Use of Digital Technology

Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was developed by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003.

The first post that we uploaded on blogger was our one minute film which was out first piece of filming that we have done for this unit. Our group decided to film a one minute film called “Stalker” which was based of a TV Show which we recreated near the sixth form area.

After this post we took back feedback and improvements and were given the task to produce a Prelim. The prelim was based of a drug exchange where we experimented with different angles and different camera methods and put into work the 180 degree rule.

Then we also did some research on rule of thirds and how this rule can effect how a film makes the audience feel. We learned that The rule of thirds is a concept in video and film production in which the frame is divided into nine imaginary sections, as illustrated on the top photo. This creates reference points which acts as guides for framing the image. Points of interest should occur at 1/3 or 2/3 of the way up (or across) the frame, rather than in the centre. Like many of those rules of framing, this is not always necessary but we need to know why we use before we break it.

Pre-Production

BBFC Website- 2014 guidelines

This is an example of a thriller film that was released a few months ago. As you can see from the image the movie was predicted to be rated at an 18 due to a lot of sexualised threat and aggressive language toward a women in one of the scenes. The distributors wanted the film to be a 15 so that the film could reach a wider audience and so that the younger age group could also see the film. They achieved the 15 rating during the finishing version as they listened to the BBFC and took out some of the scenes.

Pre-Production

This is a bar chart from a survey that the BBFC did in 2014 to see what age groups go to the cinema in a weekly bases. As you can see that the age group that goes to the cinema more on a weekly bases is the 35-54 age group. This could be due to them having more free time and having more money to spend on leisure.

This post reflects the work that we did in researching about film openings and what happens in the film opening. Through this research I have learnt how audio and visuals are used to give us information about the film and how the opening few scenes are used very effectively to show us what and who is involved in the film. i have also noticed how audio is used to portray the genre of the film. I investigated the opening to "Captain America" and this some of the audio and visual that i noticed during the opening.

Another post I did on blogger reflected other thriller films and what conventions they used that made them a good film. For example the use of climax was used throughout each film which was successful in making the film more interesting and following the conventions of a thriller film.

Pre-Production

Cannon 650 DSLR Camera with a 50mm Macro Lens

• I found that using the cannon camera was much easier due to my prior experience of using a DSLR camera and knowing how to set it up for filming. I also found that the DSLR camera was a perfect choice for us when it came to recording our film openings as it was easy to transport around and it was pretty light weight.

• In addition I like the 50mm macro lens that came with the camera as it was the perfect lens to go with our opening and the zooming function that comes with this lens was perfect was some of our close up shoots of the face

• However we had problems when it came to filming due to the battery dying on us 3 times. This set us back few hours as we had to leave the battery to charge for a bit before we could use the camera again.

• DSLR stand for a digital single-lens reflex camera (also called a digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera combining the optics and the mechanisms of a single-lens reflex camera with a digital imaging sensor, as opposed to photographic film.

Production

Post-Production

Final Cut Pro is the name given to a series of non-linear video editing software programs

During the post production process we used final cut pro to edit all our clips and make it into our final product. Final Cut was the easiest solution we could find due to some of having experience of using this product. Final cut also allowed us to put special effects easily and the user interface was easy to negative around,

Another useful website was YouTube which we utilised to upload our footage onto. This website enabled us to put it onto the web so other have access to our opening and also helped us to document any video/Audio footage on as everything that was audio/video on our blogs would have been uploaded onto YouTube first.