How and which media technologies do you use in the construction and research and

evaluation stages?

Technologies used;

• I used a wide variety of media technology in the creation of the final three piece (trailer, poster, magazine front cover). These include, YouTube, blogger, Photoshop, comic life, garage band, final cut express, iTunes, Photobucket, slideshare, flickr.

Research into teaser trailers;• In the beginning of research and planning my partner

and I looked at existing teaser trailers and conventions of teasers and not theatrical, then looked more into the genre of our own trailer to get a better understanding of the techniques used which would help towards making our trailer more professional and realistic. Mostly for this research YouTube was our source as many teaser trailers from all genres of films are there to look at free. Later to plan the research and everything that was looked into I used Blogger to upload my findings and thoughts about our own work.

Analysing teaser trailers• After looking at many trailers I picked a few that I thought

were effective and fit in with my own work and analysed them, I did this by using the ‘grab’ programme on Apple Macs and dragged and dropped each shot from the trailer into comic sans where you can choose your own layouts and used the pictures down the left and right along side them explaining each shot and how its effective. In doing this I found it was easy to look more closely into effects, music and camera angles used into creating the right atmosphere for a movie.

• Another effective way of analysing a trailer was by embedding a YouTube video onto blogger where I could analyse right onto my blog and not use each separate shot which I found to be much easier.

Looking into horror trailers;• When reaching the

decision to create a horror/thriller trailer my partner and I looking into several different horror trailers, including ‘The Amityville Horror’, ‘A nightmare on elm street’ and ‘what lie beneath’ which I found to be very effective and inspiring.

Magazine and film poster• The two ancillary tasks to

go along side the film trailer were a poster and a magazine front cover so the next stage of research was to look in depth at film poster and particularly the horror/thriller genre, although the first stage was to look at any genre for the basic techniques used. Two posters I looked at were ‘The Amityville Horror’ and ‘What lies Beneath’ which I felt worked particularly well.

• The same process used for analysing trailers was used for the film posters, the picture was uploaded onto blogger where I analysed the picture and wrote about it in detail, this gave me a great understanding of techniques and conventions of horror trailers and how to attract attention, I looked specifically at the fonts and effects used for horror trailers and how they differ from say a romantic comedy, this came in very useful when creating my own poster. I also looked into posters that I felt didn’t work so well and analysed ‘befriended’ which I felt was plain and uninteresting.

Film poster

Magazine front cover• The magazine front cover was last to research

and I started looking at magazines such as ‘total film’ and ‘empire’ for ideas. I found that on the magazine with articles about a film the actress/actor was used out on there own unlike the film poster as this could be seen as offensive to some people. In the case of our magazine cover we decided to use the actress out of character, as the clothes for the film were quite dull and casual and would not have fitted on a magazine to promote a new film.

Tests

• To get used to Final Cut Express my partner and I did a test with the programme and camera by filming a chase scene as practise which help us get used to importing, slowing/speeding, using the effects, adding titles and mostly cutting and using different layers.

Location scouting• Using a digital camera we location scouted and

anywhere we felt fitted with a horror we photographed and took a note whilst using actors to stand in shot to get a feel how it would look when filming for real. We also recorded the time of day we did this and decided the right time we should go and film, we thought around 4-6 at winter would be appropriate lighting for a horror atmosphere. These images were them uploaded onto a slide using Photobucket and placed onto my blog.

Editing • Using Final Cut Express for most of

the footage and editing we uploaded the footage into the Mac computers and this made every shot separate which came in very useful when cutting our shots down.

• The effects were all on Final Cut Express as well however Garage Band was used for the music where we chose most appropriate sound effects and music which was then saved and opened into final cut express which could be dragged and dropped into a new layer on a timeline in final cut express, also making sure that all sound from the filming was muted as there was some talking through the shots and amateur noises in the background such as birds, cars, planes ect.

Music• We decided that the best way to make

the music fit was to do all editing and cutting first, even adding titles and then cut the music to the shots and faded in and out at different scenes so it all flowed well together.

• Unfortunately some footage was too dark which meant lightening using colour balance on Final Cut Express and this proves time consuming but created a nice effect as the shots look like they were all filmed at the same time. The footage was then uploaded to YouTube where it could be downloaded onto blogger and viewers could make their comments.

Creating the film magazine front cover

• The poster was created using Photoshop which I found to be extremely easy as I had previously used it in school and as a hobby.

• The image of a face (main character close up) was added to a new layer where it was changed into black and white and upped contrast using burning and dodging tools and curves, this created a more dramatic effect that would be likely on a horror film poster.

• A jigsaw pattern was then overlaid and the opacity changed to give an odd look. Magazine cut outs of lips and eyes were then scanned in and cut out to sit over the original photo which looked very odd and fitted well.

• Titles were then simply added and effects (inner glow, drop shadows and strokes) for fonts were used and placed around the face.

• I then annotated the magazine front cover on flickr

Creating the poster• The magazine front cover was the

last to do which was also completed on Photoshop.

• We found and used a masthead from an exciting film magazine (total film) and then followed the colour scheme of red, gold, black and white which was also taken into consideration when choosing what the main character should wear for the picture of the front cover.

• Drop shadows and strokes were the main effects used and each text had its own layer (a few linked to move in one section).

• I then annotated this on flickr