EVALUATION 4

4) How did you integrate technologies?
- software, hardware, online
- in this project

     During this project, I've integrated many technologies into my film opening. First the software that I used; for video editing I mainly used Adobe Premiere Pro which was the most effective video editor an average window user could use. I used it for essentially almost everything post production related e.g. editing, colour grading, sound effect and music inputting. Talking about sound effects and music I ensure to use non copyright music and make use of all sources I could find.

     For the music, I've used several sites but non as a wide variety as the Youtube Audio Library https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music, music can be used freely but some even though they were free they require a credit to be put into the description of the video which was what I had to do in the final film opening. For sound effects, I used a website I've always used called http://www.freesfx.co.uk/. Reason I used this website because I've used this website in the past and they have got a wide range of sound effects to choose from.

If freeSFX does not have the sound effect I am looking for, I will look through YouTube for what people has uploaded. One of the sound effect that I ended up using was a major one which was the killer's footstep sound. I really wanted a solid thud sound. Looked through couple pages of the YouTube site until I came across this very dramatic footstep sound that I was looking for. As soon as heard it I downloaded it right away. All of these sound effects are convenient to use as they all use the same format of .mp3.

     The way I would change a YouTube video to an mp3 file was really easy; it was simply through a site called http://www.youtube-mp3.org/. If the website server was down, I have a back up website called http://www.clipconverter.cc/. They are both really useful.

     In some scenes, the sound doesn't seem to fit it.E.g. the scene where the killer is walking towards the victim. I changed it up a bit by putting the sound effect in the program "Audacity". In some occasion I would minimise the echo and some of them I would increase the amount of echoes in order to make it sound more atmospheric.

     The website that I used in order to find the right font for the credit sequence, I used a website that I have used many times before due to it containing more than 10, 000 community made fonts to choose from. It's called http://www.dafont.com/

     When dealing with text I used a program called PAINT.NET; it's similar to Adobe Photoshop but more simple and you can still install extra plugins for it. Every single one of the credit sequence are text in PAINT.NET saved as a .png so that the background are clear so that I don't need to mask it again in Premiere. Since it was a picture, in my opinion it's a much better method of key framing instead of using the text tool.

      

     Now on to the hardware,  The laptop I used was the ASUS which was pretty decent for editing since this laptop was built for gaming. Using it for editing has one disadvantage is that I cannot bring it anywhere without a plug because Adobe Premiere drains the battery very rapidly.

      Camera used during this project was the Canon 760D, the built quality is in the middle of not too good and not too bad. It handles very smoothly since I've been using it for a year already. The downside to this camera however is that I cannot shoot in 60fps full HD 1080p. This limits us on the eye shot where we could have a more clearer shot of the eye but the camera only shoot 720p 60fps. In ter of noice performance (grain), it actually worked out ok; the entire film did not look like a grain mess except the eye shot of course. All in all, it's a good camera to be working with.

      Throughout the filming, I've used a total of 4 lenses for the camera which were 18-135mm which was the ordinary lens that came with the camera, 50mm F1.8 for more close upshot like the clock shot, the 55-250mm EF for the shot we anticipated for which was the eye shot. and lastly the 24mm fixed for a wide shot when Richy was banging on the door.

18-135mm

50mm

55-250mm

24mm

     Once we were filming the eye shot scene, we encountered one problem of the scene being too dark, I bumped up the ISO up to 1600 but it looks too grainy; at first we tried using the iPhone built in flash light but it looked too bright. Luckily that I've brought my own personal reflector which produce just enough light for it to look natural.

     Also, when we got the feedback from the 2 classes, we got a feedback from some people including our teacher suggesting that the interrogating room does not look like an interrogating room, Richy and I went back and have a think about what we could do. We thought we were going to reshoot the entire interrogation room again but that would take up too much time. This meant that we had to do something else. Richy came up with an idea which was since our classroom WAS the interrogation room, we will use the door entrance to our advantage by sticking a sign saying interrogation room. On the day I do not have my camera with me and we just want to get it out of the way, Toy who played as the actor was fortunate to be in the room with us doing his blog while other people were off filming. So Richy stuck the sign on the door and we reshoot the entrance shot. Once finish I will then upload the video file on my iPhone straight onto Google Drive then downloaded then onto my film opening sequence.

This was the only shot to use an iPhone as the camera

     When it comes to transfering the video files which were in the format of .mp4, I would use an SD card reader due to the fact that my PC do not have an SD card reader then moved the files into my external hard drive.

     The way I edited this project was through Adobe Premiere Pro, I've been using this software for nearly a year so I was pretty confident using it.