HOLLY: EVALUATION: QUESTION 6

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

In the main task, we used a wide variety of technologies (editing and filming) and learnt from the entire process.
For example we have learnt how to use a camera, with the right methods and procedures, and the framing of a subject.
We have learnt how to use white balance and the difference it makes when you do not white balance a subject, making the shot seem very unsaturated and unrealistic, and so we made sure to white balance our cameras before shooting for the final product. Here is an unrelated photo to our thriller film itself, but showing the importance of using white balance, as to make a subject more lifelike and realistic.










We struggled with the framing of our characters, as our tripods had very limited movements and we wanted to avoid zooming in on the cameras as much as possible, we had to crop most of our images on Final Cut Pro to get the correct framing of our characters and not cut off the tops of heads or have irrelevant items in our shots. learning to frame correctly was difficult, but once we got the hang of it, we were able to frame well! In our interrogation scene we struggled with the entire framing, our shots becoming 'samey' throughout with not much variety until the end when the tension builds we were able to crop the shot size down to a close up, creating a tense atmosphere.

We looked at other shot reverse shot sequences for inspiration, such as the sequence between Reggie and the detective in 'Case Histories' which had a variety of shot distances and camera angles, which created the atmosphere in the sequence.

We also have learnt from the continuity editing of our product, in the images titles and sound, for example our use of filters, to alter the pace and go into our flashback sequence, creating clear contrasts between the interrogation and the flashback. We had a few problems with the editing software, as all of us are mostly used to working on Windows 8, It was very new to be working on Mac's but we soon got the hang of it.
We had a problem to begin with with matching up the audio to the video, as we recorded along when we were filming, we had recorded over 20 minutes of audio, which we had to listen to and match up perfectly with the video we wanted to use, which gave us great difficulty in the beginning but all of our audio is now matched up with the video.
We struggled with the animation of our titling as we didn't know what looked best in order to fit in with the conventions of a thriller title sequence, but with our research done we began to animate our title sequence and are now happy with our results.

With the pace and filters of our editing, we decided to speed up the frequency of shots to try show the flashback and show the parallel editing of the flashback and our interrogation scenes.

We used a black and white filter and sped up the pace of these flashback shots, to show them in quick 'bursts' making it seem like his thoughts or his memory of the night.






The lighting is another technology we learnt about in more detail,  In order to light the flashback sequence in such a way to actually show the character without making it blatantly obvious that we were lighting the character, although in some of the shots we used it looks obvious in the fact we were lighting the character, it creates a disorienting effect to the audience. We learnt about the process on how to light a character, showing them in dim effect, subtle effects, bright lighting to show facial expression, which in the interrogation scene, the scene was brightly lit.