Jack Sandham

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF

CONSTRUCTING THE PRODUCT?

EDITING EQUIPMENT: IMACS.• The iMacs allowed us to utilize the

software of Final Cut Express and After Express. I think the iMacs were a good basis to use and it provide us with easy to understand controls and software that is only available on the Macs.

• I think that the main problem with the iMacs/Software was that of speed and freedom of choice. This is because at some points they would freeze or just take very long to export.

• I have learn’t from these iMacs that they are easy to learn from for beginners however, if you were editing on a regular basis you would want a faster version.

EDITING EQUIPMENT: FINAL CUT EXPRESS• We used Final Cut Express, Final Cut Pro and

After Effects to edit our film. To edit the main sequence we used Final Cut Express to put cut, split and edit clips together in one sequence and added sounds clips to this. I have learnt how to combine multiple audio clips together by integrating them from the video and from external sounds. I have also learnt that with Final Cut you can create editing patterns by viewing the length of clips in the timeline to view the pace of your film.

• I would consider a main drawback of Final Cut Express to be its layout. It’s not efficient enough to do all editing manually and is time consuming for the user. This is because simple fade in’s and out’s can take a long time and this is consistent throughout the product.

FINAL CUT EXPRESS: COLOUR CORRECTION

• I have learnt how to colour correction my footage by using the above tools alongside the video. I think that it allowed us to let the video footage look more realistic by dragging the same correction onto each clip so that they all matched each others colour. However I also think that a drawback with this software is that the ease of use for someone who knows nothing about colour correction is poor as it doesn’t give you a simpler way to do it apart from dragging it into different colours. In comparison, Final Cut Pro gives you this option but it also names certain colour effects that add a tone to the film. This would have been easier as we could of added one tone to the whole film.

FINAL CUT EXPRESS: FADING

• I have also learnt how to fade in and out of the footage by using the tools in the sidebar of final cut. This allowed us to add a unique blinking effect to our film which gave realism to the characters point of view shot. However I feel that this it self had drawbacks as you couldn’t complete this quickly and so it made the project inefficient in its timing. This is because you had to click on a tool, create two dots, zoom in and then create the fade. Whereas in a more simpler drag and drop effect it would take a second.

FINAL CUT EXPRESS: EDITING WITH SOUND• We used mainly digetic sounds in our

opening and I think that Final Cut gave us good options for intergrating the sounds into the footage. This Is because we wanted to have a mixture of foley sounds and sounds from the video. I have learnt how to do this by cutting and pasting sound clips from external resources that we had collected.

• I collected the sounds from Final Cut Pro which gave us foley sound effects for many props such as gun shot and breathing.

• A drawback for editing the sound would be that it was hard to keep track of all the different sound tracks on display. We had up to 10 different sound lines on our footage and Final Cut made it hard to see which were muted.

EQUIPMENT: CAMERA AND TRIPOD• The camera we used was a Sony HD Handycam which

recorded in 1080i and included video stabilization. I think that the camera offered many features which appealed to the use in our thriller. For example I learnt about the ‘tap to focus’ setting in the camera that allowed me to focus on specific items on screen at a given time. When recording the gate scene, I tap to focused on the characters hand to make sure it didn’t go out of focus. A certain good feature of camcorders today is that of their size and purpose. Many years ago film’s were recorded in massive cameras that would have been able to fit in our location and so I think that a benefit of this camera is that it size suits the purpose for our location.

• The tripod gave us the functionality of being able to use it for still panning shots. This included our sniper scene where the sniper would be on a tripod to steady the aim. I have learnt that we can use it at many different heights to give the film dynamic camerawork. This was due to the Joby Gorillapod that allowed the camera to grip to objects like the gate in the image above and also to locations the massive tripod couldn’t get to.

AFTER EFFECTS• We used after effects in our film to create a transition from the sniper scope to a

fake scope. I believe I have learnt how to use after effects in its full potential because I have explored the features and functionality it offers. This includes ‘the wiggler’ that overlays one video image on top of another to give a wiggling effect. This was used in our thriller when we had the fake sniper scope but with the outer ring of a real sniper so that it looked real.

• My criticism of After Effects is that of it’s clunky design and ease of use problems. Even though I understood how to use it in the end, I found its layout to wasteful. After Effects also crashed frequently and caused problems with the video quality.

FINAL CUT PRO: VIDEO STABILIZATION

• We used Final Cut Pro X in our thriller editing to give the effect that couldn’t be done in Final Cut Express. This was to stabilize the video because it was blurry and it looked unprofessional. By using the stabilize features as in the image above, we were able to eliminate the problem of blur and have created a smooth pan from the camera attached to the gate.

• The limitations of this were that we had to use this updated software to do it instead of using Final Cut Express. This shows that this was a limitation to the original software.

THE INTERNET• The Internet was a fundamental device in providing us the research into how to edit our sequence

together. This is because it gave us Youtube, which showed us tutorials in how to do certain parts of our thriller. For example the sniper scope effect. After viewing this tutorial we downloaded a image of a sniper scope that would overlay the video. The internet was key here as if we didn’t have this technology we wouldn’t of given the same dynamic storyline.

• It also gave us our fonts from dafont.com which was only found by searching Google.

• The internet gives our day and age a uplift over previous years because it provides us with tools and tutorials to do more.