How did you use media technologies in the construction, rese

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research & planning & evaluation stages

Non-Diegetic Sound

The in car scenes were very hard to capture as they required a lot of build up and preparation due to the awkward positioning of the camera, and the shaky nature of the car, this meant that we lost a lot of time just preparing and re-shooting car scenes.

Another set back was SD cards in the DSLR due to its speed we needed an SD card that wrote fast and so lost even more time trying to buy a card that could write fast enough.

Also we had to use sticky bottomed tripods for the Go Pros in the cars which damaged paintwork slightly when getting off as the adhesive was so strong.

We spent a long time researching different songs to play throughout our film using websites such as SoundCloud to find royalty free music that worked well with our film

When shooting we found that the manual lens allowed us to focus pull very efficiently and effectively.

We also had a very smooth tripod made for filming, and so it allowed us to play around with panning shots without having to worry about them jolting and ruining the effect of the shot.

We also had experience in Final Cut and so our editing process was fast concise, and we didn't have to spend too long getting to grips with the software's layout and design.

Because our prior experience editing we knew how important sound was and so we spent a lot of time when filming making sure that our mics were set up and clear as to avoid audio problems during editing.

Also we used portable studio lights which allowed for perfect lighting within specific scenes and helped to pull the character away from the background which is important when using a 35mm lens as it helps to build a layer of contrast into each shot.

Editing

It was important that the non-diegetic soundtrack we found fit the piece as the music helps to bring the piece alive, it layers the film giving it a much higher sense of professionalism as well as connecting the scenes withing the film perfectly, and fills out any uncomfortable silences.

The songs we found were all free giving us the royalties to use them, making them legal for use in our film.

Also the sites we looked at specialized in royalty free film music meaning each piece in there was tailor made to be used in a film, making them perfect to suit all the films requirements.

We all learned to use Final Cut Pro in order to edit our film, it allowed us to play around with the ordering of shots and allowed us to experiment with the chronology of our narrative to see what was most powerful. This allowed us to refine the film to the best possible version of itself. We also didnt have to worry too much about time when editing as we had already learned the layout of the software and so we didnt have to spend time getting to know it at the beginning stages.

Finding the right sounding song to fit the piece took a very long time as the website's were not very ergonomic and so you had to search through a bunch of wrongly labeled songs before finding ones that fitted.

It was also very challenging finding music that was long enough to fit the correct scenes as a lot of it would only be 30 seconds to a minute long.

It also took up time trying to fade it all in and out and match the beat of the song to the pace of the film.

However we spent a lot of time trying to find the correct music, and diegetic foley sound to fit the scenes, this was time we could have spent exploring more complex editing techniques to enhance the film, and its feel.

We also could have enhanced our transition variety and played around with more complex and effective transitions. Had we spent less time finding foley sound.

Conclusion

Editing times were cut down and improved due to our prior experience on Final Cut Pro.

We were able to use advanced editing skills in order to improve aspects of our film, E.g. We used colour correction tools to improve the colours contrast and exposure of some in car shots to fit there scenes better, as a few of them were blown out and de-saturated.

We were also able to play around with motion editing tools to speed up and slow down shots accordingly.

Although we very succesfully faded and synced up all of the sound perfectly, which would have taken a lot longer had we not already been proficient in the software.

Photoshop & Indesign

In conclusion throughout the process of making our short film we came across a lot of new and old technologies and equipment old it all took getting used to and advancing in, doing this took time and each individual piece of tech we used had its own challenges and rewards, but without the abilities to use it all we would not have been able to make our film to the quality it is.

Camera, and camera craft

Photoshop & Indesign were key programs in making and designing both our poster's and our LWL review. having prior experience inPhotoshop helped me to speed up the poster design process and also allowed me to be more creative with it, however i wasn't very familiar with Indesign which took a lot of time to learn.

Because we used an Iphone as our mic we were able to get it close to the sources of sound when needed as it was acceptable for our character to have a phone on him, this meant that our sound was very clear and loud meaning it was easier to work with during post production.

Because we were editing on a mac it was essential we made sure that all formats we used were compatible, and so the Iphone allowed for clear audio and easy syncing with the mac when it came to exporting the footage, which saved time as it is not very compatible with android or other alien devices.

The license free non diegetic sound we used was very fitting for our film and blended with the scenes and there pace very well which was helpful as background sound is very imortant within a film, to create a better tone and give a real sens of quality.

Despite all the positives with the audio we had a few setbacks, such as, the IPhone didn't have any background noise reduction capabilities, like a professional mic and so we had to find locations that were as quiet as possible to ensure there were no issues with audio clarity.

This wasted a lot of time and in some shots we couldn't find quiet locations and so had to spend even more time trying to cut out the background noise, during post production.

This subsequently allowed less time for more important aspects of the film such as re-shoots and learning/development time during the editing stages.

Audio

Craft

I wasn't aware of how Indesign worked before using it and so it meant that editing the LWL (Little White Lies) review page took a much longer time than making the poster.

Because of this i was unable to test out some very complex Photoshop poster designs that may have looked better but we ran out of time.

I also found that when designing in Photoshop it was easy to make things to complex and make the poster feel more like a large scale media film rather than a short film.

We used a Cannon 550D to shoot the majority of the film however we did use two Go Pros for the car scenes as they had superior stabilizing qualities making them ideal for bumpy car scenes.

We recorded the majority of our audio on an IPhone 5s, this is because it had very clear audio and was easy to sync with the mac as well as it being an everyday object which allowed us to keep it in frame making for clearer audio without breaking continuity.

We spent a long time debating whether we would shoot the film free hand or with a tripod, we came to the conclusion that in order for the film to seamlessly flow we needed to match the shot with the intentions of the scene's and film as a whole, The Interview is a comedic film following one mans journey to find a company willing to accept him for him. And so we locked off the majority of shots as to not distract the audience from the film and its narrative however we played around with angles to make some characters seem more superior than others to give connotations of the job not quite fitting.

For example in the first interview the camera was aiming down on Ted giving connotations of Ted being inferior, where as in the last interview the camera is level between the two characters giving connotations of them being similar and a good match, he then goes on to get the job.

we used a 35mm lense as it was equivilant to a 50mm lense on a cropped sensor which is highly regarded in videograhy as one of the most cinematic lense's due to its shallow depth of field.

Because i was already proficient in Photoshop i could do the basic and some of the complex aspects of it quickly without needing assistance, this allowed for more time to be creative with the design and to explore the more complex and more effective design techniques.

Using Photoshop allowed us to really play around with the design of our poster in a way that allowed total creative freedom, allowing us to make a poster that wasn't just an image with text over it.

This more complex editing made the poster look more professional and more appealing to our target audience.