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

Throughout the process of constructing our film opening I learnt a lot about technologies such as Final Cut Pro and Colour, as well as the cameras themselves. For example, with the Canon EOS 550D cameras I learnt that in order to achieve an extreme-close-up you use the 75mm and for a wide a 35mm is required – the middle/mid-shot being 55mm. In this way being able to use trial and error to achieve the perfect wide shot (etc.) was the easiest way to ensure that the right lens was being used. Similarly, discovering Final Cut Pro seemed like a daunting task however, once we learnt the basic tools such as the ‘Razor Tool’ for a straight cut, is was easier to use the software. It took a while to be able to understand the software since there was so many tools on it which appeared very confusing. 

In order to do many things such as the writing appearing on-screen in a typewriter fashion, we had to google how to do this. Often, watching videos on how to use Final Cut Pro helped quite a lot.  We also wanted to adjust the sound levels of the music throughout the opening to imply- since the music was diegetic -that the music would get louder when the shot was closer to the laptop where the music was coming from. This took a while to get right and make sure that we adjusted the sound levels with slight fades between the different levels to make sure that the music was not jarring when it changed volume. Surprisingly, as a group we managed to work out how to complete this on Final Cut Pro, we realised that all we needed to do was clip on the audio and adjust it in the viewer.

The Colour software was actually fairly easy to use, what caused the most problems was actually transferring it back to Final Cut Pro since we did not understand that we had to ‘render’ the whole completed sequence in order to send it back to Final Cut Pro since the files could not be read properly. However, the colour software itself was easy, as I described it, ‘it’s a bit like Instagram filters’, despite the appearance of the software looking complicated, it was fairly easy to use because if you moved one of the buttons you could see how it would affect the actual picture.