Evaluation 6 - 'What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?'

There are many different programmes and applications form websites that we used to make our media products. Some new to us while others we found familiar, there were those that took time to get used to where a few we got the hang of straight away.

The first new product, at least to me, was the use of a Mac conmputer. Personally I had never used one before and it took a little time to get used to. But it is because of this that we were able to use some of the programmes needed to make our media product as some applications only work on a Mac computer.

We also had access to a sony HD camcorder which was where we filmed all our scenes and takes. There weren't many problems with the use of the camera and it didn't take too long for us to get used to using it. The addition of a dolly helped with a couple of shots. 

The first application we used was blogger which we needed a google account for. It allowed us to make a blog so we can record all our work on the number of different blogs we have. As it is accessable via the internet a browser was also required, i personally used Safari. 

Safari was the main browser that i used to do most of my work and research. I also used mozilla firfox many times but not as often as safari which i used both at school and at home.

We were then introduced to the non-linear editing software Final Cut Express. This is where most of our video editing happpened. All the cuts twe shot with the camera were put on the Mac and then put in Final Cut Express so that we could get the best takes and fit them in the scene to make a flowing sequence called our thriller opening sequence.

- The interface of the Final Cut Express application

We also used the Adobe After Effects application available to us, more specifically Adobe After Effects CS4. In here we did some of the video editing and added a few effects, well the only thing we changed of the video was the brightness and contrast. We mainly used this application to create and work with the text and integrate it with the video.

Garageband is another useful application we used which is only for the Mac. We used this and the enormous number of loops it provided us to create our soundtrack for our opening sequence. It had a wide range of sounds from a great number of instruments as well as other more 'wacky' sounds.

The ever so popular youtube allows you to upload your own videos as well as watch what other people have done. This site was one of the most useful in terms of research into other thriller film openings and allowed us to embed those videos to show exactly which ones we did research.

What work would be complete without the use of Google. Probably the most important factor for our research it allowed us to find many different sites, including art of the title, IMBD and more, for our research.