Evaluation | Technology
Full Script in Description
During the process of making the project, mainly editing but recording and planning as well, we had had to use many new technologies. Using the internet to find tutorials we were able to teach ourselves how to use these various pieces of software and we utilised the skills gained to create our final piece.
When planning we used the internet calling software Skype. Because we live far away from each other and don't have enough media studies lessons to finish off our planning we needed a way to work outside of school. Skype lets you call people for free from anywhere in the world so we could talk through our project without being pressed for time. We also used Skype's inbuilt screen sharing software. This let one of us see the other's computer screen on their own. We used this to draw out the parts of the film we were talking about on photoshop to give the other a clear mental picture of what the film should look like. This made it easier to do the storyboard later on by hand.
Once we had found an appropriate location we used our phones to film us talking about how we could utilise this location and took pictures of the place. This also helped us in the storyboarding stage because we could perfectly recall what the place looked like and how we planned to use it by watching the video.
We used internet tutorials from YouTube by "Jay Yao" and "Tabasco ZA" to learn about how to use the camera that we had been given, a Cannon 600D. We learnt about aperture, ISO and shutter speed, aperture being how open the lens is letting more or less light into the camera, ISO being the sensitivity of the image sensor and the shutter speed which effects how long or short the shutter is open. The video also talked about how to focus the camera and how to achieve depth of field the effect of having one point in focus while throwing the rest of the image out of focus this is used to draw attention to specific parts of the image. Jay Yao's video also showed us the Cannon 600D's specific focus zoom function. This is a button that allows us to briefly zoom in on an image and lets us check it's n focus in the camera's small viewfinder. Tabasco ZA's video explained how to utilise lighting to certain effects such as partially obscuring the face this technique is known as chiscsuro lighting; which is a convention of film noirs. Being able to see how all types of lighting worked on screen helped us pick lighting for our preffered tone. We went with low key lighting to give a mysterious and dangerous tone to the film.
Once we watched the shots back in VLC media we renamed depending on what the clip was, for instance 'cigerette close up', and whether we should use it or not, 'cigerette close up good' as opposed to 'cigerette close up bad'. Sortig the clips in this way made the editing faster later on as it was easy to locate the clips we needed. VLC media player also let us spin round the walking clips that we shot upside down so we could watch them properly.
The editing software we mainly used was Adobe Premiere Pro cs6. This let us use multiple audio and video tracks as well as apply basic effects like turn clips black and white and spin round the walking footage. We used Abode's online instruction manual constantly throughout the editing process the find out how to do the effects we wanted. This was helpful, step-by-step instructions on how to achieve the end results you had in mind.
The audio, once imported, had a loud and annoying background hiss that brought attention away from our film. To stop this we put our audio clips into audacity, a free audio editing software. We then selected moments of silence in our audio and created a 'silent noise profile'. Once we applied this profile to our sound effects and dialogue the background fuzz was taken away and we were left with clear audio.
The music we used is royalty free jazz music from incompetech. Thewebsite lets you search through thousands of songs with no copyright which meant we were legally allowed to use this music for any purpose we wanted. We found our music by selecting moods from the box like 'mysterous' and 'tense'.
The glitch effect was not achieved in premire pro but another program in the adobe creative suite; after effects. We found a tutorial on glitch effects on youtube from a channel named 'HazaEdits'. As well as going through step by step what we had to do he had a link in the video's description to a free download of all the additional software we needed.
We applied the knowledge of after effects gained from Hazaedits' video to making our titles. One we set up the glitch on screen we changed our title into a 'luma matte'. This made the text see through so the glitch bled through and it looked like the title was glitching. We then followed the hazaedits tutorial again and glitched the screen on top of it.