6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

Throughout the process of creating the opening sequence i have learnt a lot about several different technologies that i have come across and had to use. During the process of shooting the sequence i developed my knowledge in the equipment used, although i am quite confident about cameras, video cameras and tripods as i have a job in John Lewis, Peterborough in the Audio and TV department working on mainly the camera section. Within the opening sequence a Canon MV500 was used which is an old video camera that runs on tapes also a Panasonic SD200 was used later on in the filming, this was because the Canon ran out of battery and we needed a camera quick fast. During the filming of the Preliminary task a basic range of camera shots and editing was used, due to it being a Preliminary task the need to spend a mass amount of time on it didn't see necessary therefore a quick edit was done. It was a short and simple task yet a fun one. It was a good starting point that allowed me and my group to get familiar with what was available to us and what we would be able to use again. When it came to the opening sequence we knew what we needed to use and how we needed to use it. We used both the Canon and Panasonic Video cameras, but before any of the filming could take place we had to plan and research this meant deciding what genre we wanted and what films we could look at for ideas. As a group we decided to take up the genre "Thriller" but we wanted to go into more depth therefore we decided to use "Physocolgical Thriller" this meant doing individual research, i researched about "Schindler's List" and "The Blair Witch Project" to research about these i looked on the Internet to get the basic information the i suggested that we should watch the film, luckily one person had it in the group so we got together and watched it through once and then we watched the opening sequence a few more times on its own. This allowed us to fully understand what we needed to do to achieve the standard we wanted. It then came to the planning, this is the moment we all sat in the library and collected all the information we could in books, the Internet and just from general knowledge. Then after this we went into the filming.

The technology that i believed i learnt about the most was the editing software, we were able to use SonyVegasPro at school. When we first used it in our priliminary we weren't sure as a whole group how to use it, but the person who got use to it fastest was Olly Aird, so he sat down and taught me the basics. As a system it is very easy to use, easier than i first thought. It was as simple as adding the footage you wanted and then either editing it in colour, or speed. Then you could overplap footage to give it a double effect.

I believe that the technologies used throughout were all very useful, books, DVDs, and the Internet. The most useful was probably the Internet as everything that was needed was right there, but having the access to books enabled me to find out more information that was definitely reliable.