Question 6

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

During this years AS Media Studies course, I have developed the basic skills that I initially had, using technologies. I have realised how important technologies are in achieving a final product to be proud of.

Apple Macs

With no experience using this hardware prior to the course, I knew I needed to familiarise myself with them, as they are very different to the Windows PCs that I am used to. At the start of the course I explored the uses of the Macs, in order to understand them, and achieve the most from them. As I became more aware, I was confident to use the software that I needed to achieve my final product - our film opening.

Creating a Soundtrack on LogicPro

Using advice from our teacher, we decided to use LogicPro rather than Garage Band, in order to create a soundtrack for our film opening that reflected the advanced skills needed to use this piece of software.

We decided that for the base loop, that would run throughout the whole of the soundtrack was an 'Acoustic Picking' selected from the downloaded loops. Although there was many loops to choose from, we has heard a piece of royalty free music that would have been perfect for our film opening therefore we wanted to replicate aspects of it- so this is partly how we made our decisions.

As our film genre is a 'psychological thriller' we knew that it was vital that we created a build up of tension within the soundtrack that would co-ordinate with the tense atmosphere in the opening. We achieved this by building layers of very low, and very high pitched sounds. for example with 'Tube Bass' and 'String Essemble'.

Possibly the most important thing we achieved by using LogicPro, was being able to import in our film opening, so that we could match the visuals on screen, with the audio on the soundtrack. This was really effective and allowed the film opening to reflect a more perfected product, with advanced skills used in the production. An example of our visual and audio co-ordination can be seen in the first 40 seconds of our film, where the opening titles are shown: 

Final Cut Pro

This is the main software that we used to edit and produce our film opening. Using Final Cut Pro, I was surprised about what I learnt, and how it would help us achieve a product that would have been completely different without the use of technology. An effect that we used, that was vital for the success of our film opening was the 'masking' tool. Unfortunately, from the shots that we had taken to represent a car crash, were not convincing - therefore we had no way to show how our protagonist's (Molly) parents had died. This was vital to the plot, and we therefore had to find another way. Using 'masking' we were able to overlay clip 1 (of a cars headlights driving towards the camera), onto clip 2 (a point of view shot from Molly, looking onto her parents and out the front window). We used the tool to crop down clip 1 so that it fit around the perimeter of the front window.

Conclusion

In summary I believe the skills that I have developed, in using technologies to produce our film opening are vital skills that I can carry onto A level. Next year in Media Studies, the course will be more challenging and will require a larger scale of understanding for both shooting and editing - therefore having developed my skills I will be in a more prepared position to achieve a high level product.