Research on equipment

In order to create accurate footage that met expectations we needed to use up to date technology, of which many of us had little experience with.

We carried out research on the different types of equipment that we had access to and we felt this was important to ensure that the footage was filmed properly, uploaded appropriately and edited accordingly. For this to happen research took place on the following:

Sony Cam Corder:

Fortunately I had a basic understading to how this piece of equipment actually worked though to assure the rest of the group this camera was potentially better to use than the standard camera provided by the school I needed to do some research.....

I looked up various websites such as: sony.co.uk/hub/cyber/shot?s.

I figured that sony would have a lot to say about the camera though the actual website reflected little, (as is understandable for a 6/7 year old camera) so i decided to contact them directly... They were very prompt in getting back to me and I even managed to obtain a free manual explaining general usage of the camera.

The main benefits were that the camera could counteract jults and movement (to a degree) which ment that the majority of the film could easily be filmed on foot as oppose to lugging around a large tripod which would also be potentially dangerous in the conditions in which the film was captured.

The camera also captured footage on to DV tape which ment the footage captured was portable and could go into other camera, this was important as it ment that more than one tpye of camera could be used, perhaps in the event that we wanted to film a different shot from a stand still (tripod) prospective...... yet upload the footage from one tape to make things simpler.

I also found out that it was firewire compatible, meaning i could use a firewire cable to upload it onto a mac. The firewire and otherwise known as the IEEE1349 interface would help when transfering our captured footage onto Final Cut Pro - the editing software avialable on the Apple Macs. It would deliver a better quality of image at a greater speed.

The group held no experience with apple mac's or their software applications and being that the film was largerly reliant on editing it was important that we had a reasonable understanding of how to work it.

We begun are reseach and approached fellow class mates and teachers for help and guidance although in some cases they were very limited to what they could actually help with.

So we approched the internet and looked at different website such as:

Hawaii.edu - this website reflected a very helpful step by step guide on the use of Final Cut Pro though it was very long winded and putting into account the time allocated there was only so much we could take in.

And we approach Wiki, which somewhat proved helpless as a lot of the information on there was writen by everyday people which ment that most of it was inaccurate and unhelpful. We also tackled youtube in hope of a step by step video though many of the search results were simply irrelavent.

These were the two main pieces of equipment that needed to be researched in order to produce a good quality film, and although not all sites and sources were relavent it did prove helpful.