Evaluation Post 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have learnt quite a lot in the use of both hardware and software during the process of constructing our film opening.

Hardware

During the filming of the project I used the Canon Legria HF G30 camera. Although I had experience with this camera during GCSE, only during this project through experimentation did I work out how to change it to manual focus mode.

I had never used a camera jib before, but due to being very interested in photography and videography I did know a bit about them. Although no shots using this piece of equipment were used in our final sequence, we did shoot several shots with it, mainly shots of the table in a bird's-eye view style.

The lights were something else I had never used before, but knew a bit about, mainly due to having worked with virtual lighting in 3d animation software Cinema 4d. I learnt again through experimentation how to change the intensity of the light from the Arri floor lights, and learnt how to adjust the angles of the light hitting the scene. I also learnt how to adjust the shape and size of the ceiling fill light using the extendable rod.

Software

I had a lot of experience using the composition software Adobe Premiere Pro, but nonetheless managed to learn something new, as before starting the project I had never known you could have multiple sequences within the same project. Through the course of the editing sessions I also got to grips with and got into the habit of using the hotkey shortcuts, such as holding 'Alt' whilst scrolling in order to quickly zoom the timeline in or out.

Animating individual mask points

Although I had some past experience with Adobe After Effects, I had never really used masks much before, and learning how to make any shape mask and animate the locations of each point within the mask was a great new skill I learnt during the course of the project.