AS Media
Progress tracker of AS Media project by Matthew Facer
Candidate Number: 7547
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
When we as a group reflect on the transition from the Preliminary Task to the Final Task, we realise that there were actually quite a few big differences we had to adjust to. The most obvious differences being the change in both camera and editing software; not to mention that the change in editing software also came with a change in what type of computer we then had to use to create our blogs and edit our film/upload to YouTube. In terms of the the computers we used, I actually ended up preferring our original Dell computers from the Prelim to the Apple Macs we moved on to for the Final Task because the Macs always had a problem of some sort whether it be losing connection to the internet or programs crashing or a number of other issues we encountered. Among
these other unrelenting problems came mouse disconnections that happened too frequently.
We'd be working on editing our film or typing out portions of our blogs and then we'd go to use
the mouse and instead be greeted with an error message of some sort declaring that the
mouse had lost connection or a warning that the mouse was low on batteries. My mouse ended
up losing connection to my Mac entirely at times so I had to get our school's technical support in
to log me off whilst they reviewed the situation. The keyboards were much the same, frequently
disconnecting at the most inopportune times. We didn't encounter any of these problems when
we were working on our Prelim on the old computers; the only bad thing about the old ones was
that they were quite slow in comparison to the Macs but I, personally, would rather work on a slow
computer that functions correctly rather than a rapid computer that disconnects every five minutes!
That said, uploading things such as the Final Task itself and one of our evaluation answers to YouTube
was far easier and faster on the Macs in contrast to the old computers.
The most valuable lesson we gained from the Preliminary Task, however, was definitely how to work the camera. We actually used a different camera for the Prelim and the Final Task but their layouts were still fairly similar. It was hard to get to grasps with how to use any camera during the Prelim as our group had never used a camera besides our phone cameras which obviously are a lot less complex than the Panasonic ones we used throughout our filming process. We didn't have our old camera for very long because during the Prelim it ran out of charge a lot which caused a lot of hassle for us whilst filming because it meant we had to stop between scenes
quite a lot to recharge the camera - this usually took around 10-15 minutes which obviously isn't particularly ideal when filming as it messes with continuity (lighting changes as time goes on). The switch of camera was definitely handy for us especially considering the quality actually ended up being much better on the new camera too. The model pictured on the left was used for the Final Task and it was a big improvement. Not only did the charge last longer than 2 minutes but the camera focused a lot faster and there was a big graphical difference. Our Prelim looked quite grainy
at times and stretched out some shots which distorted certain clips which would have looked terrible if we had needed to use the same camera for the Final Task. Instead the new camera was a lot clearer and provided a much smoother watching experience on the whole.
As you can see here the still from the Prelim (left) and the still form the Final Task (right) are drastically different which highlights both what we learned from experience with the camera and the huge difference in camera quality. In keeping with what equipment
we learned to use, we also had to use a different tripod for both these tasks. In the first task we had a basic one given to
us by the school which we used that didn't have a tracking stick and was incredibly difficult to set up! It took myself and
James nearly 10 minutes just to make it stand up straight at one point! It was really difficult to work out when the tripod
was stable because we had to constantly look at the camera's view whilst adjusting the tripod legs which proved to be
an almost impossible task. The tripod we used for the Final Task was far better - James had found one at home which
he brought with him to use; this one was far easier to set up, not that we struggled anyway as we had already taken
from the Prelim how to set up the tripod quicker. It was absolutely vital that we had a way to produce tracking shots for
our actual film too and the new tripod had a tracking stick which we quickly learned to make use of and that was a
massive help. Learning how to use the camera in the Preliminary Task was certainly a fun experience for our group and
we had a lot of laughs with it! The camera skills we took from the Prelim was a huge bonus as it meant we didn't have to jump straight in at
the deep end for filming.
The last important learning curve from the Prelim to the Final Task was the difference in editing software. During the Prelim we used PowerDirector 13 for editing and it was quite a simple program (image of the interface at the bottom of the screen). Main editor Jordan found it very easy to use but there wasn't a whole lot to it in terms of how in-depth you could go with the editing of different clips. There was minimal micro-managing of clips and sound was fairly difficult to import. Not that anything was easy during the Prelim as it was also the first time anyone in my group had ever used any editing programs at all! We were given a brief introduction to it by our teacher at school but we ended up experimenting by ourselves quite a lot just to see what looked good and how smooth things looked. From the Preliminary software we were able to take important editing skills into the Final Task. Such skills included things like: inserting clips into a timeline; merging two songs together to create one flowing smooth compostion of mixed music; how to make things slow-motion or speed them up as well as how/when to fit foley sounds into clips to ensure a feeling of verisimilitude is put into place.
When we moved onto the Macs for our Final Task, we used iMovie as editing software (see the symbol below). This software was a lot more advanced and allowed for micro-managing clips down to singular frames and exact moments which was helpful for creating transitions. It didn't take much getting used to and the general interface wasn't too dissimilar to that of PowerDirector but iMovie offered up a whole host of different foley sounds to use and royalty-free music that we could test out in our film. We spent a long time on audio alone but that was useful in the end. Jordan learned how to colour-contrast and adjust the brightness of shots too at this point which was something PowerDirector didn't seem to offer (or if it did, we certainly couldn't find it!). This turned out to be very useful as we had to create a lot of darker shots to symbolise that the events of our film were taking place during the evening/night time.
iMovie desktop shortcut
PowerDirector 13 interface