Q6.

Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Research and Planning

The first thing I learnt how to do was actually work Blogspot. I had never had a blog of my own before on any of website so had no knowledge whatsoever of how they work. I think the technical aspect of how to use/work the blog was fairly obvious it was more how I would present my ideas that I struggled with as I have never been very creative. However, throughout my planning I learnt many different ways of presenting my work to ensure that my blog looked visually interesting to read. Having done this and gradually gotten better at it I have been able to see a clear different in my work and the layout of my blog has improved dramatically since I first started to post ideas onto it.

 

One of the first posts I uploaded onto my blog consisted of text and a Youtube clip that had embedded onto my blog. This is something that I did not know how to do before. Although it is not a pretty as some of my other posts it allowed me to refer to examples that I have used in my written work. Embedding Youtube videos is a common was of presenting work therefore I feel this was a very useful skill to learn as I have become a lot more digitally literate and therefore may have greater success later on in life as I am aware of how to use such presentational skills showing creativity.

Another way in which I learned how to use present my work was using 'Scribd. This allowed me to upload PowerPoint onto my blog. I found this really useful because power point is something that I have had a lot of experience using so was able to produce a piece of work fairly easily. I did however struggle to upload the PowerPoint onto Scribd at first but after a while I managed to get the hang of it.

My favourite piece of presentation that I found really easily to use was Prezi. It was really easily to throw all my thoughts onto the page and present my ideas in a really creative way. The first Prezi I made was one as a group and this was a very basic Prezi. After a while I was able to explore it further and realised that PowerPoint’s, images etc. could be presented in Prezi. This made it really easy for me to analyse pieces of work as I was able to present videos and images that backed up points I was making etc. One of my proudest pieces of work came from Prezi because it allowed me to be very detailed in my answer but it also looked visually amazing even though it is quite hectic.

 
I found this piece really fun to work on because it meant I could show my create side but also learnt a lot whilst going through it. The good thing I found with Prezi was that there is always something else you can do with it, I was always finding out new things and gaining new ideas through it.

I also found looking at other people blogs to get some inspiration for how I would present my ideas very useful. In particular I looked at Adam Turners blog. I thought that his presentation was fantastic and showed how using a variety of presentation skills could make a blog a lot more interesting.

 

Dafont.com was a website I had never even heard of before doing my research. I thought it was really cool that I was able to search all different types of fonts and define my searches to allow my font to fit in with the genre and themes of my film.
I learned how to download the fonts onto Premiere Pro so to be able to use specific fonts for the titles and credits at the opening of my thriller.

I did however decide against using any of the fonts off this particular website as I found one more suited to my thriller on Premiere Pro. None-the-less I enjoyed learning about the website as it gave me the option to enhance my creativity.

Production

The school provided us with HD Canon Legria cameras. This allowed us to shoot in high definition improving the visual quality of our work.
Before our preliminary task I had not used a video camera at all so my knowledge of it was lacking. However working on my own did work to my advantage in the sense that I was able to teach myself how each device worked so now I can safely say that I know all there is to know about this particular camera!
The camera we used allowed me to zoom in and out which I did find very useful. Because of this my opportunities for creativity were enhanced as I was able to change the focus on screen etc.

We were provided with an SD card by the school where we were to save all of our footage from then camera and transfer it to Premiere Pro. The particular c ards that we were given were very useful for our coursework as they were very fast, small (so we were able to carry them around with us throughout shooting etc.) And waterproof. I
 would say that this was one of our most useful pieces of equipment as it allowed us to mess around with different lengths of shots and re-take shots several time as it provided us with the memory to do so. This gave us the scope we needed to try different things.

Post production

I had never used any kind of filming software before our Preliminary Task so do not have the knowledge to compare Premiere Pro do any other software, however it is extremely professional and gave me the opportunities to play around with my footage as much as I wanted.

The effects of Premiere Pro were very advanced. The colour grading effects in particular was something that I found very useful. It allowed me to turn my footage from a dark location to a bleak, gritty and cold looking location which I found to be key in setting a hostile and deathly atmosphere.
 
Premiere Pro gave me a lot of control over what I was doing so I really felt a sense of achievement at the end knowing that every second of my final cut came from me. The after effects of transitions and the titles allowed me to really develop my creativity and it was the media technology that gave me to option to do so.