question five

2. At the start of the course I didn’t know how to use the camera, lighting or tripod.
However after being taught by my peers and teachers I have now learnt the basic
techniques and how to improve the quality of the footage. I have learnt that in
order for the footage to be clear and professional, the camera must be in focus at
set at the correct frames per second. For example, myself and the other group
members struggled to capture a clear establishing shot, but after changing the
seconds to 50 frames instead of 24 we found that the quality looked much better.
I have also learnt about all the different types of camera angles/shots and how to
perform them. For example, a tilt requires the tripod in order for the camera to be
steady and smooth and that a tilt can be performed by tilting the tripod upwards
or downwards. In addition, from this I have learnt that the tripod can come in as
really handy when filming as it ensures that the footage is still and not wobbly. I
have also learnt that the lighting is very significant when filming as it can improve
the footage by again making the quality clearer and more professional, however
unfortunately the bulb blew whilst we were filming our extract and therefore
resulted in us having to depend on natural lighting, which was very risky due to
the weather being fairly dull and cloudy on our filming day.

3. At the start of the course I had no experience with blogging and very little
knowledge about the blogging industry. However I now know many
techniques such as; how to upload individual blogs and how to manage my
blog efficiently. After learning these basic skills, I was able then able to learn
new advanced skills. For example, I learnt how to customise and edit my page
to improve it’s presentation and how to alter the text and layout to your own
personal taste. Another skill that I have learnt is, how to embed codes from
other websites and to paste them into the HTML. Also towards the start of the
course I have learnt what each symbol means on the top tool bar, for example;
the picture symbol allows you to upload images from your computer drive and
into your post and that the film board symbol allows you to copy links from
YouTube and place the video into your blog post. In addition, after making the
posts visible for others, I found that you can make improvements and
alterations to your post by selecting the pencil symbol that’s located directly
under each individual post. Overall, I didn’t face many issues with the blogging,
apart from when the font and colour of the text wouldn’t change, however my
teacher then advised/told me how to solve this issue, which was by changing
the HTML code manually.

4. At the start of the course I didn’t have any previous experience with using the
editing programme, Adobe Premier Pro and I had little knowledge about how real
films are edited. However after being introduced to the programme during my
preliminary task I was able to quickly pick up the basic editing skills and became
more confident about editing, which made me look forward to filming and editing
our actual opening sequence. From using the programme I have discovered the
black and white filter, in which we used to remove the warping lines that appeared
on the footage due to the poor lighting. Another skill that I had learnt was how to
cut down/crop the footage using the ‘razor tool’ which is located on the left hand-
side tool bar. This skill enabled me to cut down the duration of the extract which
was an important technique to know due to our original, initial footage being over 3
minutes long. In addition I have also learnt how to import and overlap footage to
create effect and I have learnt that you need to detach the audio from the footage
first before making alterations to the film as this could change to sound levelling
and make either dialogue or audio sound un-professional. However I also faced
minor issues whilst editing the extract, for example; I found adjusting the sound
level difficult at the start, but was fortunately shown how to perform this task
correctly by my other team members.

5. In order to capture clear audio, myself and the other team members had to use a
recording microphone. I personally didn’t know how to use the microphone at the
start of the course, but due to the device being fairly simple and easy to use, I
quickly understood how the microphone functioned. We initially intended to use a
internal microphone, but found that the captured audio wasn’t to a clear or high
standard and sounded very muffled. Therefore due to the sound being very
significant within the opening sequence, we decided that the recording
microphone may capture the audio clearer. So then we chose to record the
antagonist’s dialogue using this device and after importing the audio onto the
editing software, we found that the audio was in-sync with the footage and
sounded more professional. In addition, In order to capture the footage, we had to
use an SD card so that the footage would be stored. Fortunately I have used an SD
over the previous years, so therefore I understood how to import the footage onto
the editing software.