6q

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

2. This coursework taught me a lot about technology and how different programmes work and their charasteristics. I
picked up many skills such as making a short film on Final Cut Pro, how to edit titles with motions on Motion, how to film
correctly with cameras and tripods and how to make my own song/soundtrack on Logic Pro.
The film opening went up on Blogger because that is how our teachers marked it.
This technology allowed me to achieve a tidy, labelled and organized
coursework. It helped me build my work and include all the details needed.
Initially, I wasn’t able to use Blogger and was new to the website but as I practiced
more and more I picked u a few skills. It has different really useful features. In
blogger we can embed videos, write notes, make posts, make links and we can
even import videos, images and sounds. The embed feature I think was one of the
most useful features Blogger has due to how i can share my work that i did on
other websites such as Prezi, Slideshare YouTube videos and Powtoon, therefore i
can do my work on different websites but then share all of them in one. It makes
everything way easier and convenient because everyone can just click on the
embedded post and a new tab will open which will make them view it. In addition,
the fact that I can change the date of a post to move it around is an advantage
for me due to how there will be a much clearer order of the steps I took to create
my whole coursework. I learnt how to used Blogger fully just after one month of
using it because I think it is an easy and straight forward website to use.
Here we can see all the posts in order and organised.
This is how i embed. I copy and paste the
embedded link in the «HTML» page.
Here it turns into a youtube video once
it is on the «compose» page.
Changing the date
of the posts.

3. Final Cut Pro was fundamental for editing our film opening. This programme is known and
used to edit videos and make short/long films and helped me achieve my 2 minute film
opening with titles, logo and sound. When i was first introduced to the programme I found it
hard to understand and use due to the diffferent tools and feautures it has. The easiest thing
to do was importing and exporting the videos but the hardest part was getting the black
fade and inserting the titles from Motion. Importing all the scenes we filmed took quite a
long time because we had over 100 clips which needed to be imported onto Final Cut.
However, the fact that we could put all of them into one folder (for example all the scenes of
the locations went in the ‘location’ folder) made everything a lot easier and saved me a lot
of time due to how organised it was and we only needed to click on one folder to view all
the clips we wanted to edit. We chose to follow a specific narrative therefore the scenes had
to be in a specific order. We decided that we will start off with the locations and then alter
betweenthe actress and actor to emphasise the contast between them. Getting the black
fade into the beginning and end of the film opening was hard because we had no idea how
to do it, which mad us Google it. We then succedeed and got the black fade effect.
Importing the sounds was quite easy as it was an MP3 file and we only clicked on ‘import
audio’. Importing the titles was quite difficult as we firt made them on Motion. That is why we
had to Google it and learnt how to do it. It took me qute some time to learn how to huse
Final Cut Pro properly (about 2 months) because there are so many features. We had other
problems such as the scenes that kept freezing as soon as we played them. Solving that
issue took us a week because we had to get all the clips and move them onto the desktop
and start editing all over again. However, it taught me even more about the programme
because if next year while doing my Media A2 coursework something similar happens, I will
be able to deal with it quickly and effectively.
These images are screengrabs of some of the
steps i took to edit in final cut.

4. Logic Pro was one of the most challenging programmes i’ve come
across so far. This is because i have never used something similar and I
am not familiar with composing any type of music or sound. With the
support of the music department we learnt how to compose a
soundtrack with different instruments. There were so many insturments I
did not even know about such as the Synthesizers and using Logic Pro
not only taught me how to use the programme but also about music and
instruments. I learnt how to put music loops and special effects to each
sound which made it unique for my film opening. The special effects
allowed me to almost replicate the song ‘Radioactive’ by Imagine
Dragons which is the song that I was inspired by. The fact that we could
import our video was really useful because that way we could see the
exact timing of each scene and use that to be as precised as possible
with the music. Precision was a must due to how we want to show
contrast between the two characters and the scene changes every 3 to
5 seconds from character to character. That means that the music also
had to change mood every to 5 seconds and the having the video right
there on top of the sceen playing each time we composed our
soundtrack helped us get the timings right
Music Loops
Screengrab while
composing our
soundtrack. Yellow
lines rapresent the
length of each
note.
We’ve had issues with exporting the sound due to how the
video got saved with the actual audio. This lead to the
actual Logic Pro file to go missing and we thought we lost
our original sound. However with the help of our teacher
we saved the audio and exported it to Final Cut pro to
then add it to our final film opening. It took me 2 weeks to
finish the soundtrack and Logic Pro made everything a lot
quicker due to how advanced it is.

5. Motion was a really useful programme to make the titles for our film
because we had over 100 fonts to choose from. At first, like the other
programmes, it was hard to use and I took 2 days to get my head
around it. It did not take us too long to make the title due to how it is
roughly 3 to 4 lines. However we tok our time and tried different types
of fonts and behaviours. The programme is called Motion probably
because of its behaviours (motions). That was the main reason we
chose it: we wanted our titles to appear and dissapear with a motion
and have an unique font that matched our genre (romance). We
wanted it to be elegant and we achieved everything thanks to Motion.
The challenges were exporting the titles onto Final Cut Pro because we
could not move them but then we solves the problem and getting the
writing to motve a certain way. Sometimes the motion caused the title
to tilt or rotate automatically which affected the making of the titles
due to how it took time to adjust each of word. The final product turned
out really good and of a good quality. Now i know how to edit text
and add motions, including exporting it to Final Cut Pro which again,
will help me with my coursework next year with A2.
Here i am
choosing the font
«Apple
Chansery».
Here i am choosing the
behaviour of the text. «scale in»
«Scale Out».

6. Cameras contributed to the process of constructing our media product. Without cameras we wouldn’t be
able to film scenes professionally and the shots wouldn’t be as steady. Tripods were needed to get the best
out of each shot due to how they hold the camera still. During the coursework I learnt how to hold a steady
shot and do pannings. There were some challenges that I had to overcome for example the memory card
kept running out of space and in order for me to film the rest I ad to delete all the other scenes. It was safe
because i saved all the scenes on the computer before hand. The camera allowed me to film clean scenes
throughout the whole coursework.
Internet Sites: sites such as Prezi, Powtoon, Slideshare and Glogster also took a big part in the making of the
coursework (in research, panning and evaluation). They are easy to embed to Blogger which is why they
were worth using. All these technologies allowed me to construct my media product and were all useful and
convenient.