AS Media Evaluation - Question 6 - What have you learn about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

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

2. What I have learnt through:
research
In order to construct my product, I had to research the genre I was dealing
with beforehand; this lead me to learn much about the technologies that I
was using in order to construct my opening sequence. On of the ways I
researched the construction of an opening sequence was through
watching examples of well constructed, high budget ones on
Artofthetitle.com. This lead me to come across ‘This is England’, a film I
gathered lots of inspiration from. Not only did I look at high budget,
professional opening sequences, but I looked at A grade examples on
YouTube – this showed me the types of things I should include in order to
get the higher grades.

3. Research cont.
Another way I conducted my research was audio commentaries
from directors on DVDs and YouTube. This allowed me to listen to
the director’s ideas and thought processes through the opening
sequence in the ideas that he had to construct it and make it
effective in order to draw the audience in. I did this for Layer Cake
and Lawless. From this, I found that sometimes with an opening
sequence less is more, as less information being thrown at an
audience can confuse them less and be more effective in wanting
to watch further into the film. This is reflected in Matthew Vaughn’s
opening sequence. We follow a car along a road with a tracking
shot before this turns into an establishing shot, showing us the
country club that Daniel Craig’s character will enter.

4. Planning
In the planning process, I have learnt that camera’s are a good
technology to use for location planning and character
establishment. With this, when there was more planning time in the
group before we went our separate ways, I went out and took
pictures of locations and possible characters, one of who I
developed to be a character in my final edited opening
sequence, showing that this form of technology in planning is
useful and effective. This also helped me to visualise the
characaters in their locations, something which then helped me to
develop the direction in which I wanted my opening sequence to
go in.

5. Here I have blogged using the
camera equipment to take
pictures of possible locations. I
also believe that blogging was a
useful technology that I learnt
about during the process of
constructing my product as it
allowed me to learn how to keep
up with work regularly and how
to present the work.

6. The blog post I used for possible
character casting.

7. Construction
I learnt a lot about technology during the construction of my product
as this was the time I most used different forms of technology. Some of
the main ones useful to me were:
• Cameras – I used two different types of camera in order to
distinguish which I felt was best quality for my opening sequence.
This allowed me to learn a lot about the different qualities of camera
and I learned how to use each for recording the best footage I
possibly could
• Editing software – I edited my opening sequence on Sony Vegas, a
fairly easy to learn yet effective programme. Using this for my first
time in editing was very useful as it allowed me to grasp the basic
idea of how to edit, which affected my opening sequence
massively as, working on my own, a lot of the second half of the
sequence used footage that was not my own, which I learned how
to manipulate and change into the way I wanted the footage to be
presented on the editing software.

8. • Filters – I used filters in the construction of my opening sequence
whilst manipulating other footage. This meant that I was able to
learn which looked best for the fitting into my sequence.
• Sound effects – I included sound effects which I didn’t think were
prominent enough in the original recording of my opening
sequence. Some of these, for example, were sounds of heels on the
pavement, or car doors slamming. This allowed me to learn about
the technology as I would select many different sounds which I
believed had the potential to fit into the sequence, placed them
into it and decided which sounded the best. I also included a
voice-over effect in the beginning of my opening sequence, a
cross between diegetic and non-diegetic sound effects as
although it was a sound that was in the actual sequence, it also
transferred from one shot to another, creating more of a voice-over
effect than just background noise.

9. Evaluation
In the process of completing my evaluation, I have learnt even more
about technologies. Some of these include information presenting
media technologies, such as SlideShare, Prezi and Emaze. Using these
allowed me to broaden the technology choices I will make in the future
when presenting my work, as they are interesting and fun ways to use.
Here I inserted a link to
a Prezi I made for the
first evaluation
question
Here I inserted a link to
a SlideShare I made
for the second
evaluation question
This is an Emaze I
created