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

During construction of this product we learnt how to use the following:

• Camera
• Tracks
• Tripod
• IMovie
• Blogger.com
• Youtube.com
• Freesoundproject.com

Firstly we learnt the basics of how to use the camera, such as how to record, pause and rewind the tape.
We then learnt how to use the camera to create different moods and atmospheres for our opening, how to make character's come across in a certain way and how to film in order to make our opening look well presented and not to confuse or distract the audience. To do this we learnt about the following:

• High angle shots - we found this useful when filming the victim as it made her come across to the audience as more vulnerable.
• Low angle shots - we used this to shoot the villain, as it made him appear to be more powerful and intimidating.
• Wide shots - we used this to help establish the setting of the opening.
• Close-ups - we used close-ups of the victim's eyes in the beginning to help convey the genre of the opening and of chloe's face when receiving a text message from the villain and when running to show her facial expressions to the audience, which reveal a lot about the emotions and state of mind of the victim. Close-ups can also be used to make a character look powerful as their face is dominant on the screen.
• Long shots - We did not use a lot of long shots for our opening as it is very fast paced and the action starts quite early in the opening and we wanted the viwer to be able to see what was going on. Long shots can be used to establish the setting and make a character look helpless or insignificant as they will appear very small in the shot, but we felt we had already established the setting and made the victim appear vulnerable using other techniques. 
• Checking the camera is level was important in making sure the product looked professional and so not to distract the viewer from what was going on.
• Checking the camera lense was cleaned before we started filming was also important in making our product look professional and not distracting the viewer from what is happening. In our opening we had problems with this because although we had cleaned the camera lense and it looked clear during shooting, when we uploaded the video onto to IMovie and saw what we had filmed on a bigger screen we could see that there had been water marks on the lense of the camera. We took this into consideration during the rest of our filming and ensured we cleaned the lense thoroughly and checked it a few times before filming.
• 180 degree rule - we learnt that the camera should stay within 180 degrees, unless there is good reason not to do so. This is to prevent the audience from becoming confused or disengaged. 

We then learnt how to use a tripod so that the camera would be stable whilst shooting, which is very important for making the film look professional and not distracting the viewer. We also learnt how to use tracks with the tripod so that the camera moved steadily and at a constant level whilst we filmed our victim running.


We used IMovie to edit our opening. We learnt how to import the footage onto IMovie, how to cut and reorder the footage, and then add effects and sound.

We published our ideas on blogger.com so we had a record of them which all members of the group could access easily. We also used blogger.com to evaluate our product.

We learnt how to upload onto youtube.com as we put our preliminary task and our final product on this website. We also learnt how to access and use un-copyrighted music from the website freesoundproject.com, which was useful for finding the sounds for our opening such as the text message  and gun shot sound in our opening.