Evaluation Question 6

Equipment

The camera I used was an HD Panasonic Camera and was relatively simple to grasp and use effectively. I found more trouble in making sure that i had an SD card and was able to save all my footage effectively. I avoided using zoom too much or panning and tracking as often the shots looked shaky and unprofessional. 

I did not have to use a microphone as I did not want to record any of the ambient or diegetic sound.

Using the tripod (Velbon DV-7000) was easy and effective. I got to grips with using the spirit level to make sure all my shots were level and adjusting the speed of pans was easy enough to do on the tripod.

The lights and their power packs were very self explanatory and I used them extensively whilst shooting indoors. They helped to create interesting shadows and highlight elements within a shot that were not being paid enough attention to. The main problem i ran into when using the lights was that they ran out of power very quickly, leaving me with less light in certain shots than i would have initially hoped for. Of course natural lighting and the lights already present in my house were of great help when shooting my film.

I was already well accustomed to using Mac computers and luckily enough was used to using software by Apple as well so some of the functions of Final Cut Pro were not completely alien to me.
Final Cut was probably the technical element of the course i found most difficulty with, purely because i found the interface difficult to understand at times and i thought many of its functions were not well thought through enough when considering beginners to the software.

I wrote all the music for my film on Logic Pro 9 which i have been using for a couple of years now, so was able to create what i wanted with relative ease.