How did you use media

technologies in the construction and evaluation

stages? By Eden Taylor

How did you make use of

photography in planning your Trailer/Poster/

Magazine

Camera Skills

How did you make use of photography in planning/constructing your trailer?Usually I found the use of photography particularly helpful and one of the main aspects that I used within my own trailer as I experimented with the idea (suggested by that of the Juno teaser Trailer) of using an animation sequence of images put together to suggest a sense of movement, atmosphere, colour and overall narrative, in stead of actually live footage.

As soon as I thought of using my school as the basis and scene for my animation about a young boy at school, I instantly found myself grabbing a camera and exploring different footage and objects that I found very stereotypical and interesting around school. For instance I felt that the fire bell in particular suggested this power over the school students in the way it announces the start and end of day as well as when classes are over and begin. This would make a very good and strong start to that of my trailer. I also found other stereotypical scenes within the school such as the layout of certain class rooms and the gym that I could then experiment with creating a cartoon replica within Illustrator ready to animate accordingly.

I felt that as my trailer was not stereotypical in the fact it does not require any live footage and is therefore heavily supported on my photographic observations and the idea of replicating stereotypes and scenes within schools that my audience will be able to quickly grasp the concept of being taken on a short journey around school and the different class rooms.

How did you make use of photography in planning/constructing your Poster/Magazine?In the construction and planning of my magazine and poster I found the use of photography was particularly important in the way that the images appeared to be the initial eye catching center piece to the majority of the research I found within both the magazine and the poster. With both the magazine and poster I found myself constantly taking several photo shoots of my main character in costume and in character. This gave me a variety of shots and a starting point to start experimenting with in Photoshop or Illustrator to create a strong and eye catching front cover and image on my poster. I set up photo shoots where I brought into school the different stereotypical objects such as a bow tie, braces, glasses ect that brought my character to life as well as placing him in a blank environment so I was then able to place him in any situation or background that I felt I would experiment with. I also felt it was important that my model was in character when taking the shots, such as placing him behind a desk for my photograph on my poster and perhaps a thumbs up for my magazine suggesting a all round good issue. I felt that is he acted within character this would not also strengthen the stereotype I was going for but attract the attention and suggest a theme to my audience of my trailer. As well as using my own photographs I also found myself advertising some of my class mates films as sub headings, titles and of course using their images but slightly modifying them to fit my the purpose in which I needed them to within my magazine in particular.

How did your camera/editing skills develop as your trailer progressed? At first I felt that my camera skills were pretty decent on the basis of taking photography and media studies for two years now but I have never had the idea of dressing a model up as a stereotypical ‘Geek’ so this was a challenge in itself as I have also never worked alongside my model before but overall I found him fun to work with and my shoots were quick and simple. Last year I tended to stick to the automatic setting of my camera to keep my shots safe, yet I felt they all appeared to be on one level of focus. This year as my trailer was based on this idea of animation I felt that I needed to use the macro setting in order to really capture the detail and close ups of some of the objects such as the school clock and bell that I really needed to grasp their look and the detail. I also learnt how to set up the photo shoot with my model more appropriately with using a blank background behind him so that I could easily cut him out within Photoshop and edit anything later in the process. I also felt that I took more direction towards my photo shoots now I have more confidence in asking my models to do exactly what I expected of them and wanted them to look like as the main focus was on the idea of his ‘Geek’ character. I few shots were missing or I found myself also redoing some of the photo shoots that I felt worked but that a few shots were missing in that I could have slightly used a different position or facial expression so I was not afraid to redo some of the work or try different versions and compare them against one another on my blog.

Photoshop

Photoshop: Photoshop this year I tended to use only the production and experimentation within my poster and magazine cover. I found when constructing each one that use of layers was particularly useful in each sentence of font, an image or an effect appeared on separate layers which allowed me to edit quickly on each layer several times to get different effects and gave me room to experiment without directly effecting any of the other layers of my poster/magazine. Having so many different tools would initially appear rather confusing at first but within the programme itself it offers and labels help all over the programme. For example: I found that if I was unsure of what a certain tool was I would hover my cursor over the icon and it would instantly tell me what the tool was. I found the programme was also easy to navigate around in that everything was labelled under icons such as effects, view, file.. Just like a word document would.

