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

In the process of constructing our production, I have learnt a number of new skills, the main one being how to use Adobe Premier to create a film, though in the process I have also developed my skills regarding the use of Tumblr, especially to publish photos, links and learning how to embed, learnt how to use Youtube - which I had previously only used to watch videos rather than publish them, and learnt how to use Scribd, Slideshare and Prezi. Furthermore, my depth of knowledge has increased on how to use the camera, lighting and sound equipment.

Prior to this task, I had no experience with using Adobe Premier Pro, however during the process I learnt how to add non-diegetic sound, fade it in and out and layer it, speed up and render the footage, add titles and transitions, use the garbage matte effect and finally export the film once it was finished. These techniques can be observed from the screen shot to the left. I think the

aspects which were most effective were the titles which we overlaid, as they were consistent in font and size throughout (other than the final title ‘Accidental’, which we identified as being unique and memorable by using a contrasting font), the overlapping of sound between the non-diegetic sound of the track ‘Engagement’ and the false though diegetic sound of the car engine, and the application of a garbage matte. Furthermore, I think one of the shot transitions worked effectively, whereupon we used it to disguise a slight jolt when merging two fridge shots together (as you can see from the screen shot on the left), though I don’t think it worked so well when using it in conjunction with a zoom out from a close up of the fridge magnets, since this is not such a common transition and made our title sequence look slightly more amateur. However, our alteration of the speed was not so successful – we were forced to increase the speed in order to cut the length of the footage down from 3.50 minutes to 2.20, though this has had consequences regarding how realistic the film looks, as it clearly looks as though it has been sped up to an unrealistic speed. The screenshots above show how the sound was altered. Furthermore, the point where the main character is applying lipstick was split into two clips with a small section removed to cut down on time, however when we sped up the sequence the speed is slightly faster in one section than the other, resulting in a lack of

consistency. Also, our limited knowledge on the movement of titles meant we were forced to change our initial plans on how to present some titles (such as creating the illusion that milk was being poured in the shape of a title) and instead our titles were presented in either a much simpler straight transformation, a still, or were incorporated them into the film – largely through the use of post-it notes. As mentioned above, throughout the course of the year I have learnt how to use the camera, sound and lighting equipment effectively, though for our main task the knowledge of how to use a camera and tripod was most beneficial, as we did not use the sound equipment (since we relied on sounds provided by Youtube and Adobe Audition) nor the lighting equipment (since we made use of the appropriate natural lighting). In our preliminary task, we failed to use a wide variety of camera angles which had effects on our main task as we were not experienced with using transitions such as ‘Crash Zoom’, meaning many of our shots were out of focus, and jolty. However, after reshooting these scenes we improved this, greatly losing the number of jumpy and out-of-focus transitions. Furthermore, in our initial shoot we failed to use the tripod sufficiently (due to wanting to track the main character (which we did not think was possible whilst using the tripod) or positioning the camera in positions unavailable when the tripod was attached), though this meant the majority of our shots were shaky. However, after identifying this we re-shot these scenes by improvising, for example, when tracking the central character when walking outside, we used a convertible car and positioned the camera and tripod inside, meaning the car could slowly follow the character and the camera would remain still. I think this worked effectively, and was a vast improvement from our first attempt, though there are still a few occasions where sudden movements occur. However, I think the most technical skill we learnt was how to use an eight-point garbage matte to cut out part of the top layer track, in order for the illusion to be created that the car was pulling the title ‘Accidental’ along behind it. I found this particularly difficult as it required accurate precision in order for the entire shot to be covered, to ensure that the garbage matte was not exposed at any point. The screen shot below illustrates this.