On gathering the voice recordings we discovered how unreliable technology can be, and that it can always be helpful to have a back-up plan, (or two).

Initially we used a unidirectional microphone but this failed to pick up any sound even with the actress holding it directly in front of her mouth. We changed wires, batteries, and the laptop the microphone was connected to before changing the microphone itself to another unidirectional that we acquired from another school. Even this was somewhat temperamental at times but after researching on how to make it work, we changed the output levels and used an open source programme called Audacity to record the voice over dialogue we needed.

 

When it came down to filming we used a Panasonic HDC-SD88 Camcorder on a tripod but had to cover it with an umbrella as there was heavy rain. We also had to angle this so that the sound of the rain hitting the umbrella and the resulting echo wasn’t directly heard on the recording. We learnt a lot about using the camcorder during our days of filming. We learnt how to create a controlled zoom shot that we later decided not to use. We used a slow zoom in and out and a rapid zoom in and out.

On one specific occasion the light from the sun was reflecting off the road into the camera lens and the shot appeared to be completely white as a result. However after experimenting with the settings we managed to adjust the brightness, focus and contrast so that the picture was visible.

We used a second camcorder, a Panasonic HX-WA3, to record ambient sound of the interior of the café and the exterior. This included just outside the café and closer to the crossing where traffic was louder. We didn’t shoot specific images, but just made sure that the sound being heard in the footage would be what we wanted. We then later added this to our film by dragging the clips to the audio section of the editing software that we were using. This converted it into an audio file so that we could overlay it over the video files.

 

We learnt a lot about using the Apple Macs during this process. We have had many issues with them and have generally been unlucky. For instance at times they did not allow us to log in, and at others there was no internet connection. Furthermore Android and Apple devices are incompatible so any extra Foley sounds that I recorded on my Samsung Galaxy Core Prime Lite LTE had to be converted through a process that was filtered by the school’s internet.