Photoshop allowed me to insert text, images, colours, shapes as well as being able to manipulate any of these to fit the purpose of both my magazine and poster. For example I wanted to exaggerate my idea of using cartoon and the atmosphere of being at school so I create an effect of my character within my poster to look like a cartoon pencil drawing of him in the perspective of a students doodle that would be present at school. This took several layers of the original photograph and several trail and error attempts at creating this effect. Firstly I had to find edges on one layer of the image before enhancing the lightness and contrats.

Any problems? I found that although I have used Photoshop regularly enough to grasp the concept and the tools and acquired the knowledge of how to use and create different effects and layers, I found the problem lied within the difficulty of keeping up to speed with all the different layers as id have to remember to name each layer exactly with what is present. By naming each layer this could help me know exactly what's on each layer so that if I needed to slightly edit anything that I could easily and quickly pull the layer up and change it within having any diverse effect on the other layers. Another reminder that I had to do was to save each production as a Photoshop file that I could reopen to work on the next lesson as well as remembering to save each stage as j.peg file so that I could simply upload each image and stage of progression onto my blog. This year I also had to learn to categorise everything into neat and specific folders of work within my H drive the N drive and also the D drive so that my work was clearly labelled and I knew exactly where and what work was in each.

Photoshop Tools

Illustrator

Illustrator: As my main focus and unique style of my Trailer was the use of experimenting with animation one of the first stages before actually animating my images were to create them and produce cartoon line drawings of stereotypical scenes and objects that make up the atmosphere of a school environment. I got constructed these drawings from the photographic observations I took using the camera and exploring the schools premises. I used my own photographs as a template for my cartoons and simply using the pen tool as well as the marquee tools to create shapes that I was then able to manipulate, pull, subvert and bend the drawing into all shapes and sizes by dragging the pin points to where I wanted them to be. After creating simple outlines I felt the idea of a graphic drawing needed to be exaggerated so began using the pain bucket to pick out shapes and fill each one with a block colour. To create the first stage within the animation process I had to simply cop and past my drawing several times and using the pen tool manipulate the structure to suggest a slight movement and repeating this process I would then acquire a sequence of illustrations ready to place into Adobe Flash and animate.

Illustrator Drawing of the Bell:Looking at the animation creating for the clock I felt that it needed a break in between the two different animations to emphasise the importance and suggestion of time passing so therefore I thought something would support the idea of time passing and the end of school would be the school bell which I got the inspiration from the fire bell shot taken around the school premises. This would be a great interactive a sharp start to a trailer particular on the basis of no narrative this would instantly attract my audience attention as when students here this bell it symbolises a movement around school and the bell is used as a powerful tool around school. This was the drawing stages of the animation again within Illustrator. As you can see there are 4 drawings but two are the same which will be the start and the end of sequence. This animation consisted of only 3 key frames as the less key frames the faster the bell will be moving. I drew the centre of the bell separate to that of the arm so that I could animate both separately later on.  This animation is simply done using still photographs being placed next to one another just like in a flip book where a drawing appears to be moving. The less drawings the faster the character would move.

Illustrator: I found that using Illustrator was very similar to that of Photoshop but I felt hat it seemed to offer more in the way of I can take apart layers of work that I produce into components that I can then manipulate. For example if I were to be given a flattened image within Photoshop I couldn’t pick a certain part of that image and move it or cop and paste it where as I found with Illustrator I could create and manipulate as well as take apart any object I liked

Any Problems: One problem that I found with using Illustrator is that it is not as neatly set out and easily navigable around the programme as there are far more tools and effects and shot cuts that as a user you have to acquire that knowledge by simply experimenting and exploring by yourself around the programme. Again I also had to remember to label the layers so that I knew exactly what was on each layer and to save as j.pegs so that I could import them into the Adobe Flash’s library ready to import and start animating together.

