Evaluation Question 6

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

Lighting is a key part in the construction of film and is impossible to create cinema without it. Going into this task I briefly knew about lighting due to the preliminary task. Lighting was a key aspect in our film as it allowed us to distinguish archetypes within the product and help identify certain characters and personas throughout without requiring additional information or dialogue. In the scenes we shot in the dark using the lighting allowed us to add different atmospheres to the scene. A piece of equipment I was unfamiliar with up until this task was a reflector which helped us diffuse the intensity of the light in the shot to suit our interpretation of the shot. In addition the lighting helped us highlight characters facial expressions and body language which allowed us to again introduce a character without the use of dialogue or additional information.


When I went into this task I was very worried about the editing stage as the editing I applied to the prelim was very basic and I was anxious about having to apply more advanced techniques to improve the construction of the final product. In addition  I had never used a MAC before in my life, except the prelim, so I was nervous learning just the simple functions of the hardware before educating myself in the software. We used a program called Final Cut Pro in order to edit our piece. In synergy with this application we also used Adobe Photoshop which was applied in order to create custom text and overlays to add to our product which was very affective in helping identify characters and implementing titling. We used different transitions such as a fade to transition to the ending title sequence and cuts throughout to keep a flow throughout the piece. These were all basic techniques. In order to improve I know I needed to implement a different ratio of transitions so I used a static transition in synergy with the scene with the hacker to complement the scene as the transition and the character both have very similar connotations which was shown through the editing. Finally we used garage band, a music programme, in order to insert foley sounds and non- diegetic soundtracks into our product. Due to use of garage band at lower stages of education I was familiar with all the software and the technological aspects of it so I was able to apply my skills absolutely fine.


Using the digital cameras to record our product with we were able to have crisp clear footage to use when constructing the product. One of the techniques I learned from filming using the cameras was to be able to "make a sandwich" This was were you make sure you have excess footage at the start and end of the recording which allows you to have more variation when editing footage. This makes it so that you always have enough footage to edit, due to a fatal error being people forget this and don't have enough footage when editing, and makes "mess-ups easier to take care of. In addition I learned that using white balance was a great technique that we needed to use in order to exhibit bright and bold colour schemes in our product. Without using white balance the product becomes distorted and the colours become to saturated and turn a shade of blue or orange which can destroy the mood and atmosphere that components such as lighting and cinematography produce.