Kayvon Nabijou - Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Below is the list of different technologies we used and how they influenced the final outcome of our project:

Pre-production (Research & Planning)

• The Internet: Vital in our research, helping us find useful audience statistics from websites such as BFI and IMDb as well as draw inspiration from existing films that we could access through YouTube. Use of Facebook very important for organising meetings/delegating tasks.

• Sony DSC H50: We made our animatic on this camera, making it easier to visualise our film opening and spot any practicality issues.

Production

Cameras

• Canon Legria HV30 Mini DV: School-issued cameras. This recorded footage on tape which was then captured onto our edit suites during post-production. The camera was very portable and lightweight, simple, and shot in HD. However, its lens was not wide enough to create some of the shots we had in mind. Through the lack of manual exposure on this camera, I learnt of the importance of it when trying to make our montage look professional. Without manual exposure, there was a white glare for a couple of seconds at the start of each montage shot, as shown to the right.

• Canon 600D: This was Mahalia's camera. We could shoot wider shots on this camera and set a manual exposure to avoid over-exposure during the montage shots. It also had a higher quality image than the mini DV. We originally planned to only use this camera for the wide shots, but realised it would be easier when it came to grading to use this camera for all the shots in the interest of continuity.

• Tripod: This helped us get steady shots when we needed them, as well as panning shots. It was also simple to use and portable. However, our crabbing shots in the montage were hard to do with only a tripod mounted on a skateboard. However, I became more comfortable in using the tripod in more inventive ways that I hadn't done before.

• Lighting: This was our first time using lighting independently on a shoot. We learned how to use a 3-point lighting system, pointing the lights into the corners so as not to create any unwanted shadows. We could keep the same lighting all day because of the montage nature of our indoor shots, meaning there was no worry of breaking continuity. However, the lights got very hot, meaning we had to regularly turn them off and open the door.

• Microphone: We used a Blue Yeti microphone to record our soundtrack. We used Adobe Audition for this, which I had rarely used before. We also used a Rode Stereo Microphone with the Canon 600D to record dialogue.

Post-production

• Premiere Pro: This is the editing software we used to edit our film opening. We could use this for creating a continuous sequence out of our footage, grade shots and create basic titles. Through constructing this project, I have become more confident in editing software.

  

  3-wheel colour correction tool we used to grade our shots

  
  

  

  Cross-dissolve on title 

  

  Our whole opening sequence shown on the timeline (left) 

• After Effects Pro: This is the software we used to create our integrated titles. Before this project, I had no experience with this program, but now I feel confident in certain aspects.

Integrating our titles into the shot using After Effects

Facebook was very helpful in communication and delegating different tasks to people.