The document discusses the technologies used to create a product. A Sony Handycam and Sony 230 camera were used to film footage and photos. A tripod was used to capture stop motion shots. A Mac computer was used to edit the project in Final Cut Express. Posterous and Wordpress were used to blog about the process. YouTube was used to upload test footage and receive feedback. FreeSound provided copyright-free sound clips. GarageBand was explored as a source for music but not used. Final Cut Express allowed editing together footage, photos, and sounds into the final product.

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

2. Camera
We used a Sony Handycam camera for filming our product.
Although we also had previous experience of using it for
filming other sequences like our Preliminary Task, 180 degree
rule testing and Match-On-Action examples. After all of the
practice we had with these camera’s it felt rather easy to
actually get used to them and we soon grew to know rather a
lot of techniques that we could do with it like the Macro and
Spot Focus features. We then learnt how to transfer anything
we film from our camera to the Mac that we were using. With
the use of other things like a tripod and a reflector, I think we
got some amazing shots that would fit perfectly in our thriller.

3. Sony 230
On the day of filming I brought in my Sony 230 camera and we ended up using it
in many different ways. We began by using it to take some photos for our
Polaroids that were to later feature in our product. We also used it for a behind
the scenes look at our filming so that we could then upload it to the blog to show
the process of the whole product. During filming we used the camera to take
some stop motion shots using the tripod which later came out really well and was
actually added to our final product. I think we had rather a lot of experience with
this on the day but with the experience that I have had by using it outside of
filming and media, it worked really well and ended up giving us some very clear
and effective photographs. The use of the stop motion shots taken from this
camera worked really well when edited in with the film clips and was actually
added to our final cut.

4. Tripod
The tripod came in handy many times throughout filming.
We ended up using it with the Sony 230 camera in order
to take our effective stop motion photographs as it
helped provide us with a fixed and still shot. We have had
previous experience with using a tripod in the prelim task
and other lessons which actually gave us an advantage
when it came to using it on the day of filming. We could
set it up really quick without any fuss and quickly found
out how to easily take shoot some scenes with a range of
different angles and sometimes with the use of very slight
panning.

5. Mac Computer
Before starting the Media course I had no experience
with using a Mac before and it proved rather difficult to
get used to but as soon as we started to use it more often
when researching things for the introduction tasks and
eventually editing during the preliminary task I found it
becoming quite easy to use. We finally learnt all of the
new keyboard commands and using the mac became
much more second nature. The speed of the Mac
computers were amazing 99% of the time and actually
helped us to improve out thriller a lot with the use of
Final Cut Express.

6. Posterous
(https://posterous.com)
Posterous is a really good blogging site which contained all of our classes
blogs. We each had our own ‘Space’ in the blog which was named depending
on which computer we were using, for example my group was called R2-32
and so was our space. We had the freedom to customize our space as much
as we’d like by adding backgrounds and perhaps even changing our space
layout. I really liked this as it gave a more personal feel to our space which we
later used to blog about the process we went through from start to finish,
almost like a diary that we kept updated. The blog was made available for
anyone to see so we also got to see how the other people were doing too. I
think that doing a blog has really helped as we can see how far we are getting
with things and we can see what needs to be done to get the highest grades
possible. Unfortunately we had to move our whole blog over to Wordpress as
Posterous was shutting down a few months later.

7. Wordpress
(http://wordpress.com)
After we moved to wordpress from Posterous we began
learning the basics again. We started off by trying to find
out how to customize the blog to make it our own and
soon enough we did and we eventually got the hang of it
again. It is actually better than Posterous in some ways as
you can make video, quote, link and text based posts
whereas with Posterous we were restricted to having one
type of post but imbedding videos and links onto it.

8. YouTube
(www.youtube.com)
Youtube was really simple to navigate around as all of our
group has previous in depth experience with the site. One
of our groups also had a channel so we knew that it
would be easy for us to know how to successfully upload
and annotate it. We all used it to upload the Preliminary
task, Ident, Rough Cut and other test footage like the
Match-On-Action and 180 degree rule tasks. YouTube also
allowed us to be able to upload any footage we needed
feedback on because anyone was allowed to comment
and rate it so we had a constant feedback for everything
we did.

9. FreeSound
(www.freesound.org)
FreeSound was really easy to navigate even without
having used it before so we easily found many sound
clips that we liked and that fit together and in Final Cut,
created a soundtrack. FreeSound was just a simple way
of finding copyrighted sound clips that we could use for
our product.

10. GarageBand
Garage band was one of the simple programmes we
came across whilst making our product. It would
simply just take some clicking and dragging with
sounds that went well together to come across a
tune that works really well with our opening.
Although we didn’t end up using a song from
GarageBand as we didn’t get anything that would
work well enough.

11. Final Cut Express
Final Cut Express was a programme we used that allowed
us to piece together any footage, photos and sounds
together and edit them the way we wanted in order to
get our final product. It was really simple to use for
editing as we had previous experience with the
programme as we made previous things in it such as our
Preliminary. Due to being rather adventurous with the
programme we eventually gained the skills we needed to
create something we were really proud of and with the
use of FreeSound we got the perfect soundtrack to go
with it too!