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How did you use digital technology in your production work?

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STAKE OUT

FINAL CUT PRO

+ Final Cut Pro was the program used to edit all of our film. The program was

completely new to me when we started editing, so I learnt along the way, and by the end I even knew shortcuts along will all the aspects of Final Cut. We faced many problems whilst working with this program. The biggest problem was the issue of our files ‘going offline,’ and not being able to reconnect them. Meaning we had to upload the lost files off the camera, and repeat the process. This meant wasting precious time that we could have used for editing or making our soundtrack. Some of the clips had a problem with the sound volume of certain actor’s voices, which couldn’t be resolved by heightening the noise bar. This could have been resolved if we’d used a microphone whilst filming, but one was not available to us. Final Cut Pro has a large amount of effects and transitions that can deeply improve your film if choosing the correct one, this meant we had a lot of choice as to which one suited a certain part of the film better. As we chose to have a black and white film, Final Cut Pro made it very easy in which to create this, the effect was called ‘desaturate.’ For the one flashback scene we have used the effect ‘sepia,’ to represent a change in time period, so it’s obvious it is indeed a flashback. The transitions we used for the clips were called the ‘fade in and fade out dissolve’ and the ‘cross dissolve.’ These were subtle transitions that worked well as we didn’t want really obvious ones. For our flashback scene we made the duration of that transition much longer as we wanted it to be perfectly clear the scene was changing to a flash back. We used a ‘cross fade’ for the music, so there was a subtle ending to the music to start the next scene. As we re-filmed certain scenes, the lighting differed from the rest of the filming we’d done in that scene. This was adjusted by toning down the clips that appeared too bright next to the new clip.

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GARAGEBAND

+ We used GarageBand to create all of our sound effects and music in the film. It was simple and easy to use as I was already familiar with the program, from using it previously in college and at home, mostly as a recording device. It offers a wide range of different effects and sounds, from screams to a creaking door noise effect. The music and sounds were not difficult to find, as we knew the type of sound we wanted, and looked for that directly. We repeated a soundtrack that we made in GarageBand for several different scenes, which is something done in professional film production. We also used it to record the two soliloquies in our film. To make a GarageBand recording or track into an mp3 file was a quick and easy task, done by just exporting the file into an mp3 file, then it can be crossed over and used in Final Cut Pro. The version of GarageBand used to edit our film is the latest version. I used an older version of the program to produce my radio trailer for the film. I thought this was going to be an issue, but it wasn’t as it still offered enough sounds and effects that were required. I recorded my voice using a voice project, then saved it as an mp3 file, which was then added to the soundtrack of my radio trailer. I added the ‘radio effect’ to my voice, which was a huge help with wanting it to sound as realistic as possible.

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PHOTOSHOP

+This was how the image looked before I edited it using Photoshop. I began by adjusting the contrast of the picture, but that wasn’t quite the effect I wanted. I then started to adjust the colour altogether, I began with black and white, and then sepia. I preferred the black and white effect. As the film is about murder and betrayal, I wanted the film poster to represent this by the choice of colour.

+I looked at many film posters, and I decided I definitely wanted to include captions from well known media producers, such as ‘The Gazette’ and ‘Empire’ magazine. Including ratings on your poster makes it seem more realistic, as most film posters do include this aspect. The title of the film ‘Stake Out’ needed to be the biggest aspect of the poster, so I centered it, and used the signature font, ‘cracked,’ so it was recognisable to our film. The tagline represents the character who is the killer in the film. Which immediately makes it obvious of the genre and theme of the film.

I didn’t have to edit any ofthese using Photoshop, as they were already the correct size andcolour etc.

I used a simple squareshape over the centreof my poster, this wasso the writing was clear as the backgroundI’ve used is a busy image. I made the image transparent, so you could still see the background image.

It was difficult decidingwhat colour I should choose for my captionstext, as I didn’t want it to clash or be too tonallysimilar to the background.

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PowerPoint has been a crucial part of my blog work, as it offers a simple and effective way to present a lot of information, in the form of images or text. Slideshare is the website where you can share your PowerPoint

presentations, and embed them onto your blog. Soundcloud was the website used to upload my radio

trailer, and then embed onto my blog.