What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

When we began our coursework we immediately began to use various technologies throughout our project to research and create our film opening, and we used the iMac's and computers to gain this knowledge and understanding of the various technologies.

Final Cut

When we began our film opening process we thought that we should start t teach ourselves how to use the programme since everyone in our group was new to the programme and wasn't sure how to use it. This was essential for us to do because in the end we decided to create and edit our clips and footage on Final Cut as we all found it easier to use, rather than using iMovie. 

We found this programme usual for our editing process but also for when we filmed our Preliminary Task as this allowed us to play around with the different filters, transitions and effects to et an idea of what kind of things we could include in our final film opening when we got round to editing. Since it was our first time using this programme we found it quite difficult to get into the process of using it properly and adding certain things in, for example we had a little trouble with our titles as we wasn't sure how we would go about adding them into our final piece, however we got round this dilemma and decided to be more creative about the process.

Overall, after using this programme it was a good learning tool for the whole group, and it will useful for us in the future if we carry on with Media later in life.

GarageBand

Another programme that our group was new to using was GarageBand, again we began to use this at the beginning of our coursework to practice and learn how to use the programme properly, as we knew that we would most likely use this to create our final soundtrack/s to our film opening. 

Whilst teaching ourselves to use this programme we decided that we would make practice soundtracks that would give us ideas for our final track for our film, so we played around with the various instruments and sound effects that were available to make various practice tracks that we thought would deem suitable for a horror film. An advantage of using this programme was that it allowed us to make changes to the soundtrack whenever we felt the need to as it remained in the GarageBand format, which was helpful as we changed our soundtrack quite a lot so it was able to fit properly with our film opening and within the editing process. We ended up creating two final sound tracks, this was to create more tension within certain clips as we felt that a particular track fit in well with a particular part of the film opening, so we ended up making two so it would fit in better with the clips. 

Microsoft Powerpoint

Microsoft Powerpoint was an essential programme that we used during the research process since this is where we were able to cut down our research information and also edit/crop any images or print screens that we needed to save as pictures so we could upload them onto our blogs to support our research. 

We also came to a decision to use Powerpoint to help us with filming our title sequence. We added our desired font that we wanted as our titles onto four slides, which created the final title of our film (Never Look Back) then added various effects that made the slides look blood splattered. We then allowed to slides to maximise into the presentation format and by pressing the ENTER key it allowed each slide to flash onto the screen which is the effect that we needed for our film opening, so while one of use flashed each slide onto the screen, another person in our group used the camera to film the titles as they flashed onto the screen, this then allowed us to add this clip into our editing process to create our final piece. 

DaFont

We decided to use this website to search for a suitable font that we could use for our title sequence, and we had all used this website previously to find creative fonts so we thought that we would use it to find one that would fit in with the horror genre.

This was effective as it allowed us to explore various font choices and decide together as a group which one would look best for the titles. However it was quite difficult to save the font choice so we could use it, so in the end we created the text so it showed the title of our film, and then print screened it to make the image so we could then put it onto Powerpoint and edit the colour of the font into a blood red so it linked in with the horror genre.We thought this was a good idea as it was quite a creative way to do things and we are very pleased with the way our titles came out.

Internet Browsers

The internet was a big part of the research process for this project since we used various websites to research into various films, genres and institutions. To research into various films we mostly used IMBd as it allowed us to get all the information that we needed on that particular film, this also allowed us to see what institutions were linked with particular films, and this helped us to identify what institutions linked in with popular horror films.

Film institution websites also proved to be very helpful when researching into particular institutions, and the Warner Bros one provided us with very useful information that we used within our research. These websites also allowed us to identify which films they had sponsored which were horror films, for example Warner Bros sponsored the Scream films which ended up to be quite a good inspiration for our film opening.

Google also helped a lot when searching for particular images to put into our research to back it up, again, especially when researching the film institutions as we were able to find particular logos to back up each one.

Facebook/Social Networking sites

Facebook was used for feedback on our film opening from the public, and since Facebook is a popular social networking website we thought that we would be able to get a few comments of feedback from our targeted audience.

The only problem we had with this was that was that the comments weren't very detailed, and not a lot of people gave any critique. Also most people didn't really look for certain things within the film opening, for example the mise en scene wasn't commented on, and most people didn't point out what they liked or disliked about particular aspects e.g. camera work, sound, editing, etc.

YouTube

YouTube was also very useful during our research and planning process as it allowed us to research other popular horror film openings that would help us with the conventions of a horror film. It was also easy to upload YouTube videos onto our blogs either by the link or by putting in the video, however this was quite difficult at times because it was hard to find good quality links to the videos or the videos wouldn't upload to our blogs properly.

We also uploaded our final cut of the film opening to Becca's YouTube channel as she has quite a few subscribers so it enabled us to get a lot of views on it. This also made it easier for us to upload our final piece to our blogs as we wasn't able to upload the file straight from our documents onto our blogs as it didn't seem to work but we got round this problem and used YouTube as our back up plan.

Camera

To capture each clip for our film opening we used camcorders that allowed us to film each camera shot so we could then edit them all together to make the final piece. These cameras were very useful as they were pretty good quality and had a memory card in them which we could easily remove and upload all of our needed footage onto the iMacs to edit.

When using these cameras we were able to experiment with various shots at the beginning of the project, this was practice for us so we were able to learn how to use them properly and gain knowledge on various that we could use in our final piece. On one particular shot within our film opening we used the camcorder and secured it onto a skateboard so we were able to film shots at a lower angle to film the characters feet, and because the skateboard had wheels we were able to film the characters feet while they were walking along, we just had to pull the skateboard along as they walked. We then edited out the sound of the skateboards movements on FinalCut.

The only disadvantage of using this particular type of camera was that there are better quality camcorders on the market, and within the film industry they would have a lot more equipment to make the films as good as they can be, but we obviously didn't have access to higher quality equipment.