This document discusses the technologies used during the three main stages of constructing a media product: planning and research, construction, and evaluation. During planning and research, websites like YouTube, IMDb, and Wikipedia were used to find information and ideas. For construction, the author learned how to use a camera, microphone, lighting, Movie Studio Platinum for editing, and Photoshop for titles. Overall, the author gained valuable experience using filming equipment and editing software to create a quality film opening.

1. QUESTION 6
What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this
product?

2. STAGES OF PRODUCTION
There are three main stages to through when constructing a media product:
 Planning and Research
 Construction
 Evaluation
This presentation will address the technology we used to do these things:
 Prezi
 Blogger
 Movie Studio Platinum
 YouTube
 Photoshop

3. PLANNING AND RESEARCH
For our planning and research, we used a number of different websites.The main website we used was
YouTube.We also used IMDb,Wikipedia (for plot ideas) and BBFC to find out about existing films and
their classifications – this gave us an indication of how to classify our film.These websites were easy to
use as they were self explanatory and didn’t require too much time to use.Their secondary data was
very useful in our research. I learned how to find particular information through these without wasting
time.
We also looked into ourTarget Audience, researching their demographics and interviewing them on
what they want horror films to contain.This helped up with many ideas as to what to add in order to
please/attract theTA.

4. CONSTRUCTION ELEMENTS
For the construction process we had to learn how to use the camera, lighting and
mic.We also had to learn how to use movie studio platinum and Photoshop
effectively.

5. CAMERA
Throughout the process I have learned about how to frame and balance the
camera so that the shots do no exclude important features or equally include
disruptive ones.This way I can make it look professional and keep the focus on the
main part/person in the scene. It also helps when thing’s like clocks just happen to
the in the setting.These can be out of frame to avoid continuity errors. Balancing
the camera also makes the shot look for stable – it’s easier to watch and again
looks more professional.
When producing our film opening, I also learned how to export the clips from the
SD card and save them in a specific folder.This helps with ease of access and time
management (of the products) now that I can do it quickly and efficiently.
As well as the camera, I also learned how to use a tripod in order to keep shots
stable. I found it had different heights, a tilt option and helps with panning shots.

6. MICROPHONE
When filming our final piece we decided to only use the microphone on the mic, despite planning to
use and boom mic due to one of the outside settings as it would eliminate any unnecessary sound or
wind.We recorded sounds from the woods, thundering bangs and some screaming to add into our
piece, so although the sound effects are still non-diegetic in the sense that you can’t see the source
which they are coming from, the sound effects were made by us either on set or added on afterward
(not including the music). Overall, I have learned the use and importance of mics when picking up
diegetic sounds within our opening and I know how it works and how t o connect it etc. – even
though we didn’t find use of it ourselves.

7. LIGHTING
We used artificial lighting for our opening because both locations where naturally very dark.They were
easy to use and they just needed to be set up then turned on or off.The camera mounted light could
also be dimmed and brightened which is very useful. It also had different filters to change the mood of
the lighting. We decided to use the orange and white ones because it had to look natural – we are only
using lighting because without it nothing would have been picked up on camera, thus we didn’t use
any special tricks to draw attention to the lighting. We used the bigger lights for large shots where the
character could run off into the darkness. I learned how to use both kinds of lighting very effectively
and how much difference lighting can make to the film and its atmosphere.

8. EDITING SOFTWARE
Movie Studio Platinum: We used this to edit and piece together our footage. I learned a lot
during this process.The basics were learned through a preliminary task at the start of the
course. It was pretty easy to get understand and gets a hang of. Later, I learned of more
technical elements like how to trim certain scene so that their transitions look authentic, how
to add music and sound over a clip and how to make scene lighter and darker due to the nature
of our locations. Movie Studio Platinum was the most useful piece of software I learned to use
effectively.
Photoshop: I learned how to use it to create our titles/credits. It had a massive range of fonts
and colours to use so that we could find what factors of the titles can help establish our genre.
Thanks to Photoshop, any background (behind the titles) was removed, making it much easier
to put them over our footage.

9. MOVIE STUDIO PLATINUM PHOTOSHOP

10. CONCLUSION
During the process of constructing my media product I have learned how to
use filming equipment professionally and effectively and also how to use
editing software to make a good quality film opening. Before starting this task
I had never edited footage or filmed with a proper camera (and equipment).
This task further my capabilities in these fields and has taught me a lot in this
regard. In the future I will be able to use it efficiently and further develop my
skills and knowledge.