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

Throughout the A2 project, I used a variety of different forms of media technology in order to create a successful trailer, film poster and magazine cover. Throughout the different stages, different technology was used. This varied from digital cameras to editing software and design software.

Throughout the research stage of my coursework, various different computer software programmes and websites were used in order for the research to be done successfully. The first part of my research stage was to carry out a quantitative audience research survey, asking a variety of questions about horror films. This primary research created for us a first-hand understanding into what our target audience would like to see from our film. In order to reach our audience, I created a survey on QuestionPro, a website for designing surveys, collecting data and analysing results. The website allowed me to easily create a survey on to a pre-set template. In order to distribute this survey, I used a free form of advertising on social networking sites, Twitter and Facebook. QuestionPro then calculated the results; therefore it was a straightforward process of me transferring these results onto graphs that I created on Microsoft Excel.  I then transferred the created graphs onto a Microsoft PowerPoint slideshow in which I presented on my blog. Therefore, before we even started the templates, three different examples of software were used.

However, the research part of the project was not over yet. Part of the research was to analyse existing texts of existing trailers, magazines and posters around the genre. This was in order to have an idea of what has already been done, and to familiarise ourselves with the codes and conventions of each product within the genre. To access these set texts, I used websites such as YouTube in order to find existing trailers. This allowed me to easily access the trailers, and I could watch them over and over again. Before web 2.0, it would have been impossible to do so; the only place trailers were accessible would be before feature films on VCR’s or before the feature film in the cinema. On top of this, I used Google in order to find existing film posters and magazine front cover features. Since the creation of web 2.0, this has become easy to do, as I was only a matter of clicks away from finding another text to analyse. Web 2.0 describes the World Wide Web sites that use technology beyond the static pages of earlier web sites. Web 2.0 allows users to interact with each other in a social media dialogue as it creates a virtual community in contrast to web sites where people are limited to the passive viewing of content. Through web 2.0, websites such as blogs, social networking sites and video sharing sites now benefit independent movie companies like ours.

 For the development and creation of my templates for the magazine and the film poster, I used software that I was very familiar with, Microsoft Publisher. Microsoft Publisher is an editor and layout tool for creating publications, and in this case, film poster and magazine templates. Having used this software for years before, including in the development of my music magazine as AS level, this was pretty straight forward for me. The whole Microsoft Office software package was vital to my entire project, with Microsoft Word also being used when I was creating call sheets, which informed the cast and crew of the dates of the shoots, the destinations and the contact numbers needed.

Social media proved to be an integral tool to the project. By the use of a Facebook group, as a group we uploaded our joint work including the synopsis, the call sheets and the risk assessment in case these documents were misplaced or lost. This was also how we distributed our call sheets to our actors. Rather than giving them a hard copy, we sent the file over to them so they can decide whether to print it off, have it on their phone, or on their computer. This was also beneficial when negotiating the time of the shoots due to the personal commitments of the actors, so we could all come to a mutual agreement as to when we film.

For the creation of my magazine front cover and my poster, I used a piece of software called Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is a graphics editing programme which allows me to create a range of publications as well as editing photos in great detail. Within the creation of my Little White Lies magazine, I had to alter the original image incredibly for it to go in line with the codes and conventions of the magazine. On the front page of Little White Lies, a hand painted picture is always apparent, however I did not have the skills to successfully pull this off. Instead, I used Photoshop to alter an image I took of our killer. I began by using the lasso tool to crop around the mask, and then I changed the brightness and the contrast of the image. Using two different layer copies, I managed to create a painted effect by altering the strokes, bevel and emboss and colour overlay edits. I then decided to create an outer glow on the image to get the feeling of supernatural, and I also done this by using drop shadows and the outer glow tool on Photoshop. 
With my film poster, I used a combination of Microsoft Publisher and Adobe Photoshop. I felt that Publisher was straighter forward to organise and put together. However, in order for my actual image to look effective when placed on the magazine, I altered the image on Photoshop. I began by adding a darkened effect into the eyes of the mask, because I didn’t want the killers eyes to be completely visible. Secondly I reformed the contrast and brightness of the image and added a black and white effect. I then saved the image as a JPEG and opened it in Microsoft Publisher. For the font, I used a website that generates custom fonts called Dafont. I decided on a font called SF Gushing Meadow because of the horror effect added.

We shot our entire trailer using a camera which was provided by the media department within my sixth form. This professional style camera we used allowed us to get professional looking shots. However, we found that the editing stage proved to be the most time consuming. In order to create our non-linear trailer, we used a piece of software named Serif Movie Plus. Serif Movie Plus is an example of video editing software that allows users to edit digital videos and digital images. I found this software easy to use, as it allowed us to easily import and edit all of our footage from the shoots. The software was stress-free to play around with, and crop shots down to the appropriate length, and we could also move the order of the shots around to see where they looked best in our trailer. 

Play speed edit

A useful tool for us was the shot filter tool. Due to the availability of our actors, a lot of our shots in the woods were shot in pure daylight, which wasn’t ideal as we wanted our shots to be a bit darker. Therefore, through the use of the filter tool, it allowed us to change the shots to make them look darker. One particular filter we used was called ‘half and half’, which was under ‘greyscale’. Greyscale shots add an element of black and white to them, as it evens out each individual pixel of the shot, which added a darker feel to each shot, which made it more appropriate to our trailer. We also used red filters on some of our shots to create meaning. We also included a panning shot of the group of teens drinking, and the camera panned round many times. In order for the panning to speed up on the edit, we chopped the clip down on Serif Movie Plus into a number of different clips. In order to create the effect of the camera panning 360 degrees and speeding up, we set a different play speed for each individual clip. Other elements to our trailer that were possible due to Serif Movie Plus were cross fades and captions. The only problem we faced during the editing stages was that we had to edit on the computers within our sixth form, as they had the software installed. With the computers being slow, as they all run under the same domain system, we sometimes faced issues when altering the speed of our shots, as sometimes the video playback would be slow. However, we found that when we used the school computers at off-peak times, such as after school, the computers ran at normal speed.

Before red filter

After red filter

Before greyscale

After grey scale

Once the editing process was completed, we worked alongside a sound engineer, and together we created a soundtrack for our trailer. For the soundtrack, a piece of software called Cubase was used, and through this we added music and sound effects over top of our trailer, to create our final product.