The student learned about various media technologies through creating an opening sequence for a film. They used Macs with software like Firefox, Safari, Google, Blogger and Camtasia for research, planning, arranging and editing. Final Cut Pro was used for video editing, Motion for titles, Soundtrack Pro for sound editing, and MPEG Streamclip to convert files. They also used a professional JVC camcorder, SDHC memory cards, a video drive and iPhone for production. Overall the technologies provided experience that will be useful for potential media careers.

1. Evaluation: Question 6
What have you learned about technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
Various technologies were used in
creating my opening sequence for ‘Mr.
Palindrome’ and through the use of them,
I feel more confident and independent in
relation to producing media products like
this. Each piece of technology used in the
making of the opening sequence will be
thoroughly explored and explained.
The Apple Macs provided by the college
included all the media software needed
for researching, planning, arranging and
editing.
For researching, Internet browsers such as Firefox and Safari (the latter being my
personal preference) were utilized. The programs allowed us to navigate and scour the
Internet, with the use of the Google search engine, for inspiration for our movie in the
pre-production stage. From this, we were able to create ideas relating to Intertextuality
such as the whole movie being backwards relating to Christopher Nolan’s opening
sequence for ‘Momento’. This was good for the group as a basis for the film was set
and ultimately, it would give us more marks as it covered one of the points for
blogging checklist.
The use of the Internet also allowed us to access Blogger, an online ‘publishing tool
from Google, for sharing text, photos and videos.’ An account for our class was made
and we were assigned a group blog (my group being Group 38). Here, we followed
the previously mentioned blogging
checklist given by my media teacher and
posted research plans, media evaluation and
behind the scenes footage using different
media formats, including video links from
YouTube and Vimeo, actual behind the
scene footage and pictures, Prezis (an online presentation software) and many more.
Blogger helped the group communicate with audiences in order to show the direction
we wanted to follow for ‘Mr. Palindrome’. Furthermore, I was a stranger to the tool,
so it was nice to try something new and now I feel more experienced which is good if
I wanted to pursue a media career.
Camtasia is a piece of technology that my group used to record on screen video. For
example, the typing in the beginning of our film utilised Camtasia and Microsoft
Word. Microsoft Word was used simply just to display the typing process. The
program could have been substituted for Microsoft Powerpoint or even using
Blogger. Moreover, Camtasia was used for my Evaluation Question 1 and 7 where I
did a video blog/commentary. In this example, the screen grab and a video recording
Kris Erice

2. myself (and my group) was recorded together. Various clips and images were
displayed on different areas of the screen at the same time which was very interesting
to me. Furthermore, I put the clip of me commentating into a circle using a ‘Mask’
effect, which made it more appealing and funny.
Final Cut Pro is a video-editing software that I used to edit both the prelim and Mr.
Palindrome. It was very professional (said to cost more than £250 and that most
movie studios use it) and had a very easy-to-learn user interface. This program
required our video drive in order to function and relied on our footage to edit them.
Final Cut Pro let us import our clips in and rearrange and cut them on the timeline, in
order to create our final film product. There are variety of tools, transitions, effects
and preset sounds available in this piece of software and scouring around the Final
Cut Pro’s enormous library was dreading but eventually, we found what we wanted to
make the beautiful final product that we have today. The main effect used was the
‘change speed’ video effect, which allowed us to select the ‘reverse’ option, allowing
us to put our film backwards.
Maria initially discovered this
option after I proposed the
idea for a reversed film. We
had several problems dealing
with the software including
importing sound from
SoundTrack Pro and then
rendering the sound and video
clips, but we just had to deal
with rendering the clips
continuously. The program
also let us add titles, either on a blank screen or on top of the video; the latter was
used in our case. The first time I used Final Cut was during the taster days in City and
Islington College. I was familiar with this piece of software, as I have used similar
products such as iMovie but it was nice to try something that had a lot more variety
for me to explore and now I know what effects or sounds etc. to use in the future.
When we finished with our project, we had to export the file.
The program MPEG Streamclip allowed videos exported from Final Cut Pro to be
converted into a format suitable for the blog (MP4). It was easy to use as we just
dragged and dropped the file we wanted to convert then exported to a preset blog
format which the media department provided. This preset was low in quality but small
in size which is good for simple videos to be uploaded quickly onto the blog.
The studio idents included the premade CandI Media title and the McNolans Film title
which we made using Motion. This program was also simple to use and featured
many different transitions and motions effecting the way a piece of text would move
around the screen or appear/disappear. The use of this program gave our film more of
a professional group and was fun to play around with. I hope to use this program
again in the future as not a lot of time was spent on it.
Kris Erice

