Sam Parker

Foundation ProductionEvaluation
Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this
product?

Preliminary:
For my preliminary task I used a Nikon DSLR for filming, without a tripod. I chose a DSLR over the
schools camcorders because its far superior in terms of image quality. I didnt use a tripod
because I had trouble attaching one to the DSLR, and I didnt feel it necessary to because all of the
shots were going to be short. The DSLR didnt have auto focus or stabilisation and as a result I had
blurry shots that were occasionally shaky. This outcome made me choose a camera with these
elements included, so that when I filmed the final opening it wouldnt suffer from the same issues.

I edited my footage using the Retina MacBook Pro, which I explain more about in the production
section below.

Production:
For the whole filming and editing process I have used Apple products- a
Retina MacBook Pro 13 and an iPhone 6 64GB. I chose this equipment
because I felt that the technical specifications that they provide would
greatly aid me in production. The iPhone 6 has an 8 megapixel camera with
an f/2.2 aperture which allows for a significant amount of light to enter the

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lens, which provides a better video with more exposure and a deeper, more dynamic contrast. The
colours the camera provides are true to life with a natural saturation, most cameras today tend to
oversaturate which results in overly colourful images and unrealistic colours. The camera on the
iPhone 6 captures video at 1080p resolution at 60fps and for the slow motion shots I needed it
records at 240fps, which makes for a very smooth video with no jerkiness or tearing. The iPhone
also offers digital image stabilisation which provides a shake free video capture. Digital stabilisation
isnt as good as optical stabilisation but because of the 64-bit processor powering the iPhone and
the dual core A8 chip the software is able to seamlessly stabilise video as if it was being optically
stabilised. The camera also provides constant auto focus with auto exposure, so its able to
properly detect the scene and focus on the object youre filming and make sure the lighting is
accurate.

The Retina MacBook Pro has 8GB of RAM, a dual core Intel core i5 clocked at 2.6Ghz, and an onboard Intel Iris graphics card. All of these specifications make for a very fast and fluid performance
and the processor is able to overlock itself to 3.1GHz when doing extraneous tasks such as video
editing, giving it the power it needs to sufficiently render HD video. The processor also aids in
scrubbing the video timeline and final exporting- without the speed that the processor and RAM
provide the Mac would take a very long time to export the file and the FPS (frames per second)
would be extremely low, making for scrubbing and importing extremely difficult. The Retina HD
display is also a key element- it has a pixel density of 227 PPI (pixels per inch) which means I can
easily see all of the fine details of the footage in precision. The only other option I had for video
editing was using schools iMacs. These are the 2009 models with outdated GPUs and graphics,
which makes video editing a slower process than it is on the MacBook. It also has an older version

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of iMovie that lacks in some of the features I required for my editing. Overall I felt that the MacBook
Pros editing power and the clarity of the iPhones camera could create a video that had
outstanding quality, and I believe it did.

Ive learnt all about the different camera angles and which ones I need to use in order to get the
effect that I want- for instance a high angles shot of a person would make them look vulnerable. I
know that you have to use equipment such as tripods to keep the camera stable, but I didnt use a
tripod when I filmed mine, because due to the iPhones unusual form factor I couldnt use schools
tripods to attach it. I dont think that the end result wouldve been much different if i hadve used a
tripod, because I was able to keep the camera stable most of the time by hand and the digital
image stabilisation ironed out any bumps that may have been in the footage. The woods was
chosen because I wanted a natural location that could provide me with a good amount of lighting, I
also wanted to make use of the unpredictable British weather which is often very dark and rainy,
which wouldve made for a very eerie and convincing atmosphere. Unfortunately the weather was
bright and sunny on the day of filming. Because I
was only following one person for much of the
filming, the 180 degree rule didnt apply and I
was able to get a shot of Lauren from any angle
and it would still be okay continuity wise.
Generally I kept to the rule of thirds, with the
object of the main focus being in the middle third.