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash Example of the Clock Animation: The first stage of animation was the number of different drawings and copied of the clock being placed into flash. There were 4 layers to this animation – •Layer 1:  includes the background in this case a grey wall a simplistic colour that the clock will stand out clear on. •Layer 2: are my several images of the clock and the hands moving •Layer 3: the mask and reveal technique is placed over the top each time a different section is revealed as previously shown before on the title animation I produced earlier this month. •Layer 4: holds any animation techniques such as moving the image closer, size or transformations between shots (continuity editing) First of all I placed my full image into flash on layer 2 and simply copied this key frame several times to produce replicas ready to place my mask and reveal image over the top that will hide the majority of the clock each time moving the mask around the clock in each key frame producing the effect that the clock will be spinning around revealing itself stage by stage on the wall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68ex68QO9MY

Here is the simple design stages broken down for you in Flash and saved as a Movie film onto YouTube where I have allowed my viewers to see the mask and reveal technique.

The second sequence is when the clock appears spinning around again and reveals its numbers this time as it goes resulting is a passing of time. This is done by copying the full image of the clock again and copying the key frame several times again in this case 13 frames. One for each number would around the time frame well. In this case we work backward on the time scale by in the last key frame we would see all the numbers present and simply using the eraser erase the number 12 and so on for each key frame erasing the next number backwards on the clock as when played we would see it the right way round on the screen as if the clocks numbers were being drawn in. as the hands move with them pointing to the number being revealed.

The easiest part of this sequence was the way that the clock appears to moves backwards into the distance hanging back on the wall. This is done by 2 key frames at most. The first frame consisted of placing the clock at close up as we are watching the clock spin and reveal and then another key frame at the end of that sequence I moved the clock to the back of the left and corner and reduced the size to look in prospective to my audience. I then using a default button on flash clicked create ‘inbetweening’ and this creating the transition automatically resulting in a slow flowing movement of the clock becoming small and looking as if we are being moved along the corridor.

How did you use video/sound

recording to get audience feedback

and in construction of your Trailer?

Audacity/YouTube

YouTube: I used YouTube mainly this year on the basis of researching and planning but I did also find

it useful when searching for some sound effects that I later used within my final trailer. It is a widely used and very popular search engine for mainly music and film trailers but I managed to find some sound effects based on live footage of lions roaring in the wild, this I then used in audacity to crop down and manipulate the sound into fitting in with my animation where you can see my brother roaring like lion in the opening titles which mimics as a parody of MGM’s animated logo of a Lion Roaring. I thought that by using my brother in Parody with this connection also brought forth the idea of a comedy aspect within my trailer. I also used a clip from YouTube of a school bell ringing that I was able to repeat this process and manipulate the sound into the animation of my school bell.

This is also where I manages to get the soundtrack of Alice Cooper- Schools out for summer.

Audacity: Capturing the sound was made easier than ever with the help of Audacity where you simply

insert an audio cable into both the microphone and headphone imports on the computer which take the sound out from YouTube and travels along the cable and back into the computer and recording it into Audacity.

Audacity also allowed me to manipulate any sound by cutting the clip in sections and deleting parts just like the way I did through Adobe Premiere Elements. Using this programme made it much easier for me to grasp the concept of Audacity rather quickly. I was also able to fade in and out the sound effect where I needed them to come in or out of my clip. To place and upload into YouTube I had to export each sound effect as an mps and place into the Flash file library and place onto a separate layer for audio and match the sound up to sync with that of my animation. I then had to export my whole trailer as Movie file before uploading onto YouTube and copying the hyperlink across to my blog.

Gloucester University

Gloucester University: Taking my ideas into the programme ‘Premiere’ didn’t seem to work when inserting any type of sound as it would not sync to the individual key frames, so I have invested in the help of a small work shop at Gloucester University today and got some help from some of the students within ‘Adobe After Effects’ where it would help me to download and allow me to add my sound effects into my trailer.  

