Evaluation Question 6 - What Have You Learnt About The Technologies From The Process Of Constructing This Product?

What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process Of Constructing This Product?

Individually and as a group, I have learnt a lot of different techniques to technologies in order to construct Tiny Terror. The main technologies in which i have been able to learn about are, first of all MACS, i had never used a mac before media studies. So learning how to work with one, did prove difficult at times, yet most of the time it was easy to follow and i soon became used to working with a MAC. Also, there was: IMOVIE, FINAL CUT and GARAGE BAND which i had never even heard of, never mind construct my own opening to a film opening with music on. I had no idea how to film, edit or add special effects to a film. Admittedly, i did struggle at the beginning of constructing the opening of Tiny Terror as i could not identify with any of the software which i was given, but after being given tasks in which allowed me to experiment with imovie and then final cut. Being introduced to IMovie first was a good move, as it is more basic than Final Cut, so by the time i was ready to be introduced to Final Cut, i had a good understanding of Imovie, meaning i would be able to understand Final Cut quicker, along with some help from somebody who was fluent in Final Cut.
Final cut was a very important peice of software that we used. Without it, we would not have been able to construct our final cut for Tiny Terror. Although it was more technical than Imovie, it allowed a lot more special effects and was more efficient with editing.
Garage Band was the software where we constructed our whole soundtrack for the opening of Tiny Terror. We found Garage Band very helpful as neither of Barncasarn played instruments which would mean if we didnt have Garage Band, we would have to have found somebody to record their own music for us, which would have been a time consuming task.
Garage Band offers wide range of different instrumental sounds. You can layer the sounds so you can use different instruments at one time to create an effective sound.

My Vimeo account

I have also learnt how to use many different sources to allow myself to upload my footage/podcasts onto my blog. None of which i had heard of before taking media studies, however i learnt very quickly how to use them efficiently with the help of my media studies teacher and also getting myself used to the websites functions. Websites such as VIMEO - which allowed me to upload my vodcasts, roughcuts or feedback videos onto the internet when i was unable to access youtube at school. SCRIBD - a website where i uploaded all my word documents, which was extremely useful when it came to writing my treatment, making presentations on horror films and other little details such a location scouting. And DIVSHARE - where i uploaded all of my podcasts onto, so i could embed them onto my blog. Uploading new footage of roughcuts and podcasts/vodcasts onto these websites allowed me to put them onto my blog, which made way for recieving customer feedback, and i could see what work i had already done, and what i needed to do next.

As an example of how i used different technologies in the construction of my product, here is the first rough cut that we made for Tiny Terror. Where we were in the first stages of creating the opening. We used different shot angles and different types of shot e.g. close up/medium close up etc, showed a good mise en scene location, and had little narrative. We edited the footage on IMOVIE.  



As you can see, there is no evidence of layering in the extract, no fade in or outs, non diegetic music, the shots are very long and do not use a lot of shot variation, and there is not any extremely shaky camera effect or unatural lighting. This is because, all though IMOVIE does carry some of these features such as fade ins and fade outs, it does not allow you to go straight into the detail with the opacity of the shot. Or layering between two different shots which has a great effect if used correctly in films.

In contrast, this is the latest rough cut of tiny terror which we have produced. It shows use of shot variation, layers, fade in and outs, non diegetic music, short takes when needed, and an obvious shaky camera effect for the benefit of the audience, and tweeks with the diegetic music when the doll laughs. All of these effects have been created on FINAL CUT, which Barncasarn found a lot more efficient when creating the rough cuts. However, all though FINAL CUT is more beneficial and we do prefer using it, we did find IMOVIE a lot more straight forward and easier to use.








To find out valued information about films which i was analysing or wanted to know more about to inspire my own opening of Tiny Terror. I used IMDB, which helped me alot if i needed to know what year the film was made, who the director was, what the budget was, who starred in the film, etc.



Without blogger. I would not have been able to construct my coursework. It is simple and easy to use, and i have had no problems with it. With the blog, i could follow other blogs, create my own posts which allowed me to construct my coursework, i could make a post and add links, photos, change the colour/font/size of the text, embed youtube videos or podcasts etc. This allowed me to detail what i was saying in my blog posts. Once i had finished a blog post, i clicked publish which allowed me to see my published blog post on my blog as others would see it. I could also change the layout of my blog, such as adding a background (which i did. I used Chuckie from Childsplay as the background). You can also add a LINKS LIST or POLLS. Links Lists allowed me to organise my blog so that the work that i had done was easy to find, and i could access it easily. Polls also allowed me to understand what my audience wanted  in my opening Tiny Terror. Here is an example:









Before constructing Tiny Terror, i had very little knowledge of how to use a video camera. At the beginning of the year, before all of the filming of the rough cuts, we were taught how to use a camera and tripod efficiently so that our film opening product would look proffessional. The video camera's that we used were useful enough to film our footage, however, if we were to create a film opening of even higher quality, and with a bigger budget, i would get a better quality camera as the overall outcome would be greater. We also struggled with getting the right shot of a close up, as the zoom would often make the object/person we were shooting out of focus.

When creating the opening credits for Tiny Terror, and the company Ident Barncasarn, we used livetype, which made creating these two objects a very easy process as the instructions were easy to follow, and the options to create the ident/opening credit were easy, such as choosing the right font/size/colour which were already available on livetype, there was a massive range of all 3 which allowed us to perfect what we wanted them to look like. Here is the barncasarn ident: