Question Six Transcript - Megan

I think I've learnt a lot about technologies throughout the construction of our opening. From the preliminary I learnt how to both set the white balance and the importance of maintaining this throughout filming. I also learnt how important it is to frame subjects well, which was improved upon in our final opening. The preliminary also taught me how important the 180 degree rule is when filming, and how difficult it can be to get right. Continuity errors were also a huge part of our preliminary with the piece of paper that we used for our match on action. We did try to make it less obvious by cropping our shots but it was still very annoying to fix and made us much more focused on continuity when it came to filming for the real thing. Looking back on the preliminary, our shot types were very limited, both in terms of angle and size as most of them were medium shots from directly in front of the character, or slightly to the side. Realising how uninteresting this is to an audience, this was something that we worked on in the final opening, and included a much wider range of shots such as the extreme close up. Something we also worked on what how to achieve depth of field. We wanted to switch the focus from the character to his surroundings, but it took many attempts to get right.
I learnt how to use a range of programmes throughout this process, as well as some basic commands on a mac. Among programmes I used were Final Cut Pro and Garageband. Final Cut took a lot of getting used to, but in the end I was able to cut way more efficiently than I had been able to at the start and I also learnt how to do things like adding text and cropping shots as I mentioned earlier. Garageband was fun to work with and I feel that I have learnt a lot from using it to create diegetic sound and to create our soundtrack.
I think our filming experiences in both the preliminary and the final opening could have gone better if we had done more takes for all our shots. We did more takes for the opening than for the prelim, but we still could have done with more variety in some places. Our problem with continuity errors was also evident in the final opening, but we did a much better job of fixing this in post production. We also learnt the importance of checking equipment before you leave the premisis when we refilmed our shot/reverse shot sequence. When we set up the tripod we realised that the legs would not stay where we put them, resulting in some wobbly camera work and slightly canted shots. Again, this was not too problematic to sort out in post production, but it would have been much easier for us if we had not had to worry about it.