Evaluation Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout the whole of our filming and editing process we have been constantly learning new ways to use technology to make our film.

Filming Equipment

To start with we decided on the three cameras that we were going to use, we used my Nikon D3100, Charlotte's GoPro and my Dad's JVC camera. We used all three of these cameras on our shooting day, however we then had a malfunction with the SD camera on my D3100 and lost all the footage. So the only footage we had left of the actual film was form my Dad's JVC which was really grainy when we uploaded it to the computer at school and we decided that we weren't going to use any as it wasn't as HD as the footage from my Nikon.

We then planned to re-shoot but we had a change of plans and so I decided to take my SD card to London Camera Exchange and see if they could get my files back, which they did. Due to this we were now able to use all of our old footage and we just had to film a few small bits with my Nikon that didn't take very long anyway.

After all of this we realised that we needed some footage for our flashback shots and so I then used my other camera which is a Sony A5000 to get really precise HD videos of the knife falling to the ground, the hand falling into the blood and of course the blood dripping which were all filmed at my home, by myself.

The GoPro was used for point of view shots and it was really easy to use because we basically had it connected to Charlotte's phone so we could see what we were filming and we just made Beth run up the stairs a few times like she was doing it normally.

The only real problem we had with the technological side of the cameras was of course my SD Card, we still don't really know what happened and it had recorded the footage but when I went to put it on my computer it said that it was completely empty after we had filmed about 50 things on it. The lesson that we learned from this was to back up our footage straight away as it was left a day before we tried to upload it.


We then also used 2 Tripods for filming, one of them was my own and the other one was Charlotte's that she had borrowed from her brother. We used them through the whole of our film on the Nikon and JVC and I then used mine with the Sony when filming the blood clips.

Communication

When communication with each other to sort our when we were going to film or to send each other work we used Facebook messenger, text and emails. This was so that we could constantly stay in touch with one another and plan ahead with our filming so that we could get everything done on time. We also used it to tell each other about any problems we had with the whole filmmaking process.

   

Editing

We edited our whole film using the Mac's at school and used iMovie to edit the film. It was a really easy software for us to use, partly because I had used it many times before but apart from very small things it was pretty straight forward to use and my experience with using it already helped us get off to an easy start after the delay we had had with our SD malfunction.

After being the only one who was able to edit I then showed Beth how to edit and we were then both able to edit separately and get the film done just in time.
The film came our brilliantly because we had such a good software to use.

Research and Documentation

Our main source of research methods was from the internet, we used sites such as google, Wikipedia and IMDB to find out things about our film genre and the type of people that liked the films etc. They also helped when researching the types of thrillers that most teenagers like and also the ideal location for a thriller film to be set. We spent many hours on google researching as much as we could so that our film was perfect for our target audience and exactly the way we wanted it to be.

To document the planning and making our film we used Blogger to create our blogs and show how much planning and effort we had put into the film making process but also to note down anything that had gone wrong or right with our filming and editing process.

Sharing our film

When sharing our film we uploaded it to YouTube so that it could be viewed really easily. The upload process was extremely easy and it took around 5 minutes for each video that we uploaded and each video is available in HD with gives the full effect that we wanted.