3. Another important piece of technology used
for the project is the camera to capture
footage. This is a JVC Pro HD GY-
HM100U, the professional camcorder used.
According to sources on the internet, it is the
‘industry’s first professional handheld model
to record files directly to a solid state media
in the native format of Apple’s Final Cut Pro
editing system’ and is priced over £2000.
Using Mickey’s video tutorial, I learnt how
to manipulate the camera in order for it to
work and to use it the way I wanted to. This
included turning it on, capturing footage,
inserting the memory cards, adjusting the
focus, the zoom and opening the camera lens. Cinematography and technical camera
aspects were needed in order to capture a range of intricate and accurate shots. I felt
that most of what my group envisioned for our film was captured and it was a good
experience learning how to use such a professional and advance piece of technology. I
also learnt what not to do like not to touch the lens … which I tend to do with the
cameras in my home … I am not sure if that applies but I’m now more careful with
equipment like this. Moreover, in the prelim, the framing was awful as we did not
follow the rule of thirds plus my group forgot about the 180 degree rule, so when we
started filming for our latest project, we made sure that we followed this rules closely
in order to achieve a better cinematography.
As previously mentioned, there are two
pieces of technology used for storage
space., the video drive and the SDHC
memory cards. The video drive’s capacity
is over 100gb whilst the three memory
cards given (two for recording video with
the camcorder and one for a still camera)
were at either 8gb or 16gb. I wasn’t really
paying attention to the storage space when
the cards were inserted because we had
enough memory to record all the things we wanted each filming day. Moreover, the
memory cards had stickers over them so it didn’t say on the cards themselves. The
video drive stores the edited clips and sounds we used for our film as well as our
prelim. We had to follow the exact directions for ejecting
the video drive as we lost our first video drive after a
malfunction, but it was fine as there was not any valuable
film on it and so we learnt from that experience. The two
SDHC memory cards had to be both in the camcorder
because if one card was full then there would not be
anywhere else to save the footage we saved. Furthermore, it
just would not work. We also had to pay attention to which
memory card had what in it as we would record something
then it would change memory card, so basically the cards
kept us switching back and forth. That event was only a one-
off though (faulty camera?).
Kris Erice

4. The third SDHC memory card was for the Still
Camera. I cannot quite remember what still
camera it was but it was not as important as the
camcorder or even the memory cards as we did
not use it much. We only used it for the
storyboard for the planning
of our opening sequence. The
other times we took still
images was for blogging and
even then, we preferred using our iPhones to take these
images. The iPhone itself is a technological convergent device
as it has a camera for taking pictures or videos, plays music,
apps, has the internet, texting and calling etc. All three
members of our group had an iPhone and we found it easy to
use for blogging different formats of media. I even had the
application for Blogger on my phone so I could directly blog a
few lines of text and upload an image. As I already knew this, it
was not so exciting but it was time saving.
Soundtrack Pro is a small digital music creator or an audio editing program. The
program synergises well with Final Cut Pro as the latter has an export audio to
Soundtrack option, which shows that they were intended to work together.
Soundtrack Pro enabled me to import the video of our product with the original
recorded sound and then put sound effects on top of it. I muted the original
recording audio and then begun to add foley sounds to where they were needed
(such as footsteps and the trains). Afterwards, I would add more of an
atmospheric ambiance kind of sound. Once that was done, I added effects such as
reverb to give it that spacey,
underwater kind of feel. I was
able to do all this using
Soundtrack Pro’s vast library
of sound clips and it was an
easy program to grasp as the
user interface was similar to
iMovie, Final Cut Pro and Logic
Pro (a Digital Audio
Workstation used for
composing music). Speech was
also reversed in Soundtrack
Pro. This needed my group to
download some talking from
YouTube and then importing it into the program. Effects were added, reversed
and then layered over one another to give the confusing speaking more depth.
The sound was important in the film to help establish our character’s mental
illness and so I was glad we used Soundtrack Pro.
Kris Erice