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

During this project, I have encountered some new technologies and improved my skills on the ones I was already familiar with. I learnt how to use Adobe Premiere Pro to a greater extent because this film brief enabled us to be more creative with our editing than we had been in previous projects. For example, we tried out “ghosting” within the first 30 seconds of our film, by making the shot of typing at 50% opacity, and layering it over the shot of the man’s keyboard and whiskey glass to show what he was typing. We liked this; however feedback showed us that it didn’t fit in with the pace of the opening which was fast, so we took it out. By experimenting with this effect, it made me think about the pace of our opening, and we decided to make the beginning and end fast-paced, and the middle slower to contrast and build tension.

I probably learnt the most during post-production, because with technology moving so fast, there are always new things to learn and discover. I recently discovered the wonders of Macs, and i-Movie’s ability to create amazing titles. This is something I would like to explore more of in the future. I also learnt about rendering, which was a completely new process for me.

The TV/film medium is moving so fast because new technologies keep coming out all the time. It is difficult to keep up with the industry professionals who have a much larger budget than we do, but our school has invested in some top-of-the-range cameras which are capable of HD (details in blog post “evaluation – more info”). We didn’t film in HD because the tapes are expensive, rendering takes longer, and not everyone has HD TV’s, but nevertheless our film is still high quality.

I have learnt trouble-shooting skills for when technology goes awry, which are detailed in a blog post labelled “evaluation – more info” along with a list of the technologies I used. We could have experimented with a few more effects, such as greyscale, but it was dark enough, and we didn’t want to overcomplicate our piece. If I were to advise someone doing the same project, I would suggest they use labels on blogger, create lots of timelines in Adobe Premiere Pro, and film whole conversations/let the action run from all angles. Doing this in “Caught in the Web” enabled me to have creative freedom when editing. I would also insist on saving before and after every change that is made, because computers can be unreliable. I found these processes very helpful when making my film.

Out of the list of technologies on my blog (“evaluation – more info”) I found Adobe Premiere Pro the most useful, because is digital editing and allowed so much flexibility. We shared the transport of equipment (cameras, tripods etc), and we ensured everything we needed was to hand. I recently learnt what “linear editing” involved, and realised how lucky we were to have “non-linear editing”. It is so much more reliable and efficient, and allows for more creativity.

Last but definitely not least, I learnt how to use Blogger. I had never written a blog before, and I have found it very useful. It has encouraged me to do more research because of the ease of publishing, and has made paperwork slightly more fun due to choosing colours, pictures etc. It's funny how a few months ago I didn't even know what a blog was, and recently it has become such a big part of my life.