What have you learnt about technologies from the

process of constructing this product?

O During the process of creating our thriller opening, Payback, we have learnt how to use many different technologies that we had not come across before. We have improved our knowledge of the different technologies and since the preliminary task we have seen a great difference in how we utilised the resources we were given.

O One of the main pieces of technology that we used was the Kodak camcorder, none of us had recorded footage in a professional way before and this was the first time we had used this equipment. We learnt from it how to record footage, improve sound input by using a microphone and how to add special effects over the footage we were recording. It also improved our skills in getting the correct framing in shots and the importance of it.

O We had very little camera equipment that extended to having a tripod. We learnt very quickly how important it is to use a tripod when trying to give your footage a professional feel. The tripod allowed us to frame up the shots and keep the frame steady without movement during filming. The use of interchangeable height gave our opening a more dynamic feel. One aspect of the tripod that came in handy during the filming was being able to pan, although very little of these shots were used we got a lot of practice with panning shots whilst recording the chase scene.

O To edit our work we used iMovie (9.0.9). During the production stage we came across iMovie for the first time and due to it's user friendly interface quickly learnt how to use basic editing tools like shortening clips, altering sound levels, transitions and title overlays. Further down the production line we improved our knowledge of iMovie by using more advanced tools like colour alteration, picture in picture clips, adding sound effects and adding special effects. We also learnt how to slow down and speed up different clips and sound effects. All of these features gave our opening a better appearance and a smoother outcome.

O Some media technology that we used included software like Prezi and websites like slid share and blogger. Blogger allowed us to present all of our work in one place and we learnt from it how to label work (i.e. Evaluation, Production), link our accounts so that we could all post to the same blog from different user accounts and how to import different file formats like PowerPoints and videos. Prezi was a software/website that let us make more interactive PowerPoints, which improved the visuals of our blog and we also learnt how to import videos into a Prezi directly from YouTube which meant our work could be broken up into written work and videos. We were then able to upload any of our Prezi's straight onto the Blog. SlideShare was a website that we utilised by reading other people's PowerPoints on specific subjects to improve our knowledge and it also meant we could upload our own PowerPoints on to the site and then on to our Blog.