In order to make the movie trailer and essential technology I required was a camera. I was provided a Cannon video camera from school. This camera was a high quality HD camera which made the quality of my work look professional. Using the camera was straight forward to use as I didn’t have much difficulty in handling this equipment.Before the making of my trailer, I hadn’t used this technology before. Most in most of my scenes the camera was placed upon a tripod. I am familiar with a tripod as I used this in AS. The Cannon camera had an LCD screen which made it easy for me to see what I was being filmed. The camera also made Zoom in and out easy and smooth with no issues. The camera was very important because without it my trailer would have probably been filmed on a phone or a digital camera which will make the quality very low and will make it look unprofessional.

Camera

Using Fireworks was easier this year due to my familiarity with this software from my AS coursework. However while using Fireworks this year I learnt some new skills on the software. While using fireworks I was more confident in using it effectively while making my inter-titles, magazine, poster, billboard and DVD cover.A difficulty that arrived this year while using fireworks was when creating my DVD cover. I found this difficult because of the maths it involved when making the path down the middle of the page which had to be exactly 14cm apart. This was solved easily by using the ruler and grid tool the software provided or me.Fireworks was effective when it came to changing the colour of bitmaps I got of the internet from sites such as ‘dafont’. This was helpful when it came to sticking to my house style. I used fireworks to create my ancillary text (poster, magazine and DVD cover).

Fireworks

Using fireworks ensured that I was able to keep the look of the products consistent by having the same font and also being able to add effects such as a drop shadow or editing colours. Being able to use the grid and guidelines where very useful, this kept the placement of images etc. looking organised. Another useful too was the lock and disappear tool. This was very effective in making my ancillary text especially the magazine. The lock tool helped with keeping the bitmaps in place as they could get fidgety when moving things around.The disappear tool helped with making the decisions with final image as I could layer the images and choose between multiple. When creating my information box for my DVD cover, I found that fireworks was very effective. I was able to make them with no issues and was able to use the wand tool to remove any background colour e.g. images borrowed from the internet. Fireworks helped with reducing the size between texts, making text bigger in height to fill more space when needed. Without fireworks I would have been limited in making my ancillary text as there is no other software that offers the service which Adobe fireworksCS6 offers.

To create my teaser and theatrical trailer I used iMovie which is a software only available on Apple Mac IOS. I used this software to edit my scenes in becoming a trailer and putting them in order to create the clip I required. Before creating my trailers, I had not come across this software and had never used it before. Using iMovie was a first for me, at the start my skills and knowledge were very limited as I didn’t know much about the software. Before creating my final product I had a few draft products, which showed the development of my skills and also the features of iMovie I wasn’t aware of such as the ken and burn tool.IMovie was made creating my products easy and professional. I was able to add transition effects, add soundtrack, sound effects, adjust and cut my clips, and the pace of the clips, change the volume of the sound and actors, add a voice-over etc. In iMovie I was able to do a voiceover, in places where there was difficulty hearing the characters voice, I synced the voiceover with the pace in which the characters are speaking. When creating my trailer, I realised I hadn’t shot any close-ups of my characters face, however after watching tutorials on YouTube I was able to learn how to crop a moving image. Doing so helped with creating close-ups of characters when needed. While watching tutorials I also learnt how to change or background noises around the actors, in a key-scene I was able to cut out the background noise of the two actors and increasing the actual voice of the characters. This was very useful, it helped save time instead of having to reshoot the scene.

iMovie

In iMovie, I was able to edit my music to fit with the clips showing and was able to add sound effects. ‘Clip trimmer’ allowed the editing of sound to fit exactly where a certain sound effect was needed. I found this very handy when adding sound effect to fit with my intertitle. However, I found difficulty in certain of the limitations of iMovie such as little variety in transitions and lack of texts transitions available. This made it difficult when making my final product as I found myself using the same transitions a number of times within the trailer. This made the trailer look slightly unprofessional. Although I had some difficulties with iMovie, without it I would have had to use Windows movie maker which is a software which has not been updated or changed for years and is not as sophisticated as iMovie. Movie maker.IMovie made to easier to upload my product onto YouTube than other software would have. I was able to directly upload my product onto YouTube through the site meaning that I could change and update my product whenever instead of making a whole new product.

To create my intertitles and the font on all my ancillary text, I used a font site called DaFont.com. Dafont had unique fonts that isn’t common on any other site. I used san-serif font to make my fonts look youthful and modern because my audience are aimed 15-21.

I used PicMonkey, to edit the image. When taking the pcitures on my camera they were bad quality but after using this software to edit my pictures. It made the image a better quality by sharpening the image. I have come across this software from my As coursework as it helped with editing and making my image a better quality

I used Photoshop when making my billboard, this is because the equipment I needed to make my billboard wasn’t available on any other software. This was the first time of using this software therefore my skills were limited. In order to gain more knowledge I used YouTube to help me gain more knowledge.

Google was a very important part of my research and panning in the making of my trailer. I used google to find any information I needed and in finding sites such as dafont, scribd and prezi. Google was an effective search engine and made my work research easier and in more depth. This year I learnt how to get more accurate results on searching for things such as putting more effective key words.

To present my work I used blogger, to was familiar with this site as it was used to present my work also in AS. Posting, embeding and linking to other sites were easy this year because I had done all this last year. Blogger was an easy way of presenting my work to my teachers, as blogger is such a well known it was easy for others to access my blog. Blogger is an interactive site and is easy to promote my blog through social media which I did in other to get feedback from my peers. Compared to last year I got over 1,000 more views on my blog and comments form people. Blogger allowed me to embed by trailer onto my site meaning my potential audience didn’t need to go elsewhere to search form my products. I was also able to embed research from other sites like prezi, slideshare, flickrslideshow etc. Blogger is easy for my readers/viewer to navigate through as it goes in order of post and also has a tab down the tight hand side (blog archieve) where the readers can search for what they are after.

Blogger

To present my trailer and teaser trailer I used YouTube. Unlike some of my other technology, this was the first time of using YouTube as my coursework was based around uploading my work onto this site. After finish my editing my scenes on iMovie, I directly uploaded onto YouTube. This was the first time of using this website so I wasn’t familiar with any thing the site required. However as I used the site more my skills started to develop more and learnt how to make the videos public learnt how to add notes and annotations and also learnt how to link to other sites. I embedded all my YouTube clips onto my blog making easier for my audience to get to and is an easier way for them to leave feedback if they feel the need to. Without this very popular site it would have been difficult to show my clips to my teachers and my audience. YouTube was a very essential site in the making of my A2 coursework.

YouTube

Thinglink was a very enjoyable and useful site in my A2 coursework. As I was familiar with the site I had no problems when it came to using the sites as I new the functions of the site already. Thinglink allowed me to upload images and annotate on them without destroying the appearance of the image. These annotations were called labels, theses were. In other to see the annotations the user has to hover the mouse the label or symbol. This will show a text box at that will appear with the information I have put in. This is a fun and interactive way of presenting my work Without Thinglink annotating my work would have been difficult because it would have been hand written which would make it look unattractive and hard to read.

Prezi is an online website I have previously used in as to present my work in a unique and stylish way. Although I am familiar with prezi I still had challenges with the site as I didn’t know how to write around a text and to order the slides. In my Prezi presentations i used PowerPoint and saved the images as a picture to upload on prezi. Prezi has different backgrounds and transition for the slides which makes the image look attractive and keeps the potential viewers interested.Prezi was easy to embed onto my blog and for my teachers to see and made it less boring when looking at.

Prezi