Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies form the process of constructing this product?

Question 6

Canon 550D

Nikon D3100

Although we had the option of shooting on the cameras provided by the school (Canon Legria), we opted to use our DSLR's instead. These were a Canon 550D and a Nikon 3100. As these were both personal camera's we already had an extensive knowledge of how to operate them and what they were capable of in terms of both still shots and video. We chose to use these camera's because they offered us the opportunity to shoot in 25 or 24 frames per second (fps) and also allowed the choice of interlaced or progressive video. In addition to this the DSLR's offered 1080p which meant that we could record in the highest definition, allowing crisp picture, clarity and sharp details. I used my DSLR to take the still shots for the location planning, it gave us a good idea of what it would look like when filmed from the camera and also gave us a good sense of the sort of camera angles that would work best. I have embedded some examples of the shots below.

Shot of the interior of the car park, displaying some non-ambient noir lighting.

Shot of Anglia Square car park, a location used in the thriller.

One of the best aspects about using the cameras was the fact that they had manual lenses, this meant that we were able to focus the camera manually and get some great shots that included a focus pull. Switching focus in shots helps to give the footage an intriguing look and can also help to offer a larger depth of field. We did use the focus pull in the final cut of Transit several times. I have embedded the final cut, an example of a focus pull can be seen at 1:20 to 1:24 and I think it helps to add tension as the audience are placed within the action. Researching films and looking at examples of different camera shots has really helped me to become better at being able to portray emotion through film and deciding which shots convey the mood that I want to get across to the audience. An example of where a shot is used to convey mood or emotion can be seen with the extreme close up shot of the boot in the elevator door (2:00) because it makes the mise en scene feel claustrophobic and intimate.

We encountered a problem when editing the footage in post production, one of us had shot at 24fps and one of us had shot at 25fps. Fortunately Premiere Pro was able to create a sequence that allowed the footage to flow smoothly without any lagging and the audio matched up nicely too.


I also already had a tripod due to using it for my photography so this gave me some prior knowledge on how to set it up/use it effectively. The Tripod that we used was a Vista Voyager. It is reasonably tall so it meant we could use it for a wide range of shots, including low angles and close ups. The benefits of using a tripod were the stability of the footage, there is no wobbly footage so it does not take away from the overall image. The tripod also came in handy when using panning shots as it gave a smooth arc which allowed us to follow a subject efficiently. A good example of this is one of the opening shots of the van driving of towards the car park (0:37 - 0:42).

Brightness & contrast levels allowed me to make some scenes clearer to the audience.

RGB curves, an effect I used to change the colour grade of the footage.

Fast colour correction, another effect I used to change the appearance of the raw footage.

The only previous experience I had with Premiere Pro was editing the preliminary task. This gave me a very minimal amount of knowledge, I knew how to import clips, set in and out point and put them together in the timeline. I also had briefly touched up on video transitions such as fade to black and cross dissolve. For the thriller I decided to try and learn more in depth about what the software could offer and how I could make the footage look as best as it possibly could by using effects and colour correction/grading. An important part of the editing was making the footage look gritty and dirty as to fit in with the genre and generic conventions that come along with it, I achieved this by using RGB curves and the fast colour correction tools/effects. Luckily the layout and effects were very similar to Photoshop, which I have had quite a lot of experience with and so I didn't have to learn too many new things in order to be able to create the sort of effects that I had envisioned. Another important effect that I harnessed was the ability to change the contrast and brightness of a bit of footage, this was hugely helpful in the scenes that were a bit too dim and also in sharpening up the footage to make it appear darker/grittier in some areas.

One thing that I have learned from the process of editing my film was how to edit and change the audio/sounds because this was not something that I paid a lot of attention to when I was editing the preliminary task. However with the thriller a soundtrack was needed, so I had to learn how to import this into the project in Premiere and how to edit bits of it so that it would fit in with what was being shown on screen. A good example of this is during the opening scenes when the picture cuts away at the same time as the music plays a particular sound/note (0:18 - 0:22). Alongside the non-diegetic sound of the soundtrack, I also had to think about the diegetic sounds that we had recorded with the cameras when filming. In some places I had to lower the sound levels because the wind was causing the audio to clip (the sound recorded would not be able to be used) and thus it was taking away from the overall quality, but due to playing with the volume and levels I was able to sort this out. In other places I wanted to make the diegetic noise louder because it was either necessary for the plot or it strengthened the mise en scene, this applied particularly to the sound of the engine being started (0:25 - 0:28). Unfortunately the sound still was not clear enough, so I used Freesound to find an audio clip of a van engine starting and simply deleted the original audio and replaced it with the clip from Freesound. This gave the scene a greater and more intense mood.

During the post-production/editing stage I also wanted to learn a bit more about the transitions, both audio and video. I utilised the video transitions at the beginning and end but I didn't want to use any during the film because I felt it would take away from the action and disrupt the flow; thus I used primarily hard cuts to keep the action raw. In addition to this I also used audio transitions, something that I had not used before. I used the constant power crossfade to dampen out the diegetic sound at the end of some clips when cutting away to others so that the scenes merged together much more smoothly and the change in ambient sound/atmosphere was not so noticeable. I also used the same effect at the end of the film so that the soundtrack would gradually get quieter as the picture faded to black (2:07). I felt that this would help to get across the idea that this was the opening to a feature length; therefore the music fading out would help to transition into the next scene. Finally I looked at adding in titles, although I had already touched upon titles in the preliminary task I felt that there was more to be learned. The opening title (Electric Productions) slowly zooms/increases in size, I achieved this by creating keyframes and then enlarging the font size so that it would gradually zoom (0:10 - 0:12).

