Question 4

What technologies did you use?

For the creation of my products I used...

• Two video cameras (panasonic and a sony HD quality)
• Two tripods
• voice recorder
• Final Cut Pro
• Windows movie maker
• Fireworks software

How/why did you use them?

• Video cameras - to collect the footage for my music video. I used two cameras so that I could film the actors from different angles and have different cinematography used in my product. I also used the second camera for the behind the scenes of created my product.
• Tripods - so that I could have steady shots for my footage then I could choose to have a purposefully shaky shot or a steady shot.
• Voice recorder - to get the actors quoting from the original film of Alice in Wonderland (1951)
• Final Cut Pro - This was for piecing all my footage together.
• Windows Movie Maker - At home I used this software to put footage from the filming days to create a behind the scenes containing bloopers and my directing skills with both a group of people and on a one-to-one basis.
• Fireworks - This was used to create my digipak and magazine advertisement as it had the perfect effect that I could use to create the Alice in Wonderland theme and still suit the genre of music and the brand recognition of Florence + the Machine.

What problems/difficulties did you have with the technologies?

I was put under pressure a bit with the filming as Biddulph Grange country park had times when less people would be walking around (I know this from personal experience of going there) but my problem was that my main video camera lost charge twice on different days, during big scenes. Once when I was filming Olivia (Alice) falling into the 'rabbit hole' and another when I was shooting the Hatter's (George) tea party. This was frustrating as I'd say the best take of these shots weren't recorded. Luckily I had my second camera to record the footage on those days but it was a problem having to redo a almost perfect scene. In the end the footage was filmed and those shots were just as good.
Another problem I had was after the filming process but the editing stage. My SD cards from each of my video cameras wouldn't upload to the Apple Mac computer at school so I had to use a cable to keep my footage saved onto the computer I was using.