Evaluation part 4 - Tom Whitehead

To help create our film and our blog we used a wide variety of software and hardware. By using this new technology and even some technology we are already familiar with we we're able to hone our skills, improve or even learn new skills. I think that the main piece of Hardware that has allowed us to develop creatively was quite simply, our camera. It is the main piece of equipment we used and was by far the main piece of equipment we used and practised different techniques with.

The main piece of software we used was Final cut pro. This is the software we used on our Mac based systems at college to edit and produce "Mind Over Matter." The software was very helpful as it had a simple layout for adjusting and importing sounds, video footage and text in order to create our finished film. We we're also able to make use of fades and other effects to bridge one piece of footage to the next and wipe out any sudden shot changes or what we called "bad cutting" In order to create clean and effective looking professional cuts we we're able to adjust the type of fade we used from one piece of footage to the next, the colour (if needed) and also the time it took to play the fade.

Final Cut Pro

The final cut windows simplicity shows through on the picture to the right. A list of all our recorded audio and video footage that we are able to drag and drop from the system memory into our film edit (bottom) is located at the top left of the screen, being able to drag and drop these clips heightened the creativity in our group and created a more accessible user interface. The middle clip window is showing the clip we have highlighted in the list of recordings and the right video clip is a preview is the actual finished film.

We spent a long time experimenting with different lighting effects with some stage lights and our camera in a dark room in order to find out what effects or colours work best in the conditions and what come across best on the camera. In order to further allow different lighting effects through our camera we we're able to alter the contrast, exposure or focus of the camera. These in turn either allowed us to film in dark conditions or lighter conditions. Due to the main body of our film taking place in Sid's mind (which is filmed in a blacked out dance studio) we needed to be sure that there was enough light on the shot so the camera could pick up what was happening and focus on the actor so that we can see what is actually happening in the film without lighting up the ceiling or background to show the curtains or the bright ceiling.

We had various problems during the testing of lighting effects due to faulty or short lived batteries in the stage lights and also the candle that was in shot didn't always focus in the shot due to over or underexposure, however after experimenting with exposure levels we were able to overcome this issue.

After playing around with different lighting effects and different lights we settled on shining a small light that had an adjustable brightness level on the white ceiling above where we we're filming. This allowed the light to reflect back down into shot lighting up the actor satisfyingly without lighting up any of the unwanted background.
We uploaded a video of our lighting experiments which can be found on our blog or alternatively, here

In order to record the voiceovers for our film we set up a AT4033 microphone plugged into an m-box plugged into an Apple Mac and used a recording software package called Pro Tools which I have learnt to use in a separate A level I am attending called Music Technology. Pro Tools allowed us to record the voices, split each line of words up and order them as we please, add effects such as reverb, echo or an equalizer and then bounce the voices down as an audio file which can then be incorporated into Final Cut to be edited into the film. We had little to no issues with this process as we found Pro Tools to be a very reliable and effective sound production software. I used a similar software package called Logic Pro to produce, mix and edit our radio trailer. With this software I was able to introduce plug ins such as delay, echo, EQ, reverb or compression in order to create the desired sound.

To round off our project we also created a blog on blogger or blogspot. This is an internet website that allows us to post all our work we have done throughout the project online and allow us to edit our posts, personalise our blog and also post as an individual on the blog so that we can easily see who has done what. This was helpful for us as we were able to upload completed work anywhere in the world as long as we had access to an internet connection.