Evaluation Question 6

How did technology impact each stage of the process (blogs, planning and research, filming, sound and editing)?

Blogs were good because we can keep updated with all of what we have been doing. Blogging is a good means of communication in a group because they can easily edit and it is easy to create a post and track your group’s activities through their posts. The technology impacted our planning and research because we could use a variety of programmes such as google and Wikipedia for research into the streets where we were going to film. We used a video camera that was a high quality so we had the most realistic film that we could have. Also we used iMovie for editing on the macs and that gave us the best possible editing that we could use.

What have you learnt about the importance of technology in the production and editing of opening sequences?

I have learnt that it is important to have technology in a film because of a variety of reasons. The first reason being that it is important to have a crisp picture for the video so that it will be a quality film. Also the sound must be good. it is so important to use the technology to your advantage and then you will have made a good production.

Are there any limitations to the technologies that were available to you,

If so, what did you hope you would be able to do that you didn’t achieve?

They were quite a few limitations to the technologies that were available because we had a low budget we didn’t have the money to get loads of equipment and props so we were limited on what we could get and what we could use. We were also limited on location being in a small town we didn’t have a lot of places to go and film so this also applies to low budget because if we had the money we could have gone abroad or to a different location in the UK. But overall we had to really work with the low budget to be able to do anything for out opening sequence.

What technologies have you used?

We have used many different types of technology in our research and planning, filming, sound, editing, word processing and blogs to gain the right result. For our research we look on the computer and made good use of Google Maps to research our locations such as the fields that we were going to use. I think this really helped plan out exactly where we could go and it saved huge amounts of time so that we didn’t just have to drive round aimlessly looking for the best place. In the filming process we used Nikon D70 camera to film all of our clips as we tried this camera out in our research to make sure the quality was good enough to use. We used the computers to look for royal free music to use for certain parts of our film, gaining the right atmosphere that we already had criteria to meet that we made in our planning and research. To put things on the blogs we had to use the computers and type up our notes on Word.

Have your skills in using these (or your knowledge of them) developed as a result of using them? How?

I believe that my personal skills and I strongly believe that the whole group’s skills have developed since this project. I think that my editing skills have greatly improved by spending a lot of time on my own using the Apple Mac’s to edit our film. Also, I think that my camera work has greatly improved using the different devices and rules more appropriately to gain better results.  I also think that my camera work has improved in the way of stability and steadiness gaining better clips. I think that because we all had the same amount of time as each other to use all of the pieces of technology like the camera and macs so we could all teach each other new things that we have found. I found this a lot easier to learn this way than using a YouTube video or listening to a teacher. I just think the bigger time period was the best thing we had on this project as we all had a lot of time to spend going through different functions on iMovie and other programs to gain good results.