Final Cut

Evaluation Part 4

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

i movie

For the more basic editing to our teaser trailer we decided to do this on I movie as final cut express can be used better for the more advanced editing.

Final Cut Express 4

For the more advanced and final stages of the editing we used final cut express

Blogger

Blogger has been very useful for us in our media work, it is a brilliant alternative to just writing on pages and pages with the risk of loosing them. Blogger is an online website which lets you add text, audio and video to your posts. The posts which you create online can then be either saved as a draft or published this means anyone who is a follower of yours or who has your URL can see your posts. this makes work much easier to manage as you don't need folders to carry around or a memory stick, everything is saved on the Internet. We also used this for our AS work and because it was very beneficial we are using it again.

Evaluation Part 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback? 

we have been told that we have got some good shots so far in our trailer. We had a shot in which we do a panning shot at the bottom of a surrounding cliff in which it ends with a quick cut to a puddle of water, but from the feedback our media teacher gave us we found that if we zoomed into the cliff face at the end of the shot then zoom out of the puddle it would look better. We also learnt that our shots were slightly too long and we would need to edit them to make the trailer more effective. Another issue we had to address was the lighting. I went up to the moors to test out the different types of lighting we would need to film at night. first of all we found that the moonlight was nowhere near enough because you couldn't see even a few feet in-front of you. the second lighting we tested was a torch, we found that the torch light focuses to brightly on one spot and so we couldn't use it.Now we have changed from a short film to a teaser trailer there are only a few shots already taken which we will use from the moors.

Now we have taken the shots for the trailer we have again had audience feedback, we were told that with the grey scale beginning with white flashes they should be in sync with the beat of the music and only appear when the antagonist appears on screen. Also we made the cut of where one of our characters wakes up much quicker so its more effective. The feedback we received also helped us learn along with the trailer research that some of the shots we had taken were too long for a teaser trailer and needed to be cut down (elliptical editing).

One of the main things i received from the audience feedback was the want for more killing and a final fright. We have learnt that the audience needs a real shock in the trailer to intrigue them into watching the film, so now towards the end of our trailer we have added some killings and also a final scare.

Evaluation Part 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The combination of the ancillary texts and the main product is very effective as this is the main way to market our film and appeal to our target audience of 15-30.

Here is the poster for our film The poster consists of two separate images combined The silhouette on the right is the image which has been added to the original image. The poster is very dark and leaves much to the imagination. Due to the research into film poster i noticed that they tend to have Magazine and newspaper comments and logo's at the top of the poster, We chose the sun as it very often reviews this particular genre, also we added in the empire logo and comment as they are very established in the film industry and their reviews are highly respected. Also the main title seems to be just below them and not right at the top where i originally thought. The tag line generally goes across the centre of the poster, This tag line is done in a sans-serriff font as this is commonly used in the horror genre as it has sharp edges. At the foot of the poster is the time of release and a condensed version of the credits (billing block). Either side of the credits there is the official rating of the film and the production logo.

This is our front cover for our movie magazine. I came up with the name of the magazine "End credits" as it links in with films. Again we learnt the typical layout from the research into magazine front covers. The main title is situated just a little bit down from the top where the contents of the magazine are. Also most horror magazines have a number of small pictures usually down at the left hand side of the cast of the film the piece is centered on or the actors/actresses featured in some kind of list/countdown. The image we used was the sihllouette used in the movie poster. This is typical in many magazines with the one big main image down the centre of the page with the other text printed over the top. The issue number and date the magazine was published are just about the main title in very small writing. You can see three little strips to the left of the magazine, These are so people know the main features inside the magazine without having to open it, these are the most exciting bits used to entise the reader to purchase the magazine. As You can see there is a red colour theme used throughout the cover.

We got the idea to do this from From the empire magazine who use colour themes linking to the film the magazine features itself on. We have used red as the film is a slasher and it connotes blood. Empire was the main inspiration for research into film magazines as it is probably the most promonant a most respected movie magazine on the market.

Storyboard and production plan

Storyboard Sheet 1

Storyboard Sheet 2

Production plan

mise-en-scene, props and casting

Cast

Alex Snowden

Alex is my media partner and we do the filming and screenplay as a pair. We worked together along with George Needham in our AS coursework last year and had it screen at bradford film festival.

Tom Hunter

Tom hunter is one of the main actors we used in our teaser trailer, one of the main reasons we used him is because he is 18 which is aroundthe age of the target audience we are attempting to reach with our media.

Ben Garvey

This is me, Director and screenplay writer along with alex

Theo Wightman

Theo is in our media class and is himself doing a teaser trailer. He is also a drama student so we thought he would be good on the acting from. Like Tom he too is 18 so again reaches our target audience.

Props

 We wanted to use a typical movie style kitchen knife as it follows the conventions of a real media product. The knife helps people to easily identify what genre (horror) the trailer is. The main influence in the using of this knife was Halloween which made it iconic to the horror industry.

This is the black hoodie we choose for the murderer to use in our film. There are two main reasons why we used this hoodie. The first reason is because it was black and this is very traditionally used in horror films. The second point is because it zips fully so hides the identity of the killer creating a narrative enigma. We wanted a hoodie that covers the face because in our horror research we watched a film called Dead mans shoes by Shane Meadows in which a mask is used by the killer near the start of the film and it made him look wierd and menacing.

The software

I movie

 For the more basic editing to our teaser trailer we decided to do this on I movie as final cut express can be used better for the more advanced editing. i movie is very simple to use as it only does a limited ammount of tasks but this was perfect for the early editing stages of the teaser trailer such as deciding which clips we should but where, and which clips we should delete. We also added a greyscale lense to the beginning of our short trailer as it helps show the clip is a past event.

 

Final Cut Express 4

For the more advanced and final stages of the editing we used final cut express, This isa much better editing software and is even used in hollywood by directors such as francis ford coppola. This software has two different screens to edit with but does require you to know what you are doing to even get started. We had a media technition at our school to help teach us the basics so we could begin editing.

 

Garage Band

to create a soundtrack for our media product we could use garage band 3 which is installed on the mac computers at school. This again is quite a basic level of software ideal for a short soundtrack needed for a teaser trailer.

 

Another option we are going to use also is the use of some copyright free sounds

http://www.videocopilot.net/

Here are the two packs

- http://www.videocopilot.net/products/proscores/

- http://www.videocopilot.net/products/dsfx/