What have I learnt?
I have learnt how to use various different technologies,
shown clearly through my evaluation; using various different sites and programs
to do all of the questions asked. I have also learnt how to edit, and edit
well; through using Premiere Pro, the best technology to use for (beginner)
editors as it is fairly simple but has a wide range of functions and features
to explore and use, things such as ghosting (to blur a shot making it feel supernatural), fading in and out, cropping, changing the saturation, blur etc. We did use after effects to attempt a picture that would fit within our film, but
figured it was not that useful and didn't use it again as it was not a relevant
program for what we wanted. We also made our music through Mixcraft, a program
that we saw was best fit to make our soundtracks as that is it sole purpose; to
make music and soundtracks. Mixcraft was hard to use to begin with but then
after a long time of practicing we could use it very well and was also
enjoyable to use, as you were making your own soundtrack. We learnt how to use
the new technology through playing around with it (basic trial and error); we
used what we thought looked/sounded good. Within our soundtrack we included 'male choir', 'female scream' 'violin screech' etc, and for our spike noise we placed these sounds on top of each other to create a more dramatic effect; something we learnt as we went along. We also learnt things from tutorial
videos done by different people.
From our preliminary task we knew that a mistake we made
within it was time planning; the video was filmed and edited all last minute as
the original copy was not good enough so we knew that for our main task we had
to plan it all correctly and film early to ensure that any changes that needed
doing/adding could be done in time. We also didn't plan the film correctly, we didn't like the story line of the preliminary piece so we ended up changing it
halfway through which made it harder to film in time. To stop the same
happening again we made sure we would stick by the story line, but we also made
the story good from the start so we knew we wouldn't have any second thoughts.
Planning and mainly story boarding was key for us and we
became much better at it, because as previously mentioned we needed to ensure
the story was good so that the filming was made easier as we had a schedule
designed around the story board on what we needed to film. The creative
decision making went hand in hand with camerawork and therefore improved as we
went along as we did some research into films and looked at what camera shots
were used at different points. The creative decision making was the way we set
the shot up and the camerawork was how the camera was placed so they both
improved together, and by the end I think we had mastered it- a personal
favourite of mine is this shot:
My editing techniques have improved drastically from doing the
main task as we knew that our main problem from filming the preliminary task
was making it all fit together correctly, so our continuity had to be perfect
to make the film look good and flow.
