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

Below is a quick overview of some key technologies we used to create our film opening. It's a collaborative vocal annotation of our opening by myself, Louis and Mari.

Hardware

As mentioned in the commentary, we used two different cameras to film the opening. One was a Canon HV30. It was also compatible with a tripod and a shotgun mic.

Canon HV30

Shotgun mic for Canon HV30

Useful Functions

Difficulties

HD – Capable of capturing high quality footage so that every detail could be picked up, allowing the audience to suspend their disbelief much more easily Digital – Allowed us to lots of shots in quick succession and made it much more lightweight. We could also watch the footage back instantly to ensure that the shots we captured were of an acceptable standard. Footage could also be transferred to a computer directly, making the editing process much quicker. Viewfinder – Allowed us to see exactly we were filming, which made framing far easier Lightweight – Meant that we could transport the camera around the location very easily Tripod – Allowed us to keep a steady frame and change the angles at which we shot Shotgun Microphone – Helped focus on the sounds we wanted to hear and eliminate some of the background noise Zoom function and auto focus – Made shooting from a distance much easier. Auto focus ensured that we were never out of focus, regardless of distance.

Tripod – The pivots in the tripod we stiff, which caused us to jolt the camera when attempting to take pan shots. This meant we had to shoot more takes than we expected. Furthermore, the legs were difficult to balance unless it was fully extended on flat ground. This sometimes made shooting horizontally hard. Shotgun Microphone – Although it probably did eliminate a lot of the background noise, it didn’t eliminate enough, which later caused an issue when we were editing the dialogue sequence.

The other camera we used is the GoPro Hero 3. GoPro cameras are quite unique in the sense that they are very small and compact, designed solely for filming action shots from a plethora of points of view.

GoPro Hero 3

It comes with a clamp, which can be attached to most surface types. There are also different packs you can put on the back of the camera. We used an additional battery pack so that we could film for longer. However, the additional battery pack prevented us from using the viewfinder pack. To counteract this problem we downlaoded the GoPro App from the Apple App Store on Louis' iPhone. This allowed us to view what the GoPro was filming in real time in order to check if the framing was of an acceptable quality.

The GoPro App as seen in the App Store

Here are some samples of the shots that the GoPro was used for - they are shot from the front of the skateboard as Louis (Clem) is skating about:

Software

We edited our footage in Adobe Premiere Pro SC5. Via the use of various tool we were able to alter the sound mix, tamper with colour grading and cut our shots. We also used LiveType to create titles.

Firstly, we cut our shots down and slotted them into chronological order. The mutli-track feature allowed us to view each shot clearly and independently. It also gave us the ability to separate the video of a shot from the audio of the same shot. This was particularly helpful when trying to get dialogue in sync.

Colour Grading

We used Three-Way Colour Corrector, a tool that allowed us to alter how prominent certain colours were. This allowed us to change the mood of the the shots. By making all the colours dim and bland, we gave our opening scene a much more depressing and bleak feel. We were then able to copy and paste the same colour settings across onto each shot in order to keep our opening scene continuous.

These are the settings we used on the Three-Way Colour Corrector tool

We also used the ProcAmp tool, which allowed us to change the brightness, contrast, hue and saturation of each shot. Once again, this allowed us to give our film a much darker aura, which helped to significantly change the mood of the sequence. Similar to the Three-Way Colour Corrector, we could copy and paste these ProcAmp settings across onto each shot in order to keep the sequence continuous.

These are the settings we used on the ProcAmp tool.

After using both the Three-Way Colour Corrector and the the ProcAmp tools, we had effectively graded our shots. The result can be seen below:

(The bleaker one is the edited shot)

Sound Mix

Editing the sound mix was actually an extremely simple task. On each audio track, there was a line representing the volume, which could be altered at any point in order to make certain sounds more prominent and others less so.

The simple process of altering the sound levels

Titles

We used LiveType (software exclusive to Macs) to create titles. We selected the size, colour, boldness and style of our font. We then simple typed out the titles and dragged them into appropriate corners of the screen in order to avoid blocking any of the focal points of shots. We could also add effects to our titles, whcih we chose to do so only for the final title of the film name.

The layout of the software

LiveType logo

Examples of titles in our sequence

The fade effect used on our final title shot

Communication

One very practical use of technology, is the ability to have constant communication within the group at all times. We decided to use Facebook for this. We created a group chat which included myself, Louis, Mari, Vivian and our actress, Gina.

Our Facebook group chat