What have you learnt about technologies whilst constructing this product?

I learnt a lot in this project about the technologies needed, as well as the similarities with the real media world. I developed my skills on my laptop experimenting with publisher then realizing it didn’t offer what we needed. I improved my ability to use Sony Vegas Pro as this task enabled us to be more creative and free with how we wanted to edit our piece. We experimented a lot in the earlier stages of editing, such as trying out an effect called 'ghosting'  which requires layering two shots on top of ach other and changing the opacity. This is because we realized in one of the shots that I was visible sitting in the car when the ‘hooded man’ reverses so adding another layer makes me less visible whilst maintaining a natural look.

I am still slightly visible but the ghosting effect was very effective

We also use this same program to create a realistic gunshot and a spray of blood to follow. This took a considerable amount of time to perfect but we are happy with the results :

The internet also proved to be a very useful research engine and also helped us to present our work. This is the first time I have blogged but it didn’t seem difficult at all. Blogger was very easy to use and helped us organize what we were doing whilst also being a fantastic way of communicating with each other out of school regarding progress. We of course uploaded our preliminary task along with our final production onto YouTube so that it can be easily viewed by anyone, including friends and family. YouTube is a fantastic site, as it is free yet has so much influence over the media and offers useful feedback. Unfortunately we didn’t receive any feedback through YouTube but then again it wasn’t one of our aims. We also went on to the BBCF website to examine what age category our production would fall into.

This experience has emphasized how important technology is to create a good movie. When we first watched our RAW clips after filming, they looked extremely amateur and poor. It was purely because of the editing by adjusting Contrast, Brightness, Saturation etc. that the use of camera angles and mise-en-scene came to life. I now realise how much time and effort must go into a full movie as even a 10 second clip would take us days to perfect.

An example of Sony Vegas