Technical Equipment

We have a range of technical equipment which would be used to create the project. The first thing we used was the camera, it was better quality as we could film in HD. It was more efficient using a digital camera as  each clip is separated into clips, so adding and cutting during the editing stage is easier.

The tripod was the second piece of equipment which we used, it balances the camera and can be adjusted to different heights. We found that in a thriller film the tripod is used less as it is more conventional to use handheld shots. Therefore we did have some handheld shots.

As well as these handheld shots we thought it would be good to have some moving shots, and so originally tested a dolly out. Unfortunately it was too shaky and noisy for filming with, and we found that would could move the tripod like a dolly - this was more effective.  In professional filming tracks are used with dollys to move the camera smoothly. Below is a picture of a similar dolly to ours.

During the editing stage we used three pieces of software. The main one was Final Cut Express for cutting and ordering clips, importing music, adding transitions and then finally exporting the sequence. We used this program over iMovie, for example, because it is more powerful and has more professional effects. Superimposing clips was one really important part of our sequence, and could have only been done in a more advanced program like Final Cut.

For the music we used Garageband, the advantage of this was that it has a large library of loops that can be arranged together to create a unique sounding sequence. There are some limitations to this, but using more advanced software like Logic Express or Studio would have meant creating our own sounds.

The next piece of technical equipment/software was Photoshop. Using layers we were able to create the production logo which was edited into a ident. We also used Photoshop for creating the credits, the font was taken from DaFont, it represents the genre of a psychological thriller well. We wouldn't have been able to create something as advanced/unique without Photoshop.

The last, less technical, piece of equipment is the use of the blog through Safari. It was important to use this in order to record our research. Below is a screenshot of our blog posts.