The Canon HF M306 HD camcorder was the piece of equipment we used when filming our short film. Both Jack and I had used the same camcorder separately for our AS productions, so both had a good understanding of how to use it. There are some features to the the Canon that were very useful during the filming of our short film. For example the optical image stabilisation feature kept each shot noticeably more stable, even when zooming in. The touchscreen was easy to use and clear, which was handy in quickly reviewing footage directly after we'd shot it. Doing this gave us an accurate view of the shot (and the sound) and whether it was sufficient or whether we wanted to do something different. The picture quality as expected when shooting in HD was very good. The picture was crisp and the colours were balanced even in high contrasted environments. Some of this quality was lost however in the editing process, as Jack had to convert the video files from MTS to an MOV format. Although annoying, this was necessary as the original MTS files could not be imported into Final Cut, which was the editing software we'd chosen to use. The final image is not awful by any means, but it is a little grainy in comparison to the original HD footage. Another slightly disappointing feature was the sound quality. The microphone on the camcorder was unable to pick up a clear sound from different distances which sometimes meant the sound was a tad boxy. We managed to use what could have been a disadvantage to our advantage when filming specific scenes, as we used the sound quality as an excuse to really make our actors project their voices. This insured that there would be no problem of not being able to easily hear their lines.
Blogger was a fantastic piece of technology used in pre-production. For those that aren't familiar with Blogger, it's a blog publishing web service that can be used by anyone to blog their work, life, hobbies etc. In my case it worked as the perfect platform to present my work on a step by step basis. With each new piece of research or planning that arose, I could easily document it on my blog. Blogger allows me to upload pictures and video, as well as stream Youtube videos indirectly on the site without following a link to the Youtube page. This allowed me to present my work in different mediums and better express and explain each blog post. When planning anything from camera angles, location research, costumes, story boards etc, I could add pictures of these objects to give a more detailed description of the planning involved. A good example of this is when I was able to upload the concept drawings I'd done of particular shots we wanted and of the characters. The concept drawings were a vital way of visually explaining my ideas to Jack, and I thought it was important to do the same on my blog.
During the construction of my ancillary tasks (the two posters and the film review), both Adobe Photoshop and After Effects were used. When formulating our posters, Photoshop was the program we used to edit the original photograph and add the title and production company name. We imported the original photograph of Ram into Photoshop. We then cut the photo in half and using the magic wand tool, were able to quickly erase nearly all the background behind Ram's face and shoulder's. We then finely erased away the remaining background, leaving just the right side of Ram's face and his shoulder in view. We changed this photo of Ram to black and white, and put this layer on top of a black background. We then simply added in the production company name and the title of the film. All that was left to do after this was was to edit the colour of the eye. To do this we opened our saved picture in Adobe After Effects and changed the hue over the selected area on the eyeball. We did exactly the same with the photograph of Josh and I was extremely pleased with the outcome.
After Effects was the program we used when grafting together our film review. The program allowed us to upload the two images we used in our posters, place them next to each other, and fade them into the background. We then added the title, the picture and the main body of the review over the top of this. After Effects could be detailed and we used to it to create and specific and unique design for our film review.
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