TechnologyBy Hussain Rashid

From the construction of this product I feel I have come a long way since the beginning of the production of our film. As a creative individual I thought most of the responsibility was on my shoulders throughout the process as I was the group member who had the ideas and an eye for detail. For this reason I was given the duty to be the sole camera man within the group. This allowed me to put in place all my thoughts and ideas which I felt overall benefited our film opening. Using the cam recorder enabled me to explore a range of technical features and basic hand movements which I thought aided the process.

However the most advanced piece of technology I used was the use of a Mac. Through previous experience with using Macs and Mac software such as Final Cut Pro and LiveType I felt I was familiar with the user face but had basic knowledge of editing. This motivated me to want to learn more about Macs themselves along with the software’s. Due to the fact that in order to in-cooperate my ideas into the movie opening, I had to always be present during the editing process. As primary editor it was my responsibility to direct the secondary editor on what was going on and how I wanted it to be applied. This was mainly done whilst using Final Cut Pro. Though, sometimes I had to edit certain elements of the film due to the lack of understanding from the secondary editor. This helped me vastly gain knowledge on the Final Cut Pro software as I was experimenting with different tools.

Conversely, whilst using Garage band, myself and Emile put ourselves forward for the construction of the music. As I was adamant on what type of music should be used in our film opening. Although I was inexperienced with using the software as it was my first time, I quickly grasped the concept of it and used my own initiative to figure how all the components within the program worked. This boosted my confidence and allowed me to create a soundtrack fitting with our film genre with the input of my group members. In regards to our voice over, we used our links well to acquire the services of a friend of ours to help create a voice over. We thought the voice of the narrator was crucial as it would not only be parallel to what is been shown on the screen but also the only

piece of information (other than the footage) to inform the audience of what is going on and engage them. For this we also used Garage band. We chose to use a microphone rather than the built in speaker a Mac had to offer as we found that whilst recording the sound came out clearer with hardly any background noise compared to using the built in speaker.

My initial ideas also included the use of titles. Having analysed various films within our specific genre I had a clear idea of what fonts I wanted to implement and how they were going to appear. As a group we collectively worked together to generate titles for our films using LiveType. As we all had basic knowledge in the software it took us a while to gain accustom to the user face. Whilst showing the freeze frame of the characters featured within our film, I thought it was essential to add titles showing the characters name to the views. This followed the same conventions of films in the British Gangster genre and also added to the style of the film. We chose to use the same font whilst introducing the characters as we wanted a continuous style shown throughout the opening. However we changed the positioning and outline of how the titles appeared on the freeze frame as sometimes the tone of the black and white freeze frame was parallel to the white of the text. We also used other fonts which connoted our genre through the opening in aid to show the production companies and the title of the movie. In regards to the font used for out movie title, we thought this particular stencil like font connoted our genre and followed the same conventions as other movies within the genre.

Whilst experimenting with different effects and transitions within LiveType, we came across a range of possibilities we could use for our film. In the end we narrowed down the possibilities to a selection we thought would be fitting with our movie. For our first production company, we came across a movement which we thought looked nice and would appeal to our audience. The ‘Stepping Stones Studios’ title was created through a mixture of effects, movements and font. We tried to bring together aspects of the name ‘Stepping Stones’ to create a flamboyant image. We came across the silver movement and thought it would look nice to start the film off with it. Then the cracks and ‘broken’ appeal it gave inspired us to use a font similar to it. Then we felt a movement was required to gave the title a professional feel.

We wanted to input something fast pace for our second title. We felt this was needed as it would be fitting with the face paced music and voice over that was going to be used. We also felt the need for this was key in merging two different scenes together with the use of a black background. As for the title we used a ‘type’ like effect on a concrete like background as it helped connote our genre. Also we inputted a cross like effect ,with the colour red applied to it, which we thought we could use to represent an England flag; which relates with the title of our film ‘Made in England’.