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

Before I started media studies I had never had the chance to use the equipment that media were offering. Beginning with my groups prelim as a group we was able to use the handheld cameras and the tripods that media had. Some of us had used handheld cameras before ones that we had at home but definitely not the tripods. Our prelim gave us the chance to experience first hand how hard the camera was to actually use, especially the difficulties in the correct shots and angles. Once we had filmed all pieces of our prelim it was time to edit and here we was able to use the software iMovie which was new to the whole group. The iMacs were also new to us and were actually quite fun to use. We had to edit our prelim as good as we possibly could to make a final piece.

On to our main task again we used the handheld cameras and the tripods then once filmed again moved onto the iMacs to use the software iMovie. The iMacs were high quality and were easy to use. Once starting to edit we realised that there were editing techniques that we wanted to use that we couldn’t as it was not on the iMovie software. So as a group we used the old iMovie software which made it possible to slow time parts of our film which was at the end of our media product with the cigar. This was quite hard to understand on this software and was rather hard to use we all much preferred the new iMovie software as the layout was simple and easy to use. The voice over in which my group used was not done on the iMacs as the sound around would be picked up easily instead we went to the music studio instead where no music at all would affect out voice over.

The benefits of the technology that we used meant that the cameras made it easy to catch our film and we had enough time on there so that all our media clips that had gone wrong. The tripods made it easy to film steady shots, if we were holding the cameras then the footage would have been unfocused and shaky. This gave our media product that sense of professional feeling. The cameras picked up sound really good and we was able to stand away from the cameras at a quite far distance and the sound was picked up. The advantage of using the iMovie software made it so much easier to edit as we could cut and move the footage as much as we wanted to. The software was very easy and friendly to use which made it more enjoyable to edit our piece.

On the other hand there was limitations to the technology that we as a group used. The biggest limitation I believe was that when using the cameras and filming we made a lot of mistakes when filming and had to shoot a lot more than expected. This meant that we was using the camera a lot and the limitation was that the battery went extremely quick which was bad for us as if we wanted to film a lot in one day it was not possible. The battery roughly lasted an hour and this meant that we would have to do much more filming on different days. The tripod meant that we could only take shots that were left, right, up and down but the camera did turn but it was tough to keep the camera steady when doing this. The iMacs also had a limitation because if the computer would have crashed then all our work would have been lost and we would have to start editing all over again. As I said before that the cameras picked up sound quite easily this was also a limitation because we filmed outside the wind was picked up so easily and it effected our product as the speech was hard to hear.

If filming my media product again I would say better technology like higher tripods which would make it easier to get better high shots and low shots in the film. Also in our film because we were filming outside in the dark the cameras were poor quality so if filming again technology like lighting would really benefit. As this would made the quality a lot more better and able to see. Also new technology like a camera trolley which would mean smoother camera moving shots so the tracks would make it easier and smoother. Even though we used a dolly shot by making our own equipment it would have been much more effective with tracks.