Question 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Technology has enabled us to construct our thriller opening in a variety of ways. In order for our group to gain the knowledge to construct a thriller opening, research was essential. Watching the opening to several thriller films was key, however to extend upon this, the internet played an important role within technology to construct an opening. For example IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base) allows access to thousands of films and multiple information on them including: movie ratings, cast, reviews, photos and trailers. It is also possible to gain information on demographics, which was useful when researching because we could see the demographic for a certain film which was similar to ours, to identify target audience.

Another way in which the internet vital were websites such as YouTube. YouTube allowed me to embed videos onto my blog, this meant I could embed a trailer or a scene from a particular film when doing a case study. For example I embedded a scene from 'Heavenly Creatures' when doing a case study on the film.

Another final use of the internet was being able to get access to 'blogger'. I had no previous use in using a blog before starting media studies. The advantage of using a blog is that it's electronic, this means that work can be easily monitored and feedback is much easier to keep track of. Once I got the hang of using a blog, i found them much easier and more efficient to use, rather than doing handwritten work.Organization is also much easier than doing work handwritten because there isn't the option to physically loose it and also with the use of labels, work is organized much clearer.

An example of using the manual focus 

When it came to filming our thriller opening, our group decided that we wanted a different feel to the opening. Our group aimed to acquire a cinematic look using two DSLR camera's (Nikon D3100 & Canon 550D) that could record in 1080p HD format. The use of the camera's meant that we could manually focus on specific points, this helped give our footage a more cinematic feel we were looking for.

When it came to editing our final cut, we used iMovie. The initial choice of software was to use Adobe Premier to edit the final product. Unluckily we were unable to use it because it didn't come on the laptop we were working on, so therefore we had to use iMovie. The member of my group I was working with to edit the final product very quickly learnt the basics of using iMovie and easily taught me how to use it as well. The precise trimming function on iMovie was something that was founf to be very useful. This function allowed us to cut and match clips to the millisecond creating a constant fluid motion between shots that do not include transitions.The effect of using this meant that action was not 'jumpy' in any way and had a very smooth flow.

Colour correction and grading setting

To add to this, a setting that i never came across before on video editing software was introduced to me by my editing partner. The setting had the ability to correct the brightness and colours of the footage. This allowed us to enhance shots that weren't visually good and also adjust the colour saturation, giving the mise-en-scene a very gritty feel; a look which we were after. This skill which was introduced to me can now be applied to other future media projects, which I see as coming in very useful.

The effect this setting has before and after