Some time has past for our first project which had been the
preliminary task; at the time for everyone it had been the chance to start the
media year and made everyone to understand the differences in the technology
which is the camera. This also gave a chance to have an understanding of what
goes on behind the camera during the filming process; we had been the priority
of doing 3 different jobs, one was being the director, then it was the camera
man, and then there was the continuity person to check if everything was
alright and if the movie had a steady flow and that the filming did not have
any gaps or errors.
I believe that I
have learned a lot from the preliminary task to the final project; I had not
learned a lot about the actual media process because I had already learned it
from the past years but I have learned more on the planning of the movie before
making the actual movie. I also believe that a lot of the type of planning that
we did for our final project is used in the big media productions like Warner
Bros. or Vertigo Films, this process of film planning will let us have a little
taste of how it actually feels in the film industry. For our final project it
had come to many months being used for in order to plan our final opening
sequence, unlike where we had been given the script along with the way we need
to film the preliminary task.
During the
preliminary task this was the time for first-timers to learn the most basic
things like setting up the tripod, set up the camera, and also white balancing
the camera. While everyone had finally understood the camera basics we could
move on to the actual filming of the task. It had taken some time but with some
error coming from the actors and the cameraman we had finished our preliminary
task. As we moved on to the editing we were introduced to the Final Cut Pro 7
where we were shown how to edit properly in the editing studio. From the
editing I had learned how to use the final cut server and how to check in or
check out a specific file from the final cut server. 
During the filming
for the final project we did not really have an introduction to the camera
again but we had just dove in and just started filming along the we the group
had some problems with the white balance at first but we had gotten through
that from the knowledge from the preliminary task. We had learned from the last
time with the white balance because we had previously not checked the white
balance in the studio where we had been filming so the end result was that one
part of the footage had been orange. In our thriller project we had checked if
everything was all right and if the white balance was correct. What had been
different from the preliminary task was that we had used a shotgun microphone
to capture the sound.
When we finished
with the thriller project we had brought it to Final Cut Pro 7 to edit. Since I
had known very well how to do this I had let my group to do the most of the
part in laying out everything in the timeline, but whenever they had issues I
was there to help. Once we had finished with laying out the sequence onto the
timeline it had been time to insert the sounds of the gunshots and other sounds
that we needed. Along with sound we needed to edit that actual dialogue in the
sequence to see which one was better and then use that in the sequence. Since
we had used two separate microphones we had two different audio tracks, one
coming from the boom pole and then the other coming from the camera microphone.
This had been a new technique of editing sound that I had learned during this
process of editing and I will always now remember it.
The final things that we
had to do was to go into after effects and then add in the muzzle flares into
our scenes, we then also had had edited in the blood into the sequence. We had
to also add in a blood template and place it over the male actors chest to
simulate him bleeding. In addition I had made the tittle that goes into the
end, in order to do that I had to write in the title place over a template that
looked like metal over the text to make it look better, and then had to use a
after effects plug-in to make it more like an 3D object. The very last thing
that I did was that I took the text and manipulated the text to gradually
decrease in size in a certain amount of time, I had done that by making a
starting key frame and them move throughout the timeline and then make another
key frame to mark how small do I want the text to become. The overall effect of
this was to create a type of depth of field that is covered in black that
signifies that the girl who had drove off is hiding from something or someone. From
using after effects in the thriller I had practiced the use of the program and
I had also enhanced my skills in after effects.
This was our Preliminary Task:
This is our final Thriller:
