Technology

Things like using cameras and lighting, computer editing programs and adding sound, etc. Again, this can be completed at NAME, so your mark depends on how competently and in depth you used technology. Complete a blog post detailing what technology you used and how. You can include screenshots of the editing program you used to illustrate your competence. Consider & comment on your use of the following:
To create my movie I used only a standard point and shoot camera. As most of my film is done in stop motion, this was the most beneficial for my requirements but it was also satisfactory for my clips of film which i also used the point and shoot camera for becuase I wanted it all to appear of similar quality and so this was the most obvious choice for seamless transitions. My camera was a great asset to use for this purpose as it has a flash burst mode which took lots of pictures per second for me so that I did not have too spend too long being slow at taking lots of photos. It also meant that if I had to reshoot from different angles to get a different view and different lighting or if something went wrong the first time then it wasn't a big issue. I had no problems using my camera. There were no technical malfunctions or loss of material or anything like that. I just had to take photos when there was suitable lighting and so with a little bit of experimenting, that was pretty easy to sort out.

I used pre-existing songs so that was easy to import and add to my movie. I also used my ipod for voice recordings but they did not end up getting used.

 To edit my movie I used adobe cs4 premiere pro which posed many problems for me as often my footage would not import and the computer did not have the memory capacity to cope with the movie and so that made things increasingly difficult and also frustrating. Also, any work I managed to get done often did not save. To move past this I had to edit most of my movie at home. This meant that I used windows media movie maker which was a lot more simplistic. As it was my own computer I was much more familiar with it and it was also able to cope with a lot more footage.

I edited some of my photos to remove me or other people from them so that the subject could be better focused on and established as the centre of attention. I used photo shop version 8 for this. I also touched up the photos and enhanced colours, removed red eye, etc. just normal things like that, also with photoshop. I used the sound of the fire works and they were already recorded with my video footage but i needed to make them the right volume and so I had to adjust that which was pretty simple to on the programme, I just had to remove it from the video footage and then put it in separately. As most of my movie is stop motion, most of my editing was just selecting which photos to include and then fitting them to the movie and the song. This meant that because I did a couple of test shots for each section of my film and so I could then see which was the best angles and lighting to use, the process was fairly simple as I just use the best ones. The only editing of sound I had to do apart from the fire works was to select the section of the song that I wanted to use at the end. This meant i just had to insert at which point in the song I wanted it to come in and what time I wanted it to fade out and then input at what point in the movie I wanted this to happen. This was fairly simple once I figured out what to do as I just had to listen to the song to see what portion of the song I wanted.

I did not use overly sophisticated means to make my movie but as the idea behind the movie was this journey from this person's experience, therefore being seen through their eyes, the authenticity of being shot with an average camera was appropriate and sat well with the movie. There is no dialogue to detract from the visual. The beginning and the end are tied in together with a simple title which would lead on nicely to the rest of the movie and wraps up the beginning effectively. The only break from the soundtrack (which tells a story that is appropriate for what is happening in the film), is at the end of the opening and the end of my film. This is when the fire works go off and it is symbolic as the attention then turns solely to the fire works and the rest is strangely quiet, there is nothing else going on to detract focus and it's symbolising the movie going off with a bang but also that the journey went off with a bang. But fireworks are often used in celebration and are therefore associated with accomplishments and positive things and so if effective to be used in that place.