Using the equipment

Using the equipment

While filming our group used lots of different pieces of equipment. Firstly, we used a Sony HD video recording camera to get all of the shots for the preliminary task.

The Sony camera allowed us to play around with white balance, focus and other things. We used manual focus which allowed us to get shallow depth of field shots. We used the manual to get the shot where the hacker is walking down the corridor at the start and as he gets closer to the camera he comes into focus. Additionally, the camera produced lots of high-quality shots. Also, the camera was able to store lots of footage on the memory card because the camera compresses the files so that more video clips can be stored on one memory card. This meant that we didn't have to worry about not having enough storage to hold all of our footage.



Also, we used the zoom h2 to help capture sound when the characters were speaking. This meant that we would have the camera audio what was captured with the video footage and then we would have a separate audio file that had the characters speaking and it would be recorded on the zoom h2. We did have an issue when we were recording with the zoom h2. The problem was caused by the gain dial because throughout the whole recording the gain was at zero or 1. This meant that all the recording that were recorded while we were filming had not audio. We found this out when we came to start editing and we listened to the audio files before we were going to transfer them onto the MAC and we discovered that all of the audio recordings we empty and you could not hear anything.


On top of this, we used a shotgun mic which was connected to the zoom h2. The shotgun mic was pointed at whichever character was speaking at it meant that would of have had better audio quality because the shotgun mic and the zoom h2 provide better quality audio than the onboard mic on the camera. However, because the gain on the zoom h2 was set to 0 which meant we could not use the shotgun mic audio for the final piece.

Finally, while we were filming we used a tripod and the camera was always placed on the tripod because it gave more stability to the shots and in the piece there were no hand held shots. The tripod has a head on it that allowed the camera to move which meant that pans were made very easy.