Exam Question 6 DONE

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





In the process of constructing my media product, there were many different technologies that I had to learn how to use in order to create not only my final media product, but also the preliminary task. Some of these technologies, for example the digital camera and tripod were needed for the filming stage, while others, including Final Cut Pro X were needed in order to edit our media product together.

The first technology that I was introduced to, and had to continue using throughout the entire process of constructing the media product was Blogger. This application allowed me to record all of the planning stages during the construction, including learning about and researching the thriller genre, my initial ideas for my final media product, what I was going to and what I needed to do in order to complete the task, what my ideas were, where they had come from and how they were developed and changed in order to produce the final product. Blogger also enabled me to work efficiently with my other group members by making sure that we had the same note from each of our group meetings in which we had discussed the final narrative for our media product, on what days we were going to be filming, what we each needed to bring and who had what role in the construction process.

The camera was one of the most important pieces of technologies used during the construction process, purely due to the fact that without it, my group would have had no way of creating an opening sequence and therefore no footage to edit on Final Cut Pro X. Overall, using the camera itself was something that I found quite easy, but during the preliminary task, I struggled with using both the camera and the tripod together. It took me quite a while to work out how to connect the camera to the top of the tripod in order to keep the camera steady, and how to make sure that the legs of the tripod were at the optimum height to give the audience the best view of the characters and setting. However, after watching the preliminary task back, the footage looked as though the tripod had been used too much, therefore, the movement did not appear smooth and fluid which would have been nicer to watch.

The most important technology needed during the editing stage of the construction process, along with a computer was an application called Final Cut Pro X. We would upload the footage from the digital camera to the computer and then, due to what we had filmed not always appearing in the order that we had wanted it to, I would use Final Cut Pro X to move the footage around, change the order, cut out any excess footage in order to keep the length of the sequence under 2 minutes, and finally add in any sound effects that I required to make the media product more realistic or to help build suspense. An example of this would be the phone conversation that takes place between the antagonist and his girlfriend. The girlfriend was the only character in the shot, but to allow the audience to hear what the antagonist is saying on the other end of the phone, Jake recorded what the character was going to say onto his phone, which was then uploaded onto the computer and separated from the footage so that we could embed it into the sequence.

One of my weaknesses when it came to using the different technologies was adding in the credits for the media product. On my first attempt, the names of the people involved and the roles they played within the process all appeared too close together, therefore, the audience did not have enough time to read what it was saying. After uploading the rough cut of my media product onto YouTube, this was reoccurring criticism that I received from people who had viewed it. By taking this on board, I went back over the sequence and extended the length of time that the credits appeared on screen for and also the distance between each name. It was also quite difficult making sure that the correct sounds complimented what was happening on the screen, and often during my first attempts at adding the sounds in, they would begin too early or too late. Furthermore, I also struggled with making sure the sounds fade out at the correct time in order to prevent them from overlapping with each other or overlapping when one of the characters is talking as would make it much harder for the audience to hear what they are saying.