Teesside University Skills Development Trip

On the 7Th of September we attended a skills development session at Teesside university to try and enhance our knowledge of using final cut express and our camera skills.

Using the cameras we went out and had approximately 20 minutes to record footage. We were taught how to use the cameras properly and shown some very important features on them. I learnt how important lighting is when recording something. We learnt how to adjust the iris on a camera. The iris is the piece that either lets more light in through the lens or filters it out. I also learnt how to adjust the white balance. If you do not adjust the white balance correctly to fit the conditions you are in, the colours may be slightly off. To make the colours normal you must find a white object in the room and zoom into it so the screen of the camera is framed over the white object and then you must adjust it. This is telling the camera what is white so it can detect the other colours and so it knows what they are.

Another point i learnt was that to get full quality of your image/shots, you must zoom into an object far away and focus on it. Therefore everything around it will be focused too and the quality of the image will be better.
For sound, i learnt how to use a gun mic and why it is more reliable than just a normal microphone. The gun mic filters out the ambient sound so it can fully focus on more a specific sound, for example if you wanted to record footsteps you could focus the sound towards the feet whilst walking and the fluffy thing would filter out sounds.

We also learnt how to use final cut express. We uploaded the footage onto the macs and played around with editing, transitions and sound. I learnt how to log and capture and incorperate different sounds. I also learnt how to add soundtrack and make it louder and quieter according the voice/ if i wanted any voice to be heard. We also used Clips from the film gladiator to produce a trailer/documentary about it. This helped improve and start my skills on final cut express considering i have never used it before.