AS Media

1. What have you learnt about
technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
Evaluation Task VI

2. Idents I
To start with Software wise, we used
Motion to create the ident.
I used a Graphics tablet to draw a Sloth in
Pixlemator (the process of this is up on my blog).
As I do photography, I have an understanding of Photoshop/Pixelmator,
however, this required me to learn how to draw and blend colours.
Kieran used Motion to
physically make the ident for Dizzy Sloth. For this he made a Sloth
spin on the spot . This shows the use of multiple technologies/
programmes to construct the first ident.
And now moving onto the second…

3. Idents II
The second ident was made by me. I drew a box in Pixelmator and
created an optical triangle illusion by positioning 9 cubes and then
altering their layers and on the final cube, erasing some away. In order
to add the movement, I split up the image to be able to drop in
a cube and it look believable as it needs to be behind one
box and in front of another. So, in Motion I made the cube
drop in and I found a tittle from FontSpace (that is legal to
use) and in Final Cut, I added royalty free music that
gradually fades out.
From this, I have learnt how to loosely use Motion, which
is a completely new programme for me to use.

4. Final Cut
Pro
Firstly, Final Cut Pro was the program I used to add the sound to our Idents as it
was an easier process.
Last year during GCSE I used Final Cut Pro in order to make a music video,
however, recently Final Cut had an update and so I had to re-learn how to use it and
where to find the tools. I learnt how to use the colour filters and the new tool of the
program automatically syncing the sound with the video. However, this was not
helpful to us as the sound recording of the singing and video would not recognise
one another as the tracks are so long. At other times, the singing acted as non-
diegetic sound and so this would not link up.

5. The Camera Bags
The standard bags that we are issued in Media contain
a Nikon SLR (and its charger), the Voice Recorder,
an AUX lead, a Microphone, BoomPole, Tripod and
a Clapper Board.
We have used the camera bags before for the
Preliminary Tasks, therefore I am use to the equipment.
We learnt that you could cancel background noise in the
voice recorder during our evaluation, which was a
helpful tool.

6. The Camera
On the location of our new film, we used a Roof
balcony which as it is outdoors, gave off natural
light. As a camera’s viewfinder does not replicate
what we see out the Human eye, I had to play
around with the settings to understand how to
change the
exposure of the camera. I am personally I am not
used to using DLSRs so for this product, I have
had to learn about song
the manual focus and
just basic functions- and
now I am more comforta-
ble using the cameras.

7. As I we are doing a musical, I require to record my song. We learned
how to make a sound bridge by crossing over the diegetic and no-diegetic
sound. This meant that to do this efficiently, I should record the music over
the silent film. So what I did was made the film with rough audio and then
in my own time, sang to the film. I listened to the audio as I watched the
film and it was almost perfect and I knew i could alter the speeds in Final
Cut. However, when the audio was uploaded to school, the Macs slightly
altered the frames- meaning that the audio and film were no longer
matching.
This meant that Kieran and I had to chop up the entire song and have to
calculate how much we had to speed things up and slow things down in
the audio- a feature I never knew Final Cut had. And thankfully, final cut is
clever enough to change the length of audio to fit a space.
Sound Recording

8. The DJI Osmo
In our first take of our film, we used a standard Steadicam from school, which
upon reviewing the footage (found on our Rough Cut I, the footage was not at all
steady, but very shaky. It is clear that there was not full control of the camera- also
the location was too small. So we decided to re-film and this meant we used the
DJI Osmo.
You install the application onto a Smartphone, which acts as
the viewfinder for the camera. The camera itself is
remote control, therefore we have full control with smooth
movements. To me, this looked scary to use at first, but after
I learnt how to use it , i really enjoyed the experience and the
picture looks incredibly smooth- exactly how we wanted it.
Photo from 4k.com