EVALUATION QUESTION 4 (PART 3) LIMITATIONS OF TECHNOLOGIES AND FINAL CUT PRO

Limitations of Technologies

Some of the limitations of the technology that I faced was the fact that the hardware we use is still based on DV tapes, which requires students to digitise the footage. I had to put the tape in the tape deck, then capture the footage onto the Mac, but also I had to cut the footage up when capturing it. Because I didn't really know how to do this at the beginning, I had to get someone else to teach me about it just in case I did something wrong and end up deleting all of my footage instead of capturing it. This method, in my opinion seems out-dated, another way one could have done was to shoot direct onto the SD cards, and this would have sped up the process.

This is an example image of the log and capture tools on Final Cut Pro;

FINAL CUT PRO

Using Final Cut Pro at the beginning seemed both familiar and unknown at the same time, because I used similar software last year i.e Adobe Premiere Pro. Due to the fact that I used similar software, Final Cut Pro seemed easy to begin with, but then looking further at the controls, it seemed to me a lot more confusing and so when I managed to put my videos onto the timeline, I had to be careful in case I managed to delete my footage or something so I watched YouTube tutorials and I did this in order to get to grips with all the controls such as;

The following images were some of the tools that I used in Final Cut Pro;

Others included Effects like Video Filters, I particularly used the Blur and Distort and Glow effects to create the flashback scene. The general transitions I used throughout the entire film were Dissolves, and Cross Dissolve, Fade In Fade Out in particular.For the audio effects, to accompany the effects from the Flashback Scene, I used the Echo and Reverberate effects to make the scene seem more surreal and dream-like and out of time.

I had problems using the Razor Blade Tool, as when I did cut some of the scenes and move the selected bit to another part of the short film, I usually forgot to move the sound bit which then  meant I misjudged the timings of both the video and audio which created little 'jumps' which made the flow of sound in particular much less smooth. 

For scenes when Rosalie touches Paloma I used the colour correcter and inserted more of a blue-ish hue to those particular scenes to come across as cold and harsh and gives it a bit more variety.

So what I have learnt from using Final Cut Pro is to make sure that when I cut certain bits of the scene, I need to move the audio part of it to another part of the film in order to create a seamless aural transition. 

Using the Mac for the first time was hard to get to grips with and slowed my progress down a little bit as I had a little disadvantage as I wasn't that used to Macs as say other students. It was somewhat different to Windows which most people are accustomed to.