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

Throughout our production we used different forms of technology in order to create our opening sequence. 

PRE-PRODUCTION

In the initial planning stages of our opening sequence technology was key in focusing on our unique selling point and being able to connect with our audience. 

• SOCIAL MEDIA- In order to connect with our audiences we created a twitter account @_AZOE(the name of our media group). On this popular site we were able to post updates on the film and gain direct feedback from our target audience. The use of this social media was effective with our specific piece as 'Twitter' is most used by our direct age bracket-15-24 year olds. 
• ANIMATIC- After we created our shot list we also constructed an animatic. The point of this process was to see how well the shots would flow into each other and whether the story line was told fluently. To create our animatic we used shots from our previous practice shoot. To construct our animatic we used ADOBE PREMIERE PRO to edit. This is the program we also used to edit our final sequence. By using this it allowed us to practice how to construct spilt screens and to see how the music would fit with the piece.

MUSIC 

As part of this task we had to use music that was free from copyright. In order to find music that we could use we looked at the website: http://www.freeplaymusic.com

As originally we were going to include a narrative from a teacher at the school we had to choose a song that had no lyrics. Using this site was quite challenging as the songs we originally found were not very appropriate to our selected genre nor the style of our sequence. Finally we found FULL OF MESH-'Happy upbeat track with dual guitars working rocking riffs, solid rhythm section gets your foot tapping'. http://www.freeplaymusic.com/search/keyword_search.php

Animatic


What we learnt from the animatic
After we produced our animatic we felt that the music didn't fit with our piece very well. This meant we had time to change it and find a more matching song. 
In addition we also realised that we needed to change the placing of our title. Originally we were going to zoom into the window where the title would appear however, from our animatic we realised that this wouldn't work so had to change its position in the sequence. 
How to improve our animatic
Our animatic used very rough pictures so it meant the angle and framing of the shots did not mirror what we wanted them to look like in our sequence. This made it much harder during filming as we didn't know exactly how to frame the individual shots.

PRODUCTION

For all our shoots we used

•  Legria HV30 camera
• A tripod

In the re-shoots we also used a lighting peg. This allowed use to use artificial light to brighten the scene. 

As I was one of the only two actors I was only about to shot the scenes that included Zenia. 

 

The Tripod was used in all the shots bar one. The use of the tripod allowed us to create smooth pans which we used in the establishing and master shots. One shot that we didn't use the tripod for was the track of Zenia's feet. 

In order to get this shot we had to be creative. Although we had effectively planned for all our shoots we hadn't taken into account how we were going to get this tracking shot. Whilst shooting at Emily's house we had the idea of using a skateboard. 

For the editing of our film we used Adobe Premiere Pro. We used the tools to cute clips, increase/reduce shots and create our split screens. After we had edited our piece together we graded the sequence using the ProCamp tool. This allowed up to change the contrasts and lighting on the shots. In addition it also allowed us to change the feel of the scene. We were able to fix the colourings of the scene so could make scenes 'pinker' to help reinforce the genre. 

One of the interesting aspects of our film was the use of SPLIT SCREENS.

We used split screen screens in order to show the contrasts between the two characters.

When adding titles to our piece we used the program 'LIVE TYPE' on the Mac. We kept titles pink to fit the genre of the piece and used contrasting fonts for the title to allow the audience to see the contrasts between the two characters.  When adding the titles into the sequence we didn't just want them to appear on the screen but have them related to the action that was being shown such as being blown away by the hair dryer ect...

Summary
From our work with all the different types of technology I feel i have learnt the importance of each piece of technology.

•  The use of tripod is significantly important in the use of trying to capture smooth pans which was heavily needed in our piece. 
• The Peg lighting was also significant in this project as the bright lighting helped to create a bright and girly feel which added to our genre style. Looking back we should have used the artificial lighting from the start so that all our shots had the same feel. This would have meant that we wouldn't have had to reshoot and could have saved time. 
• The use of the editing software was also important as it allowed us to create our spilt screens which were one of the USPs of our films. Looking we could have used this technique more in order to vary our shot type. 
• The use of live type was also significant as it allowed us to add motions to our titles. This meant that the title could fit with the action on the screen making the titles more incorporated into the piece rather than just being an 'add-on'.