QUESTION 6

What have you learnt about

technologies from the process of

constructing this product?

By Sophie Treneman

CAMERA SKILLSWe used the same camera in our final task as we did in our preliminary task, meaning that we’d had previous experience and knew how to work it, and were comfortable in knowing that the sound kit/tripod etc. from school was compatible with our camera. Due to this previous experience, we were confident we’d get all the shots we were aiming for. Because the camera is quite professional and hi-tech, we were able to experiment with different settings to get exactly the shots we wanted.

SOUND KIT

The sound kit we used included the following:

• Microphone (plugs into the camera)

• Boom Pole

• Dead cat/muffler

The sound kit was also identical to the one we had used during our preliminary task, however, in our preliminary task we’d experienced a few problems with it. The sound varied in volume and sometimes even cut out completely, resulting in inconsistent dialogue. After realising the cause of the problem (the camera was put onto the wrong settings) we were much more comfortable using it when it came to the filming of our main task, and the sound in our main task was fluent, clear and consistent.

ADOBE PREMIERE PRO

When editing the voice-over above the video, we found it challenging to get the audio to sound how we wanted, as we wanted the voice to sound distant (ie shouting from downstairs rather than in the same room) to overcome this problem, we managed to use the sound effect transition ‘reverb’ in order to slightly echo the audio, resulting in the accurate effect we aimed for.

For our main task we used Adobe Premier Pro to edit the footage and stitch the shots together.

This meant knowing how to get the raw footage from the camera onto the computer, editing the shots into a sequence,

changing sound and volume levels, applying sound effects and transitions, adding additional voice-overs above the video

with the use of layering, adding title credits, and finally exporting it to and uploading to YouTube. Which we managed to

accomplish successfully into our final piece.

ADOBE PREMIERE PRO

After stitching all the shots together and cutting them down as much as possible, we still found that the length of our task was longer than we wanted it to be, therefore, we decided to get shots that were fairly slow and dragged the piece a little, and sped them up.

ADOBE PREMIERE PRO

For example, the shots of the girl walking to

the bathroom seemed fairly dull and slow-

moving, so we decided to speed them up.

We did this by selecting the shot, and

then selecting the down arrow:

And then selecting

‘Speed’ and ‘Time

Remapping’ and

choosing on which

speed was subtle but

effective.1)

2)3)

ADOBE PREMIERE PRO

We also used Premiere to apply our soundtrack music. This was done by importing the track (which we downloaded from YouTube’s free downloadable audio library) and then layered it on top of the others before adding in key frames in order to adjust the volume levels to be quieter during dialogue and louder to match the fast-paced action.

We also imported from ‘Adobe Audition’ the sound effect of the alarm going off, because we wanted to use a J-cut between the two alarm clock shots in order to represent the contrasting mis-en-scene of our main characters.

In our preliminary task, an aspect of our sound that we found problematic was the cuts between dialogue during over-the-shoulder shots and we found it challenging to make the conversation seem realistic and fluent. We managed to overcome this in our main task, as we decided to use quick cuts between conversation to make it seem more believable.

TUMBLR

Tumblr is of course the main blogging site for our AS media course, and fortunately, before beginning the course I already had a personal tumblr account and therefore was familiar with the basics. However, I have learnt how to use a variety of different aspects of the website including uploading text, videos and music, and also customising and personalising my own blog.