Evaluation 4

Throughout this whole short film making project I used a vast range of technology and software that all had an important role on the development of my final product. Firstly and crucially I chose to present all my work of internet blogging site blogger.

Blogger is a reliable, easy blog publishing service that easily allows me to make a text post, display images, embed PowerPoints and present Youtube/Vimeo clips all in one place. I already have great experience with Blogger following my AS project. Blogger allowed me to show the journey i took in the production of my film, from the early research to the final editing process.
For my target audience testings and reviews i used a variety of methods. Firstly i wrote a series of questions on Blogger and recorded using a simple flip camera my audience's response, then publishing the clip on Blogger. I also used Facebook messenger to directly contact individual members of my target audience to get a more direct and personal response from them. I also used traditional methods such as printing out and handing out questionnaires to my target audience and doing a simple tally of the results. However for presenting the results i used Inforgram. Inforgram is a simple to use, free information presenting software that allowed me to present my target audience test results in a more aesthetically pleasing way.

When it came to the filming process we used a fairly simple amount of equipment. Firstly we used a Nikon D3200 DSLR.

From past experience with the camera in my AS project i know this camera is not to be underestimated. Although it may appear much, it is very reliable, easy to focus and maneuver. The lens can be swapped out for one with a more variable zoom which was very handy for long and establishing shots with minimal shake and easy focus, as you would expect with a photographer style camera. Most importantly though it is capable of recording footage at 1080p HD which makes it perfect for the quality footage we wished to capture. Although it is very capable of recording decent quality audio, for what we wanted we needed something more. For this we attached a HD quality recording boom mike, which we sometimes attached to the camera it'self or held up to the subject using a extendable boom pole, which came with a "dead cat" attachment to remove any wind distortion from the audio.

 




To be to keep our camera stead and our tracking shots smooth we used a stable and sturdy Hama tripod, which from our past experience we know to be sturdy, smooth to use and very portable. This enabled to take smooth panning shots and sturdy focused footage.

 











Throughout the whole editing process we stored and processed all of our footage on Apple IMac computers.

For the past year during our AS project we became very familiar with the high capability of IMacs and how they handle certain software and how to use their complex storage systems. More importantly IMacs have some of the most advanced and professional media software on any computers. It was these professional linear software we used to edit our footage.

Premiere Pro was the primary software we used to edit our film. Premiere Pro is prime example of technological convergence at it's best. Using this software we were able to do the continuity editing of our footage, edit the sound, lighting, contrast, speed and focus levels of our footage. It even allowed us to do a basic level of special effects. However for the sake of our film we primarily used it for the continuity editing of our film, for which Premiere Pro's easy clip importing and refining capabilities made the task very simple and flexible. It's frame by frame clip cutting tool allowed to have very refined and precise footage that fitted together into a linear sequence.

However for the more advanced special effects which we included in our film we used After Effects.

Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing software, which allowed us to create the professional standard special effects we used in our film. However I had little knowledge of how to use this complex software so for the majority of effects we used I followed a YouTube tutorials which gave step by step guides on how to create a desired effect. After Effects enabled us through complex motion tracking and fixating to create very compelling and exciting effects such as the car crash and gunshot scenes in our film. These edited clips were then easily transferred to Premiere Pro to be added to the finished sequence. For the our incidental and score soundtracks we used Garage band.

Garage Band is a simple Apple software which enables the composition of MP3 music files which can then be uploaded to Apple music and then onto our finished sequence. I previously had some experience with garage band when i created the Score sound track for my AS film. It's a very simple software that allows you access to a variety of instruments and audios that can be sequenced together one at a time into a finished composition. We used this for our score in our title sequence.

Another software we briefly touched upon was Adobe Audition.

Audition is a digital audio workshop software which allows you to edit, in detail a piece of audio. This was my first time using this software so i had to spend time getting to grips with the basics. I used audition to edit the wavelengths, echo and distortion of specific clips to give them a dramatic effect for our film, for example the sound effect that can be heard when our protagonist time travels.
After using all this advanced software to piece together our final product we then posted it on YouTube.

YouTube is the most popular video sharing application in the world. It allows you to share media footage in HD online to the whole world. However we used YouTube as it is the most compatible and easiest site to share and upload footage onto different browsers, for example Blogger. All out our preliminary clips and recorded target audience tests were put onto YouTube.
Finally for the entire development and creation period of our ancillary products we used Photoshop.

Photoshop is one of the most advanced and professional photo manipulation software available. For my ancillary product I used Photoshop for everything, the enhancing of my images, the setting of the layout and the creation of our typography. I have been using Photoshop for a number of years, In my AS course i used it to create the Ident for our previous film.