QUESTION FOUR

HOW DID YOU USE NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?



Construction

·         With access to more advanced modern technology and an understanding of the proccess/software (cameras using SD memory cards and imovie HD editing software) we could create a more professional finish to our trailer during production and post-production. For example we could add effects to our shots to enhance the feeling of fear/shock/serenity that they give or to make it look like something else entirely. An example of this is a long shot of one of our main characters walking down a country lane [seen below] where we increased the saturation and contrast to make the image starker, and therefore, more unnatural and eerie. The newly edited image and the fact that the girl was walking slowly combined with the broken up images makes that audience feel tense and also creates a sense of equilibrium to further emphasise the contrast and disorder later seen in the trailer.

·   After downloading and extracting uncopyrighted sound from the internet*, we used garageband to edit and cut sounds to create our soundtrack. We also used sample music saved to the MACs and incorporated them into our soundtrack. The modern and simple programme, Garage Band, allowed us to easily change the tempo and edit the non diegetic sound to fit with the mood and the editing of our trailer and well as conform to the conventions of our psychological crime thriller genre. We also cut sound effects from music videos and other trailers (of all genres) by recording them on our Panasonic video camera, importing and editing them on Garage Band and iMovie.


* Youtube.com, video2mp3.net

 As we became more skilled in using this software we were able to time our trailer more precisely so that the shots, the sound, editing, anchorage, and still shots were all synchronous to one another. One of the opinions expressed in our questionnarie results that we took into accoutn, was that sound that is parallel to the genre and mood of trailers is better than contrapuntal sound.

·         We learnt how to use the Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Serif DrawPlus7.0 software’s to edit and enhance our crime scene photographs and create unique fonts that we included within our trailer. We also used these programmes to produce our poster. (click here to view our poster development process.)


This enabled us to enhance certain aspects of the still shots. For example the paleness of the “dead” body’s skin in contrast with the redness of a wound for example in our poster as seen below.

Research/Planning

·          Creating a blog on the website www.blopspot.com gave us an area with which to gather and collate our research so that it could be better analysed and each member of the group had easy access to it.

·         We used the Internet to search through www.youtube.com to search for tutorials on imovie techniques in order to brush up on our existing editing skills (uploading and using photographs) and learning new ones (how to create a green screen).  The Internet also gave us easy access to films and past trailers that we could deconstruct for inspiration and researching genre conventions.

·         As we were going to make our characters look as though they had been injured we also searched through make-up tutorials on how to create realistic looking scars, wounds and bruises and practised these before filming whilst posting photographs on deviantart, facebook and flickr.

·         We also used the Internet to research pre-existing texts and trailers to get some ideas for our own, we 'favourited' these video's on youtube so we could constantly use them as references.

·         Again, using the Internet we created a questionnaire on piratesurvey so that we could gain specific ideas from out target audience as to what they feel makes a successful/enticing film trailer.our questionnaire we made on piratesurvey at the beginning of our project let people answer our questions about our intended trailer.

Evaluation

• We posted our finished teaser trailer onto the Internet (www.youtube.com) so that we could gain feedback from the general public and gain an overall view of how it has been received. Our video was also shown at a media screening/focus group where audience gave their feedback on our final trailer.