Evaluation 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In the production of our thriller opening we have used many technologies from camera equipment to computer programs.

The main computer programs we used were Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro. We used the technologies in combination with each other to construct our film opening. We used Final Cut Pro to edit the footage, and Soundtrack Pro to create the music. We then used Final Cut Pro to layer the music on top of the footage.

I learned may things about both programs, here are some of the things I learnt about Final Cut Pro:
- Has high-quality rendering which makes it possible to compute realistic effects.
- Has iMovie support, the two programs are very compatible.
- You can imported layered Photoshop graphics (good for titles).
- Auto-Analysis uses people detection to determine if there is a single person or multiple people in the shot. This information is used to automatically organize shots into Smart Collections. The program then flags shots as close-up, medium, or wide, then organizes them into Smart Collections by type of shot.

- Analyses your media in the background to identify shaky footage. You can then apply the Stabilization effect. For additional control, you can adjust parameters manually.

- Gets rid of image distortion from quick movements. Can automatically make corrections.

- Can analyse the colour of clips on a frame-by-frame basis to produce superior results when you use the single-click Balance Color feature. The color correction is optimized for the specific frames you’ve selected.
- Can analyse and fix audio problems e.g. excessive noise.

My conclusion about the usefulness and creativity of technologies is that the technologies are useful in allowing you to be creative when creating a media product. Without these technologies, we would not have been able to create our media product, and because the technologies were so useful, we were able to show creativity and make our media product how we wanted it to be. However, sometimes the technologies are not always easy to use as they are very complex, professional programs which are quite hard for a media student to figure out how to use by themselves without never being shown and having no prior knowledge of the technologies. I found this the biggest struggle when using the programs. Also, sometimes you are limited a bit on exactly what you want to do and are not always in complete control of what your media product is going to look like, for example, you cannot just create your own imaginative transitions, you have to choose from whatever is available in Final Cut Pro, and in Soundtrack Pro, you are limited on what the music will sound like as you can only choose from the sounds available in the program.