EVALUATION 6 - what have I learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The only technology of which my knowledge advanced on iMovie (as well as how to log in to a Mac computer), as I have been previously acquainted with all the others (well, this was my first time using the Blogger website but it was very easy to understand as within two seconds I was an expert on it).

The camcorder is what we used for all of the filming so of course, it was very useful. The battery never ran out on us, that is to say it lasted for a sufficiently long time, so that potential problem did not happen to us. Also, the LCD screen is really useful as you don't have to lean right up into the lens to see what you're filming as the case is with older cameras; it is more comfortable this way and you can hold the camera steadier whilst viewing if you're filming without a tripod.

However, the cables supplied with the camcorders were limited, which meant there were times we had to wait around as other groups were using the firewires, which we use to transfer the footage onto the computer. I've used a camera before but not a digital one, so actually it took a couple minutes to figure out the buttons i.e. playing back and ejecting tape. One incident which was quite bad from the camcorder's part was when it swallowed the tape which contained our footage, though to this day I am not clear on how that happened exactly. Thankfully, we only had footage from one session of filming, and I am glad that happened anyway as our re-filming turned out better than the original footage.




A tripod to a camera is like milk to a bowl of cereal or a fat bucket of popcorn to a viewing of a film: you can do without if you must, but brace yourself because it will be harder and thus less enjoyable. This is because the tripod is a three-legged contraption on which the camera is held steady in position; this is obviously very useful as it guarantees steady filming in a professional manner, and we could make use of its height to shoot high-angles as well as tilts. The murder scene is filmed hand-held, and if you notice carefully then you will see how the camera is shaking. The only downside to using a tripod was the looming threat of dropping it and breaking it and then paying for a new one.

The Mac computer is what we used for editing. Once figuring how to login, there were no difficulties at all. The actual editing programme we used (for both the preliminary task and main task) was iMovie. We found it complicated at times, especially during the first times we used it as we were only just getting our heads around it. The most complicated parts would be moving/splitting things around once they were in the timeline, but easy once figured out how to do. Cutting a clip was really easy. On the computer, we also used Itunes to upload the music onto and them import from there onto iMovie.




A digital camera was used to take stills of us filming at my house and at the main school. Very easy to use, no problems with it at all, as was the case with the scanner machine, which Sophie used to scan the storyboards on.




We used the internet alot, for research and for writing this whole blog obviously. I pretty much searched everything on google, and used wikipedia for looking up on the genre and example of films. This was the first time I used this Blogger website, but it was really easy to use. It has a good selection of decorations and lay-outs for your page, and you can change your text fonts, add pictures/videos, and made for a less exhausting manner of writing up on our tasks than it would have been if we were writing it the usual way on paper.