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

The sort of technologies we have learnt to used are Final Cut Pro, Garage Band, the camera and tripod. Learning to use the camera was pretty simple, filming the footage and capturing it onto Final Cut Pro. Using the tripod was also very easy, we just had to make sure that the spirit level was balanced, and the body of the tripod was fully erect for us to film a successful shot and finally, Final Cut Pro was used for us to edit the different scenes so that the continuity was running throughout the whole of the film. We also used Garage Band for us to come up with a soundtrack for the whole of the film opening.

We learnt how to use Garage band by creating small sounds to help with the sound effect of our film opening. We also found a pre made sound track on here and this fit perfectly with the sound that we were looking for as it had both elements of a calm surrounding as well as anticipation.

It also allowed us to create small clips of sound to help vary up the sound on our film. This helps by giving our soundtrack the fear element, everytime we see parts of Ife's dead body. It leaves more of a mystery and creates more of an atmosphere against our soundtrack. We have therefore been able to achieve the right music we want as we have added the affect we needed to make it fit perfectly with our film.

As a result to using Garage Band, we were able to achieve a good soundtrack that creates the best mood for our film and without this it wouldn't have brought the film together. The only problems that we came across from using Garage Band was that at first we could'nt find the ideal soundtrack for our film, however, evebtually we found the 'Timeless' track and we thought with a bit of tweaking and addition to sound this soundtrack could be very successful.

We were able to put the track we found alongside the natural sound the camera picked up when we were filming and we added separate sound effects we found on Garage Band to make the overall sound for our film. There were a lot of pre-recorded tracks on Garage Band and although it took us a long time to find the one suitable for our individual piece, it was worth it when we found it because it fitted really well with what we had put together for our film. It was similar with the sound effects but by searching through a list of fairly basic effects and applying them to our film where they fitted both visually and alongside the 'Timeless' track, we put together a soundtrack we were happy with.

One of the main technologies we have used is Final Cut Pro. This of which has helped us to edit the whole film opening and allow us to input transitions between each of the two different shots between Ife and Fiona. This has also allowed us to keep the continuity running through the whole of the opening. First we used the ‘Log and Capture’ option to import what we recorded onto Final Cut pro, so that we could edit it. We used different tools on Final Cut Pro such as the blade tool, which allowed us to cut a clip at a precise point, the pen tool, which we used to gradually fade the music out. We used titles from the video transitions effects to state the names related to each part of the work that was done. We created a black and white effect using the 'desaturate' effect on the image control menu of the effects. Using the selection tool allowed us to move around a number of clips at the same time without having to rearrange the order.


Some other technologies that we used, but knew how to use already are ones such as, Google, to help us find images and extra information for our blog and help illustrate what we are trying to explain.

Another technology that we have learnt is how to use blogger.com as we were able to upload video's and pictures which helps give the visual effect of our vision and how we want it to look. It also allowed us to annotate what we wanted to tell within the film opening and the ideas we used.

We also used Youtube to help upload video's of film openings that we are looking at and are comparing our film opening to. It allowed us to do research on other possible film genres and get an idea of what other film openings were like.

To find information about films we wanted to use as examples of films similar to our wn, we used IMDb.com which was useful for finding out almost anything about the film including information about the publishers and directors. We also found stills from the movie and helpful things we could include in out questions.

Using the camera and tripod was crucial to making the film for obvious reasons. One of our first coursework lessons we found our way around the camera, learning how to put the tape in and take it out properly. We learnt how to record footage and attatch the camera to the tripod. Witht he tripod, we ad to make sure it was set up properly everytime we filmed in a different location or even moved the tripod a little or the hot could be crooked as we found out in our preliminary task when the whole film hadn't been straight because we hadn't adjusted the tripod at all. Using the spirit measure we sucessfully filmed our main task correctly so that all shots were striaght.