Foundation Portolio Evaulation: Question 6

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

When creating our film opening, we had to use a variety of equipment, some I've never used before and some I have.

To film, we used the Sony Handycam HDR-CX210. This was quite easy to use; however the quality of the footage wasn't that great and it was the main thing that displeased our group when reviewing our work. 

I've used camcorders before so this wasn't anything new to me, however a constant battle we went through when filming was that it kept going out of focus; which was frustrating. 

We wanted to use a focus pull in our opening, but we were told that the camera equipment wasn't advanced enough to do this with; which was disheartening. 



We also had to use a tripod - this wasn't my first time using one as I previously used one before at my old school. There was a few slight differences, the old one I used was a lot more complex compared to this one; and had more sections to check was secure. 

This tripod was quite stiff when it came to rotating in up and down - panning across was fine; but tilting couldn't be down fluidly without some jerky movements being detected; which is unfortunately seen in our film opening.

Our only difficulty with the tripod was when we had created a custom height, so that the camera was tilted at a certain angle - this was difficult to either recreate or ensure that the frame was straight. 


I have only briefly used an Apple Mac before, so some of the actions was a bit confusing for me to use. Adjusting to the different keyboard actions, for example; there being no print screen button and instead having to key in a combination. 

The layout of icons and storage was a bit confusing when trying to upload things, as we weren't sure where they were at times, but after using these for just under two months - I got the hang of it quite quickly.

iMovie was the software we had to use to edit our film and it was something I had never used before, so we spent sometime practising with it just to ensure we knew the basics.

I wasn't happy with how basic the software was, something such as Final Cut Pro would have been better for us to edit our film opening - as we would have had a lot more variety and different editing techniques; rather than basic transitions, colour washes and titles etc.