The ability to embed videos from YouTube has been a great benefit because it has allowed me to analyse certain clips from films and use videos for case studies and research. YouTube also allows access to thousands of openings to thriller films; thus it helped to be able to watch these because it gave me knowledge on how to captivate the audience within the first 2 minutes. YouTube is awash with short films made by independent channels, it is interesting to watch the short films made by these people because it shows what is realistic with a small budget and a small time frame. Sometimes the best films are the independent shorts as they are much more artistic. For example, I was able to find the opening to "Kill Bill Vol. 1" and analyse the certain aspects of the mise en scene with ease. I have embedded the video below.

Viewer ratings for "Drive"

Another online source that has greatly helped me out for things like case studies and thriller research is the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). It came in handy for finding out initial information such as director, producer, year, genre, actors, ratings/reviews and other important information. One thing that I learnt that came to be very useful was the ability to view the demographic that rated a film the highest. For example, the film "Drive" was rated an average of 8.4 by males under the age of 18, perhaps suggesting that this was the target demographic. This helped me out because I was able to view which films our target audience rated the highest and then see why they rated said films highly.

Before starting this project and the media studies course, I had never used Prezi. However this changed as I quickly got to grips with using Prezi and created a mind map style case study for "The Killing". I found Prezi to be useful because it allowed me to use several different media formats such as pictures and videos, together on one resource. To begin with it was difficult to use because the instructions on how to do basic things (such as animating/guiding the audience around the Prezi) were not clear and the minimalist design meant that I had to play around with it for a while in order to be able to create a aesthetically pleasing presentation. Here is a link to the Prezi I made for "The Killing" - http://hamishmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/notes-on-killing-trailer-for-season-1.html

For many of my case studies I started using PowerPoint to analyse screenshots as it gave me an effective and familiar way of laying out the pictures and then annotating them with ease. I did not learn any new skills when using PowerPoint because I had been using it for so many years, therefore the basic skills were already there. To get the PowerPoints onto the blog I used a website called Scribd, this allowed me to embed my presentation. It was interesting learning how to use the website and its various features, especially the ability to view other peoples work/presentations on a wide range of subjects but most importantly film. I have embedded a PowerPoint on "Essex Boys" by embedding it from Scribd.

Essex Boys Screenshot Analysis by hamishmedia

Teacher comment on one of my posts.

I had used a blog (Tumblr) previously during work experience to keep a record of what I had been doing, so I had a basic understanding of how to create posts and use the html to embed things such as videos. I have also been using Tumblr to keep track of the work that I have been doing or my Silver Arts Award with the BFI Film Academy. Blogger is different to Tumblr though so it took a little time to work out how to change the theme of the blog and create labels etc. I have thoroughly enjoyed using a blog to do my coursework on because it allows a lot more freedom with the use of things like Prezi, Scribd and embedding videos, which I wouldn't otherwise be able to do. Having the access to this technology has made things a lot easier; using pictures and clips to illustrate and demonstrate my points has strengthened my posts. The thing that I have found most useful about using a blog is the immediate feedback/comments that I can receive from my teachers; thus I don't have to be in school to be able to communicate with them if I have a problem or want a bit of work marked. This also allows me to quickly make changes to improve my posts.

HTC maps, I found this useful on my phone in order to find directions
to locations and give directions to others.

An important aspect of the shooting/production days was that we all knew where to go and when to be there. To make this process easy we used mobile phones in order to be able to contact one another if any problems arose, such as getting lost or running late. This came in handy one particular time because one of our actors wasn't completely sure on how to get to one of the filming locations; thus I was able to give directions making the process a lot easier.



To find the soundtrack for our thriller we initially used YouTube to find music that fitted with our footage and built tension. After finding soundtracks that gave the desired effect I went on to Audio Network and used the various searching filters to find 4 possible tracks. I looked at the mixes of the soundtracks to see if there were any stripped down instrumentals that ramped up the tension and helped to set the pace of our film. When I had finalised the soundtracks I downloaded them to my iTunes and then opened them up in Premiere via the media browser, thus allowing my to easily drag and drop the soundtrack into the sequence. I also used a sting towards the ending (1:53 - 2:09), which I found on Freesound. I used the same process as when retrieving the soundtracks and then put it onto the timeline in Premiere, however I used a crossfade to subtly introduce the sound so that it did not disrupt the miss en scene. I have embedded a YouTube clip of one of the soundtracks that inspired our decision, it is 'Tick Of The Clock' by the Chromatics. Here is the link to the soundtrack that we used, from Audio Network - http://www.audionetwork.com/production-music/for-whom-the-bell-tolls-3_61166.aspx

I used an SD card to store the recorded footage on, there were many benefits to this because they enabled a large capacity of storage and a small size; making portability less of an issue. I only encountered one problem when using the SD card, half way through filming my camera wouldn't record anything longer than 5 seconds of footage even though I had space on the card. This was because I hadn't formatted the card after it had been completely filled, therefore it wasn't able to keep up with the footage being shot. I formatted the card in the camera and the problem was solved.

Storyboard during the early planning for Transit.

To be able to show some of the written work that I had done as planning I used a scanner to turn the hard copy into a digital copy. This came in handy when I had to upload storyboards. An example is to the right.