Equipment that we used

Video Camera

This is the Canon video camera we used to shoot our video. This video camera was very useful because it was small and compact but at the same time flexible. The fact the video camera was small and compact made it much easier to carry the camera to different locations and switch angle shots easily. Also the fact it was small and light weighted compared to other cameras abled us to film in unique angles such as a low angle shot, high angle shot and places giving us a unique shot which we wouldn’t be able to if the camera was bigger and weighed more. In addition to this, the camera had a good zoom making it easier to go from a wide long shot where the background was very clear to a close up. Another advantage was that the camera was very easy to use and had a good battery life when fully charged.

The disadvantage to camera was that because the camera was small and compacted meaning it was delicate and was easily broken. Also I felt the camera was not weather resistant making it hard to film in the rain or bad conditions. The fact that we live in Manchester, a city which has a lot of rain didn’t help and interrupted many of our filming days. Also the fact that the screen was small on the camera made it hard to see in detail what he was filming and so we couldn’t be 100% sure if there were anything irrelevant in the scene such as a car driving past in the background. I also felt when we did hand held shots on the video camera, the video camera was too sensitive and was shaking more than we expected meaning our footage looked unprofessional.

Overall we thought we had a good camera which abled us to film in the way we wanted to and the fact it was small made it easier to transport to other locations. The video camera was very easy to use and to transfer the video footage to the computer.

Tripod

This is the tripod we used to attach our video camera onto to get a steady shot without the camera shaking in our hands. This equipment was very useful because it allowed us to shoot different types of shots such as the panning shot and crab shot. On our first day of filming, we didn’t think the tripod was relevant and important and proceeded to our location without it. After viewing our footage in the editing room, we felt the footage was to shaky and looked very unprofessional. Because of this we revisited the location and filmed the scene again using a tripod making our new footage look good and professional.

The disadvantage to the Tripod was it took a lot of time and effort to adjust the tripod to the position you wanted it move. Also I felt that the tripod restricted some of our shots because the tripod wouldn’t turn as much as we wanted to. Also the tripod was big in size and was a problem to carry around. Another disadvantage is that the clips on the tripod holding the legs of the tripod in place are very weak and broke twice when in filming. This put the camera in risk and disturbed our filming timetable.

Overall I thought the Tripod was an excellent choice of equipment that we used. It made our video footage look professional and abled us to a variety of shots using this.

Green Screen

Green screen technology is modern equipment which is used from Hollywood films to the weather forecast. If you shoot on the green screen with a single colour (green), it allows you to make that colour transparent and replace the colour green with another image selected by yourself. In our video we used green screen often to change our background into a white plain background with the letter ‘E’ on the side which stands for ‘Example’.

This was very useful because when using this, it made our music video look professional as real video music video use this. We enjoyed playing with the green screen as we could insert any background that we wanted onto the green screen.

However I would have to say it was hard to remove all of the green of the green screen and we found it hard to manage the shadow which was being reflected onto the green screen by the studio lights.