EVALUATION ACTIVITY 6 : Michael

Throughout the production process we used a variety of different types of technologies.

The equipment we used included: 

- Canon DSL 650 D

- iMac

- Mic 

The softwares we used were: 

- Final Cut Pro 

- Blogger 

Canon DSL 650 D 

Pros:

• 18 Megapixels allowed High Quality visuals.
• Main equipment used to capture opening thriller film.
• Taught beforehand so quite simple to construct, in terms of white balance and which buttons to press to video.
• Lens allowed focus for greater definition .
• The range of lighting it offered was very useful.

Cons: 

• Battery life was an issue for us since we ran out of battery near the end of shooting, however we recharged it quickly.
• The menu on the camera were initially slightly confusing to comprehend, but eventually got used to it.
• The mic on the camera was quite weak, although we used a small boom mic to help us.

Conclusion: 

Using this camera, I learnt a lot of things such as how to hold it in a tripod, enhance lighting, white balance and filming with it in general. The process of learning how to use it was very interesting. It was a great experience since I had never used a Canon to video something before.

Imac: 

Pros: 

• Used in 2 production processes - pre and post production.
• Used to edit final product.
• Used for research.
• Auto-saved everything.

Cons:

• Occasionally the Macs crashed and froze, however I think it was the softwares itself that froze - to solve this issue we patiently waited or just logged onto a new Mac.

Conclusion: 

The iMac was one of the most vital equipment in the process of pre-production and post production. I learnt many things such as the new softwares like Final Cut Pro and Blogger that i had not had any experience with before this task. 

Mic: 

Pros:

• Enhanced our thriller by blocking out most background noise and focusing on our character's dialogues.
• Professional mic.
• Easy to attach on and remove from camera.

Cons:

• Sometimes we could still hear some background sounds.
• The mic was a pain too carry as well as everything else.

Conclusion: 

The mic was pretty new to our year so we all were excited to use it. It really helped us in our production as it improved the quality of our footage. 

Final Cut Pro: 

Pros: 

• Used to edit any footages that were to be put onto YouTube for our blog - e.g. interviews, focus groups interviews and our thriller! 
• Simple concept, in terms of cutting and editing a single footage.
• Worked well on Macs.

Cons: 

• Sometimes froze when added too many footages 
• Takes a long time to render.
• Quite difficult to cut to the exact spot you want to cut to - to solve this issue I zoomed closer into a single footage and cut to the spot I needed to.

Conclusion : This is the software that ultimately puts everything together and without it we would be unable to get rid of snippets that we didn't want in our final clip. Overall it was really good to use apart from when it randomly decided to close itself. 

Blogger: 

Pros: 

• Used in all 3 production processes
• Easy to blog on.
• Able to alter time and date to have an organised group navigation bar.
• Able to upload things from a variety of websites, such as YouTube, Prezi and Soundcloud.
• Proof of work the group and I has done individually.

Cons: 

• The images sometimes don't lay where I want them to be - however, I attempt to place it elsewhere where it would look just as presentable.
• Having to embed codes is quite long - but, I began to get used to it.

Conclusion : It was good to use and made it easy for us to post everything on to. It was also another place for us as a group to communicate as we were constantly using it and updating our posts.