Question 6: What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

When starting our AS Media project we were given a preliminary task, this was to film a sequence. This task helped us understand and get used to the Sony Handycam and other camera equipment such as tripod. Below features an image of the camera which was used during this filming session.

When undertaking the preliminary task it helped develop understanding of how cameras work. This includes producing a variety shot in a simple sequence without breaking a 180 degree rule. If this rule is broken it is difficult for the sequence to appear flowing, the person for instance would appear to be walking in an opposite direction to how they were originally. This taken some time to get used to and understand so when planning for future productions we made sure that the storyboard didn't break this rule.

The camera was very useful because it still produces high quality footage and because of this it still has a reasonable amount of megabytes meaning it can export easily compared to filming it in HD where is would use high amount of megabytes and taken a much longer period of time to export.

The tripod to the right is very similar to the one we used when filming. The legs on the tripod were adjustable in height meaning we could produce high angle and low angle shots. The lever on the tripod allowed us to produce pans without having shaky outcomes. Overall it was a very useful equipment because it helped develop nice smooth shots in the clips.

To upload our media work we decided to create a blog, we decided to do this because it helped having our work to be organized in a collective format and in one place. www.blogger.com is a very effective because it is an easy type of format to use and allows work to be published easily for people to view. We used this to update our work weekly for example before producing our media project we decided to research into existing products this helped develop knowledge of the conventions our film needed to suit the genre we wanted to film. It also given us a clear view of what different types of films had and whether it the genre would suit our style of work.

Once our preliminary task had completed we decided to begin with our official film, the genre we settled for was a Film Noir, this is a classic 1940's type pf genre which focuses on characters such as detectives and femme fatales. Our storyboard was originally drawn out onto structured paper. However, we wanted a digital copy to be put onto our blog, this meant that we had to scan our work onto a printer and send it to our emails in a JPEG form. This made it easier to transfer over to blogger.com. This scanning feature was also done in other projects for example mind maps which I written out was also scanned into the printer and sent as a JPEG. For the production schedule we decided to use Microsoft Word, this was used because we felt it was an easy software to use where we could produce a table without complication of formatting things, an alternative software that we were going to use is Ed-excel.

When writing our script we decided to use Microsoft Word, this was a simple application which allowed us to structure our work easily. We looked at other online scripts, this was to view how they were structured, this influenced our work because it encouraged us to structure it the same way. We then used online technologies like the hotmail.com to email our script to ourselves, meaning we had a assessable copy on our phones. We then used my iPhone5 to view the script when filming so we didn't have to rely on paper copies which could easily get lost. Also sending the script out allowed the actors to learn their lines more easily as they could just go through it on a day to day basis.