Evaluation question 6

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

Research:

During the research into this project I found that the use of social networking sites like blogger and facebook, really helped our group stay in touch and understand where we were in the project. I would recommend the full abuse of these sites when doing group work. We also used still cameras when picking locations, which helped us see how many extras we would need to make the hall look full up and also helped us decide on our framing and what we wanted to show in shot.

Production:

During the actual filming of the opening sequence we learnt about pad lights and three point lighting. Three-point lighting is very good in terms of eliminating shadow and recreating a 'natural' look, but only when you have been taught to use them properly. It took some lessons and a few recces for us to work out how best to use them, which was made more complicated by the fact that different lighting was needed for different shots.After getting the footage realised the importance of keep the lighting continuous to avoid continuity errors.

The boom mic proved difficult to use when doing long shots and the cable connecting the camera to the mic kept hitting things and the sound resonated through the camera. It was necessary to use a lot more than just a simple camcorder. We needed a tripod to do steady shots, a boom mic to pick up sound from further away and a boom pole to holster it, a battery to power the camera and a smaller one to use as back up, two tapes and headphones to check the sound. We also used several studio lights in order to illuminate our shots and give them more depth.

Post production:

In post production we learnt how to use both final cut pro and premier pro to edit our footage. The two were really user friendly, with acess to "bins" simple transitions and effects to add to the video and similar effects to add to our audio.

One simple method we used on premier pro was the chroma keying "green screened" effect. Following the simple steps in the above video and adding some special effects to a pre recorded image of Frank we ended up with this: