Technology

Technology

What I have learnt over the last 2 weeks working on the preliminary task

Firstly we brainstormed what we have learnt over the last 2 weeks, we then brainstormed any more questions we had .we then categorized these ideas into three group: Technology, Theory and questions.

These are things we came up with for technology.

Technology

Camera shots: firstly we researched different types of camera shots and how to use them. We took these into account when filming our short film piece. We used a range of different shots including an establishing shot which we link back to many times, close ups on the face of the main character , over the shoulder shots and wide shots. We used these shots to make the piece look more realistic and more like a film instead of just having one shot all the time. We mostly used the establishing shot and cut in different shots  such as over the shoulder at different times, making sure it matched exactly

Final Cut pro- Changing raw footage into pro res, how to edit using final cut pro, how to reverse the clip, credits (how to render them) and fluidity.  As this was my first time using Final cut pro, I was excited to use it as I have seen many people use it before. Firstly, after importing our raw footage to the Apple Mac computer we had to convert it into Apple res pro as Final cut pro does not recognise the format of the raw footage and it would take a long time for it to process. To do this we opened a piece of software called MPEG stream clip and converted our raw footage into Apple pro res which final cut pro can process. We also learnt how to edit using final cut pro with the cutter tool.

Continuity: To make sure that we had no continuity errors while editing we tried to keep everything the same when filming. An example of this is lighting, props and costumes. However we found this hard to do, as when we were filming our lighting changed. This is one of the errors in which we hope not to make again the next time we film a piece, as we hope to keep our lighting them same, so when it comes to editing it doesn’t have any continuity mistakes.

Use of apple software: This was also the first time I had used an Apple computer properly and using it helped me develop my skills in using the software like MPEG stream clip and final cut pro

Importing video into final cut pro: this was quite easy to do as it was like an normal computer and I already knew how to import.

Linking header and footer to each shot. We needed to make sure that each shot that ended linked to the start of the next to make sure it was exactly right in the film otherwise it would look messy and the narrative would not flow.

Match on action: This is when the sequence is told in chronological order to maintain the continuity so that the narrative can be followed , this is done by matching the header and footer of each shot to make a scene.

Linking different shots: We used the establishing shot which was a wide shot to link in different shots such as over the shoulder and close ups

Effective lighting. We filmed our piece in a drama space as it has lighting  that are used for plays, however we found when editing that our lighting changes at times and this is a continuity mistake. Also it makes our piece look like a play, so this is something to think about changing when filming our next piece

Using resources such as YouTube to find instructions: we used resources such as YouTube to find instructions on how to add credits in final cut pro after we tried finding it for ourselves. This gave us the answer in a quick and simple tutorial.

To conclude, we used theses different aspects of technology to create our film. I have learnt many different skills on how to use the Apple computers and Final Cut Pro throughout the 2 weeks that we have been working on this task.