Problem No.1: This soon became another problem as for some reason again this programme decided to not allow me to download my sound effects and would not sync the sound effects exactly with the correct key frames within the animation. I was quickly able to over come this problem as they perhaps suggested that I could use ‘Audacity’ to record my sound effects again and to export them onto the desktop when edited to the length of sound needed to sync with the length of animation within ‘Flash’ and to then import this sound into the ‘flash’ library. To import the sound effects into ‘flash’ I needed to firstly insert a bank key frame at the start of the animation where I needed the sound to begin and then another blank key frame where I wished my sound to then finish. I then dragged this sound effect from the library into the first blank key frame it automatically filled this gap between the two ending on the last blank key frame. To get a better finish to the sound I thought that it needed to fade out as my brother is ‘roaring’ and then slowly ends the roar rather than ending suddenly, this is where I went back into ‘Audacity’ and then using the effects I highlighted the end of the sound and faded the sound out. Seemed to work rather well and as I was on a ‘role’ as such… I then thought how a lion has a variety of sound effects so I went back into ‘Audacity’ and then repeated this idea with another lion roaring to create a variation within the next animated sequence of roaring.

Taking my ideas into the programme ‘Premiere’ didn’t seem to work when inserting any type of sound as it would not sync to the individual key frames, so I have invested in the help of a small work shop at Gloucester University today and got some help from some of the students within ‘Adobe After Effects’ where it would help me to download and allow me to add my sound effects into my trailer.

Problem No.2  This soon became another problem as for some reason again this programme decided to not allow me to download my sound effects and would not sync the sound effects exactly with the correct key frames within the animation. I was quickly able to over come this problem as they perhaps suggested that I could use ‘Audacity’ to record my sound effects again and to export them onto the desktop when edited to the length of sound needed to sync with the length of animation within ‘Flash’ and to then import this sound into the ‘flash’ library. To import the sound effects into ‘flash’ I needed to firstly insert a bank key frame at the start of the animation where I needed the sound to begin and then another blank key frame where I wished my sound to then finish. I then dragged this sound effect from the library into the first blank key frame it automatically filled this gap between the two ending on the last blank key frame. To get a better finish to the sound I thought that it needed to fade out as my brother is ‘roaring’ and then slowly ends the roar rather than ending suddenly, this is where I went back into ‘Audacity’ and then using the effects I highlighted the end of the sound and faded the sound out. Seemed to work rather well and as I was on a ‘role’ as such… I then thought how a lion has a variety of sound effects so I went back into ‘Audacity’ and then repeated this idea with another lion roaring to create a variation within the next animated sequence of roaring.

Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint: This programme was particularly useful when planning and evaluating as it allows for a large mass of information to be placed on several slide that’s appear visually more exiting to my viewers when placed onto my blog. I also found that as a viewer I could also flick through the slide one at a time to suit the speed and needs of me the viewer. PowerPoint also allowed me as a user to easily use large fonts as headings, font colours to suggest an importance to the text displayed as well as subheadings and information within text boxes along with images and hyperlinks that illustrate the given information. Here is a clear example of using a PowerPoint to get across large sums of information in one document. I have also used other power points that you will be able to see on my blog for some of the other evaluation questions along with research and planning throughout my project this year.

How did you use video/sound

recording to get audience feedback?

Video Camera

How I used a Video camera within my Evaluation: Within my evaluation as well as using PowerPoint's, essays and Publisher to display my evaluation I felt that using a Video camera would not only provide me with an quick and easy access to valuable information but having the camera set up in the interviews I felt this allowed for a much more relaxing environment as well as room for free thought about the subject. From gaining this information it then allows me to either upload the video straight into my blog via a YouTube account and hyperlink or to either just take the audio, both allowing for a visual and interact response to some vital questions. This is where we set ourselves up within a ‘dairy Room’ and loaded up our work into the computers with the camera placed steadily on a tripod and pressed record to get a natural and free expression based discussion about my work. I used this idea of filming live interviews though just audio and both video and audio as well as a director commentary which also allowed me to reflect upon my own work throughout this year and how I feel about what I have accomplished. This also gave scope for such reflective ness as what I would do if I were to repeat this brief over and what I felt I learnt this year in terms of both research and production.

Here is an unedited and the edited version example of some footage taken in an interview to some of my audiences and their interpretations of my production work this year. Focused on an analysis of my poster.

