Question 6

2. INTRODUCTION
Since the beginning of constructing our media product, I believe that I have learnt
vast amounts about different technologies related to film making. These
include Final Cut Pro, GarageBand, Sound recording equipment, and
Photoshop. The construction of this film opening allowed me to develop
already existing skills and gain abilities that were previously unknown to me.
It is clear to me that all of this experience has helped us as a group create a
higher quality of media product and will help us all in future projects.

3. FINAL CUT PRO
Since the beginning of making our media product my editing ability has improved
massively. Prior to this project, my editing would appear very rough, with
messy jump cuts and unsynchronized audio. During the construction of the
film opening, however, I learnt how to make editing appear smoother and less
noticeable. The relatively simple and accessible nature of Final Cut Pro made
it easy to learn different techniques and how to isolate and edit audio. Now I
am much more familiar with the interface of the software and would feel
comfortable using it for any project. Our gained knowledge of the editing
software definitely lead to us having a much higher standard of work at the
end. Since I had already been slightly familiar with this particular software I
found it easy to learn how to do more advanced editing and found the
learning experience enjoyable.

4. PHOTOSHOP
For this media product, since I was the member of the group who was doing Art
Alevel, I was given the responsibility of creating our production company’s
ident as well as other graphics necessary for the film opening. While I was
already familiar with Photoshop from my Art, I had never had to make any
translucent logos or idents. The construction of this media product meant that
I had to teach myself skills involving photoshop to give our filming opening a
higher standard of quality. I very much enjoyed this learning process, as it
involved drawing and design, and I found it relatively simple. The one aspect I
did have difficulty with remembering was the incredibly important differences
in file types to allow any logos I made to have transparent backgrounds.

5. CAMERAS AND MICROPHONES
For our the construction of our media product we used a Canon 700D camera
instead of the more easily accessible and simpler to use iphone camera. This
meant that our footage was of a higher quality and we had more options of
what settings the camera had, as well as the focus point of the shots. Today,
my cinematography skills are much higher than they were at the beginning of
this project, learning how to do focus pulls, the effects of the different camera
settings, and how to ensure camera stability over the past weeks.
For good sound quality we decided to use a separate microphone from the one
inside the camera. This meant that we good record cleaner audio and could
isolate the sound much easier. Learning to use the microphone was quite
difficult as I had no real experience with sound equipment before this and
having to take into consideration frequency and loudness was very difficult to
remember and enforce.

6. GARAGE BAND
Before beginning this task, I had no experience using sound recording software
whatsoever and being honest, I had an awful lot of difficulty learning to use it.
Luckily a member of our group had used it for one of her Alevels so she was
able to teach me the basics. We were able to use Garageband to create an
original sci-fi typical soundtrack to use in our film opening. Garageband
allowed us to increase the quality of our film opening as it meant we did not
have to use prerecorded loops from Final Cut Pro or other sources (such as
download sites online), and could create something that fit the mood of our
media product well.