6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have learnt how to use a camera as this was my first time ever using one.
I have learned little techniques along the way and also the importance of every aspect in filming.


It’s all about the music-

The music is a very important aspect to the film making; the audience not only like to see the film, but music also creates the right tension or atmosphere that I tried to express through the film, for example: right from the start when the titles appear the only 2 or 3 notes used which create the right tension I’m looking for so that the audience is drawn into the film, With iMovie this task was made easy to get the music exactly where we wanted and how loud we wanted it to play.

I think I should have used a few more audio effects at the start of the film whilst Rachel sneaked around the school, this would have created more little moments of sudden tension to build up a tenser atmosphere and the long note would become more in the background than taking centre stage.















(more audio effects in these shots would have intensified the drama)



It’s all about the image-

I have learnt the importance of framing all shots correctly so that the audience can see the action, which builds up a character and builds the essential detail to the storyline with the body language where they are not talking.

In the process I learned that framing shots using the rule of thirds gave extra material for the audience to pick up on, which added mise-on-scene, which is very important to create the right mood in the film.

















(this shot shows where she is heading using the rule of thirds)


It’s all about the editing-

The fact that they are very slow also built the tension up very slowly with it, and then the sudden contrast was emphasised in the change of music and volume of the music which I learnt to do using iMovie; this helped express our ideas and story much easier than adding more visuals, which then made the stories easier to follow, and it also meant we weren’t in need of microphones because we could manipulate the sounds ourselves! I have been able to lower down and increase the volumes gradually and introducing a new sound when I needed to with the help of the iMovie´s technology, which then again helped create the right atmosphere we need to express.

We also used one effect at the very end of the film whilst Rachel and Philippa are going over what they need to do for the robbery plan, this one was used as a comical ending for a massive contrast of seriousness when they get found out, this sound was actually found on the iMac itself. The sound we used was called “forest” and the reason for choosing this one was to symbolise that whatever they had to talk about was meant to be “top secret!” and we are not allowed to listen in. But we still let in a bit of muttering from them so that we can’t tell what their plans are exactly, but that they re talking and discussing, we did this by increasing the "forest" sound and lowering the "muttering".















(from whitnessing)
















(to being involved/ caught)


So here the audience is treated as a third person witnessing their robbery plans just before they get found out, which makes the change from comical and not being too involved anymore to sudden seriousness and sense of being very involved and having empathy for the robbers.































(these shots are added to enphathise drama in the scene but also have a purpose of continuity in the film)

Something which I also found very useful is that I could use the same shot separate in different places, so I could have little shots added in the master shot; which meant that when it came to editing the film I could make better effects, which improved the film overall, for example when doing the match on action of the door I only filmed the door twice, being opened and closed twice but to create a “quick” continuity effect in the sequence I split both clips into two parts and connected all four to create a match on action which had different points of view; this blended well with the scene and I could also be very picky about where I wanted to cut the film (thanks to the very specific iMovie), so that they would cause a good continuous effect making this bit of the film more interesting.


There are two shots in the film which were deliberately made to be black and white; this is meant to represent a CCTV camera spying on Rachel.

But unfortunately there wasn’t another visual effect we could use to show this was a CCTV camera, for example it would have been good to have a pretend effect of a camera recording on that shot plus the black and white effect.

I tried using a subtitle effect which said “Gordano school cam 4” in green writing on the bottom left hand side of the screen, but it didn’t look convincing (it looked a bit odd in the situation) and it would have ruined the overall effect by making it look comical when it was meant to represent tension.

So we stuck on just zooming in and out again on the first time we see Rachel’s face in black and white that ended up looking more realistic than adding too many other visual effects.

The editing of the film was easier and more professional thanks to the iMac.
I had used windows movie maker before, but when it came to cutting the individual shots short iMac was very useful to as how specific I wanted the cut to be, as I could zoom right into the clip time bar; this meant I could create very good effects and make continuity from one shot to another with every slim cuts in the film to cover up any imperfections.































(two different shots with good continuity thanks to slim cut editing)