Unedited:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT_pgLbWWhQ Edited: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzirX3jxWjI

How I subverted the idea of using a Video Camera: Having such a unique twist of a narrative throughout my trailer left me with no use of a video camera and the use of live footage where other people were able to produce camera angles and different effects such as zooms and pans ect although I soon found a way of imitating this idea though the use of animating my images and cartoons together using an ‘in-betweening’ effect that creates the impression of a movement and extra frames being places ‘in-betweening’ images that appears to the audience of being at the front and travelling to the background. I have also managed to create this timeline motion that suggests a pan travelling down a corridor and through class rooms which also adds to the idea of a smooth transition between scenes of classroom such as when the fire extinguisher explodes and we are then smoothly taken to the next class room and title known as continuity editing.

Adobe Premiere Elements

Adobe Premiere: Again using Adobe Premiere for the first time this year within my evaluation was initially quite daunting at first as I was new to the programme and lacked the knowledge of how to use the tools to create the effects and to edit my audio to the way I expected. I found this programme particularly easy to use once I used the help of class mates to give me simple advice such as how to create a title page as well as persevering myself and experimenting with the tools and directions already clearly labelled within the programme itself. I decided to use Premiere Elements to document some audio response form my audience’s perspective about my trailer, poster and magazine. Although the video footage was not the main focus and I found that people tended to walk in and out of the shot so I thought the best way to deal with this minor problem was to get rid of the footage all together and just simply keeping the audio and editing out any extra sound such as sneezes, laughing or even people talking in class rooms and doors being shut as I found this very distracting. To do so Premiere allowed me to click at the point within the audio that the sound extra sound appeared to start and I simply cut the clip splitting the audio into two parts I then also clicked the end of the sound and deleted the inner section removing the distraction completely from my clips.

Adobe Premiere: As the video appeared to capture people walking across in the background and so on I decided to delete the video completely only leaving the audio for my audience to hear. I then felt that a blank black background would not visually appeal to my viewers on my blog and want to make them listen to what myself and my interviewees had to say. This is where I then decided that I could then add in some images and titles based on what the questions I asked my interviewees and their response to the question so that it matched with the audio. To do so I used the help of ‘PAINT’ programme where I could print screen my poster and magazine and simple paste them into paint and crop my poster up and save each section as j.pegs that I could later import into the library within Adobe Premiere. I was then able to make the transition between each shot and the titles a lot smoother by fading in and out each image and title together and adjusting them so that they slowing fading into one another as the question was being asked and the answers being revealed. Overall I felt that this was a lot more visually exciting and appealing for my viewers to look at on my blog. I was then able to upload the exported MP3 version to YouTube before copying the link into my post.

Adobe Premiere: The only problem that I encountered when using Premier elements is the way that when tidying up my folders of work this year or deleting unneeded work or print screens, this effected the programme and my project in the way that the programme remembers where the initial files were and if I moved any of these files it would ‘freak out’ and effect my project resulting in empty spaces of images and audio that has been moved. This is where I learnt the hard way in deleting my work before uploading them onto YouTube so I had to start again and repeat all my work for my evaluation but I will definitely not make the same mistake twice and have now created a folder for my Premier Elements and Evaluation projects.

Sound Cloud

Sound Cloud:After taking apart the audio from the video I then had the problem of just uploading the saved MP3 file and placing it onto my blog as a visual audio track that would allow my audience to simply click and listen to my evaluation and interview with my target audience. This is where I was advised through Mediachs to use create an account on http://soundcloud.com/ where it appeared to be rather similar to that of slide share but based around the uploading of audio tracks only. After creating an account I was then able to click the simple upload icon and away it went uploading my chosen MP3 audio track onto my homepage and my own personal account. This account can either be posted publicly and shared between users so I could also listen to other users audio evaluations from my class and across the globe as well as privately so that I can keep it just on my blog between my class mates, teachers and myself. To be able to post this upload on to my blog page within a new post I then was able to use a default code made for Wordpress especially where I was able to cop and paste this code straight into a new post and then a visual audio track that my viewers can interact with by clicking pause, play and rewind ect allows them to listen to my evaluation through a different type of media.