LH: Evaluation Question 6

Use of Web 2.0
Throughout our coursework we have been using blogger to showcase our work. We set up our own blog, designing its layout ourselves. We collaborated on posts and commented on each others private work. We used youtube for some of our research, embedding videos onto the blog where appropriate. As well as youtube, we used websites such as watchthetitles.com and artofthetitle.com for our research. These helped us to build on our own idea whilst showing us how different films within a genre can be.

Use of Camera

For our piece we used a Nikon SLR camera for filming. It produced:

• great quality pictures,
  

• HD filming and sound.
  

• The zoom was 18-55 mm, and allowed us to do some great shots.
  

For each shoot we took a tri-pod with us so we could get a smooth camera movement. For the majority of our filming I held the and tracked in and out of the shots. We decided in areas that we preferred the look of using handy-cam in our piece.

Throughout our piece we had to make sure to always film with the camera landscape. So all of our footage would match up to the size of the screen, we could shoot portrait. One of our early mistakes was to shoot in both layouts. Instead of proving our photos useless, we fixed the problem by zooming in on them so they met the edge of the screen.

Use of Premiere 8

To edit our footage we used 'Premiere 8'. These were the steps we used to make our film opening:

1. The first step to editing our footage was to upload everything we had shot onto 'Premiere 8'. Once everything had been uploading we looked at everything we had decided on which we wanted to use in our final piece. Whilst filming, we always wanted to shoot too much rather than just a little.
   
2. We then watched some of our footage back on the computer, we realised that some of it was unsuitable to use in our final edit. Once we had all of our footage, we could start editing.
3. To edit our footage, we had to drag each clip one by one onto the time line. We then had to create an order for all of our footage.
   
4. We decided to edit everything in one location together, separating each location by a common clip. Throughout our piece used an extreme close-up of the girls face to create a separation between each location, giving the impression that each location, each memory is deeper inside her mind. These clips helped to define the line of narrative more clearly.
   

Effects we used with Premiere:

A black and white effect. This was used to make our footage look artistic and intense.

To add to the look of our footage, we also used a 'brightness and contrast' on our clips to heighten each image. We then edited these factors more, creating a darker look to the film and a higher contrast between the black and white.

On some of our footage we added 'old film', this made our images more static and paler, giving it a more damaged look. It also helped to build on the idea of a flashback.

As a few of our clips were quite slow and long, we used a 'compression of time' to speed them up. This tool was very useful and it allowed us to use more of our footage.

To make the effect work so the girls image would stay in the mirror, even after she had walked away, we used 'Four-Point Garbage Matte'. The first time we tried using this effect our footage had movement, consequentially the effect would not work. Because the use of this effect was so important to us, we went back to the location and re-shot that scene, this time using a tri-pod.

With two of the clips in piece we used 'mirror'. This split our image and showed two opposite images in the clip, making it look like the image had had a mirror placed next to it.

In our piece we wanted it all black and white except from using one colour, red. Other than our titles being red we wanted to bring out the red from one of our original images. To do this we used 'Colour Pass'.

For our text we used a 'Fade Out' to smooth transitions into our piece.

Use of Pro Tools

For our piece we wanted to create our own original sound. To do this we went to 'Blizzard Records' and used the studio. We had a strong idea of what we wanted in our sound; a number of different sound effects that would all build together to create a crescendo at the end of our piece. To edit and record our sound we used a software called 'Pro Tools'. In the studio we recorded each sound separately, created different tracks on the computer. This allowed us to edit each sound individually, tailor-making the soundtrack exactly for our piece. The sounds we recorded where:

Myself singing

Myself giggling

Myself screaming

Screwing and ripping up paper dramatically

Scratching metal

We also used a heart beat track throughout the soundtrack to keep it consistent and to add a build of tension to our piece. We spent a long time in the studio to get the sound just right; we had to cut the sound to each different clip which was difficult with montage editing and a fast cutting rate.