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

To plan for our opening sequence we had to first research other opening sequences to see how they are structured and how much of the story they tell, and to help us to decide on a genre and a story outline. Once we had decided this we then had to research other films of this genre, the ones we researched were I Am Legend and World War Z. We then created a storyboard of our opening sequence so we knew what shots we would have to film and so we could get an initial idea of any special effects and music. We then had to decide and analyse who our target audience would be and what we could do to make our opening sequence appeal to this primary audience. Once we had everything else planned we then created a production schedule which we would use to tell us when we will be filming, editing and when our deadlines are. We also created these blogs to keep track of all our work and so we can refer back to it to make sure our opening sequence is successful.

 

We then had to begin filming our media product. We used a camera and a tripod to make sure that our camera was steady in most shots. Many times we had to go and film extra clips during our editing process as we needed to increase the shot pace and add more tension to the beginning of our story. For example the extra shots layered over the top of the wooded section were extra clips that we filmed to enhance our piece and make it more scary for our thrill seeking audience.

 

To begin editing our piece we first imported our clips to a programme called Premiere. This software enabled us to edit our piece in many different ways and allowed us to add effects and different audio. It also gave us the tools to increase our editing skills to create a successful product. During our editing process we kept a diary of what we did on both our production schedule and on different posts on this blog. This allowed us to keep track of what we have completed and how much we had to do before our first and final cuts. Editing the audio took us the most time because we had to create sound bridges on certain clips as they needed to be cropped and therefore the sound would also be cut, but we were able to pull the sound across to the previous or next clip to make sure our sequence ran smoothly.

 

When exporting our piece, at first we struggled because we hadn't taken media at GCSE so we were inexperienced in using the Premiere software. However we managed to learn how to export our product properly. We then had to export our final cut again but this time along with our exam information.