Evaluation Question 5

What technologies did you use in making your film?

Throughout the whole process of our production we had to use several pieces of software and technology in order to complete all the different tasks that we had to do. The different stages, research, planning, filming and editing of the film, all required different forms of technology as each thing had a certain speciality that allowed specific tasks to be performed.

During the Research phase of our production we used several internet sites, such as IMDB, to research the background information of relevant films within our chosen sub-genre to see if there are any links between them, such as plots, characters, settings, that we could incorporate within our film, as well as production and distribution companies that could be used with our film. We also used Youtube to watch openings of films and their trailers again to see if there are any typical conventions within them that we could use to make our film appear a lot more professional. Another piece of technology that we used was a word-processing software that was used to create a questionnaire that we issued to our audience to get an over all view of what they think about the crime thriller sub-genre. By using this software it allowed us to easily create the questionnaire in a structured format which helped make it well presented and more professional. It also allowed us to create many graphs which helped to present the results from our audience research in a clear and concise way which was used to aid our decisions further on in the planning and production phase. By having to present them in a structured way it helped to improve our presentation skills and organisational skills.

The next phase of production was planning our film which involved planning the synopsis of the whole film and script and story board of the opening of our film. To present our synopsis we used a word-processing  software which was ideal as it can be easily used to present documents in a neat manner which meant that it was easily readable and presentable. We did the same for our script which showed exactly what was going to be said and by who, which made sure that when we filmed we didn't make mistakes and were not improvising. We had the option to produce the script on Celtx, yet instead we decided to only use it for our original storyboard which planned out our whole opening using still shots which were accompanied by text explaining why we wanted to use each shot and how it was going to affect the audience. This software was ideal as it allowed for pictures to be inserted with ease without having to rearrange them around the page, which made it much more time efficient and allowed us to perform other tasks at the same time. Using this piece of software improved our knowledge of technology available because before we used it we had never heard of it. 

The penultimate phase of our production was the actual filming of the film which was done with the use of a hand held camcorder which was also used at times with a tripod which helped to create steady shots which made it look more professional. We used a camcorder as it is light and simple to use as well as allowing us to easily transfer the videos from the camera to the computer using a usb cable. As the camera was light we were able to perform some hand held shots without the use of the tripod which made the situation of the murders appear more realistic which would intrigue the audience. We also actively chose the lighting during the scene with Rick crossing off his targets, which was a single filament tube placed beneath Rick, and was chosen as it helped emphasise the true evilness within the character as it was low key lighting and created shadows across his face which connotes that he has certain parts of him that are hidden.

The final phase of our production was the editing phase which was essential in putting all of our clips together and adding sound and special effects to make it more appealing for the audience. For this stage we used iMovie which is a piece of editing software which allowed us to put all of our clips into one place and choose the pieces we want and put them together so it actually looked like a film. This software was easy to use as it allowed for clips to be cropped, silenced, re-arranged and re-coloured which was needed throughout all parts of the editing phase. Due to sound problems during filming we had to use a microphone to voice over our film during the editing part which was easy to do as the software again allowed us to crop the speech and re-position it to exactly dub the film. The software also allowed us to silence the clips so we could insert both the dialogue and appropriate music which was played throughout the whole opening. We were also able to use iMovie to re-colour shots which made the opening shots look like a different time phase as they were previous murders, therefore it helped to portray it easily. We also used a mp3 internet site called Youtube-mp3 which allowed us to convert our music from youtube to an format which was then easily transfered on to iMovie and placed over our filming.