Technologies

Technologies used:

  • Final Cut Pro
  • Motion
  • HD Cannon Cameras
  • Dido Lighting
  • Tripod
  • Garageband
  • Photoshop
  • iPhone 5 with Time Lapse capabilities
  • Social Media sites
  • Blogger

Blogger

The key role of blogger during this production was for communication. I was able to share thoughts and ideas with my group in order to come up with solid and collective ideas. 

It also allowed me to draft and explore different aspects of the title sequence. For example looking into production titles, and being able to create multiple drafts of work depending on feedback.

Final Cut Pro

I used Final Cut Pro to edit the product. After importing the RAW files into FCP, I was able to edit, trim and manipulate our clips, and stitch them into an appropriate order. This software was easy to use, and was undoubtedly the most important software to use during production. I used the 'blur' tool to change the aperture of some scenes so that they had better depth. A problem with this technique is that it was very time consuming, and therefore did not get transferred across into the final version. 

Dido Lighting

We decided to use these lights during the indoor scenes as we had limited natural and indoor lighting. These lights were useful as they made the subjects of the clips more visible. One problem we had with the lights was the intensity. We found that even on a dim setting, the lighting created large unnatural shadows which distracted from the content. To avoid this, we pointed the lights upwards so that nothing directly pointed into the scene, stopping the large shadows.

Encountering a problem with technologies

Our aim was to create a time lapse of our main character sitting down as it grew dark however during this filming, our footage was interrupted. This meant that the clip would have to have been cut up, and our time lapse would not run smoothly.

Resolving: iPhone 5 with Time Lapse

Not wishing to re-film the 30 minute piece, I took innovative and used the time lapse effect on my phone to take shots of the city landscape. I captured passing traffic, changing lights and public commute that could later be edited into the disrupted clip. This meant that our previously disturbed clip could be edited more smoothly and the range of clips could make our production more diverse.