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

Tripod

I have learnt that the tripod was essential in ensuring our thriller opening looked as professional as possible. It allowed the footage to be steady at all times, we didn’t have to worry about holding the camera.

The tripod allowed us to place the camera at different heights so we had a variety of shots. However, the tripods we received were quite small so in the future it would be better to have a tripod with longer legs.

Canon E0S 650D DSLR

I learnt that this camera was vital for our thriller opening as this camera had 18.0 megapixels which provided a clear and crisp image making our thriller opening look very professional in contrast to our preliminary task where we used the flip camera which had much less megapixels.

The use of the lens ensured we could use the ‘zoom’ feature and establish a variety of shots such as extreme close ups of my eye at the end of our thriller opening.

Although the Canon camera had far better quality, all of its data was stored on a very small SD card so we have to be careful we didn’t lose it as all our footage would have gone. Initially, we had a problem with the camera as it struggled to focus and took time to focus which meant the picture looked fuzzy but we managed to get rid of this as we turned on the stabilizer.

Overall, I learnt how to take videos and photo’s on the Canon camera and ultimately learnt how important camera’s are as they determine what your thriller opening looks like and exactly what the quality is like.

Flip CameraFrom using the flip camera in our preliminary task I learnt that It’s extremely lightweight and easy to use as there are only a few buttons on the device which include a ‘record’ ‘play’ and ‘delete’. This camera is not bad at all considering it’s hundreds of pounds cheaper than the Canon DSLR camera.

The camera stores its data in a built in USB which means there is no chance we can lose our footage, this is not the case however for the Canon camera as the SD card is removable.

On the other hand the quality doesn’t match to the 18 megapixels from the Canon camera and the screen is only 1.5 inches and doesn’t have a touch screen feature like the Canon camera does.

Overall, I learnt that this camera is very easy to use and you can plug it in a USB port to view your footage but it’s not a suitable camera for our thriller opening as from research I have found that most flip camera’s have less than 10 megapixels.

Camera Lights• I realized how important lighting really is as it can

help to create an atmosphere and depict moods in scenes of a film. Lighting can also be used to highlight the importance of a character.

• For example, you could use a back light only for a mysterious character so the lighting is not too bright and doesn’t make his face very clear to an audience

DV Camera

This camera helped to learn exactly how to record with a handheld camera and how to insert and remove DV tapes

I also learnt how to upload footage from DV camera’s onto computers so we can edit the footage.

The DV had a useful advantage which was that the screen could be tilted all the way round so the person being recorded can see themselves, this can come in handy for different types of shots.

Although this camera wasn’t as advanced as the Canon DSLR, the quality of video and sound from the DV camera was still very good.

iMac

I have learnt so much from using the iMac’s during media lessons. I have become almost professional in using programs such as iMovie, Gargeband and Blogger.

I also noticed how advanced these computers were in comparison to the standard windows computers in the school. They take less time to boot up and are faster in opening programs such as iMovie. Safari on the Macs was definitely a faster web browser than Internet Explorer on the Windows computers.

Overall, I have learnt how crucial a computer is in creating your thriller opening as it determines what software you can access and how quickly you can make your media product.

iMovie• I used iMovie in the editing process for our thriller opening.• I have learnt how to…- Import and export a video- How to trim clips and adjust the speed of a clip (slow motion)- Insert music, text and transitions into a video clip

Positives?- It was a very reliable programme as it saved my work automatically, I

didn’t have to worry about saving my work every few minutes.

Negatives?- When editing on iMovie, I had to use the same iMac as it only saved

on the one iMac you were using. This meant I couldn’t edit if someone else was using that particular iMac.

GarageBand• From using GarageBand, I learnt how to

record and save a podcast. I made a podcast for evaluation question and thriller plot ideas as I could speak straight to the Mac because of the in-built microphone.

• I also learnt that Garage Band could be used to create music for a thriller opening with different effects.

Blogger• I used Blogger to upload posts. I learnt how to create an account for

Blogger and how publish or draft posts. I learnt how to add images, videos, links and presentations such as PowerPoint and Prezi using SlideShare. I also learnt how to change the font style, size and whether to add colour or highlight text.

• I also used Blogger to look at older blogs so I could see how they presented information and gain incentive from that.

• This program helped me to display all my media coursework in a visually appealing way as I was able to post power points courtesy of slide share and insert images and videos from YouTube. The different fonts and colours provided variety.

• Overall, Blogger helped us to present the making of our thriller opening in a more appealing way rather than reading blocks of text. It was also easily accessible via Google.

Art of the title

• I used Art of the title to watch a variety of title sequences to see the opening 2 minutes of a selection of films.

• This taught me how different films contain different titles, audio and visuals relevant to their genre.

YouTube

• As soon as we started our media coursework, I created a YouTube account and I learnt how to upload videos such as our preliminary task, lighting task and final thriller opening. Youtube allowed me to edit videos also with the annotation tool.

SlideShare & IMDbSlideShare allowed me to upload a PowerPoint file online so it could be accessed on my blog. I did this by copying the embed link and pasting it onto Blogger.

I used IMDb to learn more information about specific thriller films such as the cast, box office figures and film ratings.

I learnt what thriller films are most popular and what makes them successful or even a failure.