In order to film our piece we used a Canon HD camera. This camera was HD however, even with this, some of the shots still weren't the best quality. This shows me that even though these cameras were expensive, compared to industry standard cameras they are no match. However, for what we needed, it was good enough. The piece we made looked professional and during the filming we experienced no real problems due to the camera. It was very easy to use, playback was very simple to meaning when we wanted to watch the clips back that we had just shot we could do with ease. We also managed to film during the day and were lucky enough to have got two good days when the weather was bright, meaning lighting was good enough for us to film without it causing any problems. The only problems we did face was the wind, we found that it went straight through the camera, therefore when we played our piece back we had some sounds that ideally we didn't want. This wasn't a problem however as in our opening, there is no dialogue from our main character meaning we could mute the clip and get rid of all background noise. This meant the slight wind noises weren't a problem in the end. This has shown me however that when filming for films, institutions must have to consider all these factors, or get specialist equipment in which is very expensive, this shows me the extent of planning that has to be done before filming and also made me understand that filming isn't as easy as it looks.
When editing our piece we used Apple Macs. We used the software iMovie to then edit our piece after uploading our clips from the memory card out of our camera onto the mac. The main reason for using iMovie besides any other software is that I have had some previous experience of using that software, for example when we had to edit our preliminary task. Therefore, it seemed the obvious choice of software to use as it required the least amount of practise prior to editing as we already knew how to use it which made the editing process more efficient. Our other option for editing our piece was Final Cut Express, however, after a little practise on this software, I decided using iMovie would be the better option due to having used it before and having experience using it and due to iMovie simplicity in comparison to Final Cut. Whilst editing we didn't experience to many problems, however it was prior to editing when we were trying to upload the clips from the memory card to the Macs, we encountered a problem in which the file was the wrong type and was not compatible with the Macs. This meant we then had to waste a majority of one day changing them from one file type to another. Other than this we encountered no drastic problems during the editing of our opening scene. A good thing about iMovie is that it allowed us to improve the quality of some of our shots by adjusting the quality by stabilising them. This added to our piece making it look professional. Overall, in the film industry as technology continues to improve, film quality will continue to improve also as editing equipment continues to grow and improve. From what I used when editing, it is already very advanced, and I only used basic editing techniques which added to my piece vastly. I used things like transitions, colour corrections and stabilisation feature which improved our opening scene.
To improve, next time I would consider learning how to use Final Cut Express, as I feel this would have also allowed for an even more advanced edit and meant our final product would have looked even better.
In order to keep and produce a blog of all our work, we used Google Blogger. I found this slightly frustrating to use at first as it often was hard to insert images where you wanted them and also found sometimes when I viewed my actual blog as a whole, text would hang off the side and not be visible or easy to read. However, after I got used to the software, I have actually grown to quite like it as I feel it gives quite a professional look, easy to keep all my work in one place and finally is easy to start a piece, save it and then edit it and add to it at a later date. If I were to do it again, after getting used to the software I would probably use it again as it did help to have all the work in one place and I never once experienced any technical difficulties with the site meaning it was safe and secure to do my blog work on.
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