt to. We found the main soundtrack for our film on Files Tube, a Royalty Free website. It was simple to download, free and no copy-right occurred. This was a simple process and the next step was to incorporate it into our edited footage.

8. From our very first day of production we used a digital camera to take pictures of our progress. This created evidence for us to present on our blogs. Collecting evidence helped to make our blogs look more interesting and interactive. It also created a visible explanation of what we were explaining. We took it in turns to take pictures (depending on who was filming/acting) Being photography students we were all familiar with how to use the digital camera and had no trouble with this technology!

9. To film our product we used the schools Sanyo Full HD Dual Camcorder. Our group had previously experimented with this camera during our preliminary task, however our knowledge on using this technology was limited. Alex and I took it in turns to film our shots (as Alice was acting) and between us managed to help each other become more confident with using the camcorder. We taught ourselves how to change the focus and learnt which camera angles worked best. The camcorder became easy to use and by the end of production we were more experimental and skilful.

10. We decided against using one of the schools SD cards and used our own. This prevented any of our footage being deleted. Using an SD card was really convenient as we were able to watch back footage immediately without capturing, which is a long process. It also meant that each of us were able to have a copy of our latest footage as we could upload data from the SD card onto each of our own computers. After uploading our footage from the SD card we were able to start editing immediately making it a quick and easy process.

11. During the process of constructing our product we used photoshop to it’s full potential. As photography students we were all familiar with the programme, however I was less experienced with using the various tools. We used photoshop to make some mock-up images of shots we had in mind, to get a feeling of what our film might look like Alice created this image on photoshop which we took a lot of inspiration from when it came to actually filming!

12. We also used photoshop to create our production logo. We were able to use various different tools to create the finished product e.g. Using particular brushes to create the eyelash effect on the eye. We had to make sure that there was no copy- right involved when finding a picture to use for our production logo. Therefore we found a decent ‘free-image’ FREEIMAGES.co.uk website which provided us with a variety of eye images to choose from!

13. Finally we used Alice’s Mac book pro to edit our film. We used iMovie to edit the footage, as I do not own a Mac I was unfamiliar with this programme, but Alice taught me various skills and I quickly adapted becoming more confident with editing. Editing was certainly not an easy process, and was very time consuming. There were many things which needed tweaking and music and various other sound effects needed to be added. When we started to look back on our footage we realised that as we had filmed in various different locations, each clip had different lighting. To solve this we changed the contrast of each clip in order to make them match. before after

14. The transitions played an important part in our film opening. We needed to make our flashbacks look realistic, to do so, we used the fade through white transition which made the correct clips look like a memory from the past. It was also important to make the ‘eye scene’ have fast zoom/zoom out. It was particularly hard to get this speed the same throughout each clip, but overall had a very effective, spooky result!

15. We added the music we had previously chosen, timing it with our footage. Eventually we managed to create a very eerie and dramatic effect in all the right places, due to the music we used! Our next task was to find relevant sound effects e.g. footsteps and doors opening, we managed to find all of the appropriate sounds on iMovie!

16. Adding credits and creating the film title was also done on iMovie. This process was also quite difficult as making them the right speed and putting them in the correct place was very tricky. However, eventually we managed to create professional looking credits and film title with our previously chosen fonts and were very pleased with the overall outcome!!

17. I have learnt many different skills about technologies throughout the process of constructing our product. I have learnt to use many different media formats becoming much more confident in my knowledge of technology. Adapting my skills along the process helped to produce a professional looking ‘Art House’ themed film opening. Without these technologies, I wouldn’t have been able to collect all the information I needed in order to contribute to sticking to our film brief. I also wouldn’t have been able to contribute to this without the programmes which helped us to create high-quality mock-ups and edits. Overall, technology is really important when creating media. Without it, our product wouldn’t be as high quality, and wouldn't look professional. Conclusion