Question 6- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your product?
Whilst developing our media product, we learnt how to use many different technologies in order to complete the product itself. From the websites we used to collect different media items to the technologies used to stick the whole thing together, all these different products were new to some of us.
Apple Macs
We used the Apple Macs when using Prezi, Google or editing our opening title sequence. The apple macs have allowed access the Final Cut to edit our video with which are not found on PCs. This allowed us to produce a project to a high standard and look professional. iTunes was also a useful tool provided by the Macs when downloading soundtracks and sound effects as they were all saved there. Overall, they were very simple to use and the programs gave easy usage also.
Final Cut Pro
Final Cut Pro has allowed us to edit our film at a professional level as well as providing us with a wide range of video effects and transitions to help us maximise our films potential. It also shows the waveform of the audio we used, this helped us time our clips with the non-diegetic sound and help the video flow. Final Cut also provide a wide range of sound effects to use within the sequence. The sound effects are not restricted by copyright so allow us to freely use them. In addition to this we learnt how to use the green screen successfully and to a high quality.
YouTube
YouTube has been an extremely useful tool in the process of making our opening title sequence. The first obvious thing it gave us was the ability to distribute our product to an extremely wide and diverse audience, over 4 billion people watch and upload to this website everyday. We were one of that number, as well as uploading, we watched a lot of videos from other publishers for inspiration on how to improve each of our shots and decide upon what would be more effective. It is also the site where most of our soundtracks were discovered. For example, we found the piano track used almost throughout our entire opening title sequence on YouTube, as well as the use of Man Of Steel's 'An Ideal Of Hope' for our production company.
Tri-Pod
When filming our videos we used the Manfrotto 190L tripod in order to keep the camera steady for certain shots. When using the tripod we learned when it was and wasn't appropriate to use it to create effects. For example when demonstrating chaos in a shot we wouldn't use the tripod as the shaky camera further emphasises the nature of the scene. It was very useful when filming for "interviews" as we believed that less camera shake will give the impression of a formal conversation. We also used it when filming over the shoulder shots as it was easier to to maintain similar shots when cutting back and forth because the camera would stay in the same place.
Camera
We used a SonyHDR CX190. This was a handy little device purely because of its size, which made it very portable and easy to carry around. Although small in size, the picture quality was outstanding which is partly why we chose to use this camera. It was also relatively cheap, £450 brand new, but we picked one up second hand for around £150.
Weebly
For further advertisement for our product and "behind-the-scenes" access, we created a website through another site called Weebly. This tool was extremely useful for this process as it is very simple to use, which makes our job a lot easier. We used this website to show off our planning, research, evaluations and experimental videos (making blood and preliminary task).
Google Chrome
Google Chrome has been very useful towards completing our OTS, being the primary search engine to get to other sites that we used (YouTube, Weebly and Prezzi).