Editing:

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I edited the opening using iMovie 10.0.6 which is the newest version of the software. I already had
previous knowledge of iMovie before using it on this project, so I didnt really learn anything new
but I revisited some features such as overlaying and changing the opacities of clips which isnt
something I would do usually. I edited my clips together so that they were fast paced and i didnt
use any transitions so all clips flow together using straight cuts. I didnt use any of the iMovie
transitions because I feel that theyre tacky and unprofessional. The only ones I might have used is
fade to black and fade to white because theyre quite subtle, but they didnt suit the fast paced
nature of my opening. The timeline is extremely complex on my iMovie project because of all the
constant overlaying of shots and soundtracks. The screenshot below shows a section of timeline
with numerous overlapping soundtracks (the green bars) and overlaid shots and titles. The blue
bars underneath the shots represent the diegetic sound that I left in. When all of the editing was
finished I had to upload my opening to YouTube which is a very simple process. I simply had to
export the video in a M4A format (any will work) and then upload it to YouTube. Once it was
uploaded to YouTube I embedded it into my blog so it can be viewed from there.

When editing my clips together I cut and trimmed all of them to fit together better. This made the
editing more difficult than it would normally be because I had to make sure that the continuity
followed throughout the whole opening. The clips had to tie into the sound as well, so I had to cut
and overlay different music tracks, and detach audio from different clips so that the diegetic sound
flowed through each scene. The music had to crescendo at certain points, but then fade away at
others so where I cut and overlaid every piece of sound was crucial to the video.

Sam Parker

Research:

I used various different technologies to collect my research. Most of my work has been typed up
onto Pages and then uploaded onto Blogger. Some tasks are accompanied by Keynote
presentations that have been uploaded to Scribd and then embedded onto my blog. And I also
have some movies and animations that were created using programs such as iMovie and then
uploaded to YouTube. I wanted to use a range of different technologies that would improve my
grade, but at the time I had only just started the course so my knowledge and skill of these
technologies was limited so I wasnt able to make full use of them.

I decided to mainly use Blogger in its basic text form for much of the research section because its
just note taking which doesnt require good presentation and only serves to be looked at when
planning or producing the final product. All I had to do was to coherently present my research notes

Sam Parker
in the order that they were recoded, so that I could easily look back at them for inspiration during
the planning and production procedures. The few Keynotes I did were uploaded onto Scribd so that
I could easily embed and view them on Blogger. Its a simple technology but I have used it
extensively throughout the course so far.

I also used websites such as YouTube and Art of the Title to research different existing thriller
openings. I would then take screenshots from these websites in order to properly analyse the
conventions. I later recorded a vox pop and edited it on iMovie, this allowed me to gage the
audiences expectations and perceptions about thriller films. This early video editing was good
practice for my final piece and allowed me to discover what technologies would be most suitable for
my later works.

Planning:
Planning was much like research in the fact that I didnt use many different technologies. I didnt
upload any of the text directly to Blogger though, it was all first uploaded to Scribd and then
embedded onto a Blogger post. I prefer using Scribd because it keeps the documents formatting
when its uploaded, whereas Blogger changes the formatting and every time you edit the post the
text changes font and size which is very annoying and inconvenient. I also used a website called
PollEV which is used to create polls in which people can text in answers to your queries. I used this
to find out what typography the audience thought suited the thriller genre the best and these were
the results:
I found PollEV very useful in terms of
finding out public opinion, and the

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results I got from the poll greatly helped in deciding what typography the audience thought suited
the film type. I would use this technology again if I ever needed the audience to vote on certain
elements of a production.

To conclude, I have used an extremely wide variety of media technologies during this production
and I feel that I have gained more knowledge on which products are best to use. I know that I can
use sites like PollEV to gather audience opinion, and that I can use Scribd to upload completed
Word and PowerPoint documents. Its important to use a wide variety of technologies so that you
can get a broader range of ideas.