Question 4 – How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Tech Planning and research: Internet: When researching the history of horror to see how the genre has developed over time and where it first began, the use of the internet and search engines such as Bing.com and Google.com were essential. It allowed me to look up the older and classic horror films such as Frankenstein and see how the genre has become more and more extreme and how different themes reflected societies fears over time and how horror developed into the current craze of teen slasher horrors that currently flood the already choked market. Youtube.com was also valuable as it allowed me to watch countless horror trailers and pick out conventions that appeared in all trailers, such as length and titles and pick out conventions of horror, such as popular locations and shots that kept appearing, POV shots of the killer, running shots and the pace of editing increasing throughout the trailer to the climax of the action, this then allowed me to have a basic structure for y trailer and made the construction of it far easier. My skills on researching were already fairly competent, which allowed me to sift through relevant information and pick out the bits I wanted and the use of programmes such as Microsoft Word allowed me to coherently display the information I had gathered and then use it develop my trailer and narrative.
Construction: Trailer: Camera– One of the most essential pieces of technology we used for the construction of our trailer was the camera used to film with. The camera was a HD camera which allowed us to pick up on detail, which was good at times, but not at others as the detail in the picture made it obvious that the props we used to represent the drugs were just props. For example we used sugar to represent an anonymous powder, but close up it looks fairly obvious that this is sugar, our main core audience of drug users will recognise that it looks to ‘bitty’ to be a drug, as the powders are usually a lot finer then the consistency of sugar. So this was a minor draw back but this will simply add to the overall underground feel of our film and the camera was essential for filming and good even in dim light.
ďƒ&#x; sugar is not a good subsitute for drugs with a HD camera.
The tripod was also essential for filming our trailer, as due to being let down by our original cast we only had the three of us in the group and we were all playing characters in our trailer, and so for the shots that included all three of us we needed the tripod to set the camera up on to film all three of us, an example can be seen below where we simply set the camera up on the tripod and pressed record before all three of us sat down into the shot.
The camera also had a memory card, which was good as it meant that all of our footage saved automatically and it was easy to plug the camera into the Mac’s and capture all of our footage.
Capturing/Editing – When we had finished filming, we uploaded all of our footage onto the Macs to the editing programme Final Cut so that we could edit the footage into order and add effects. The programme Final Cut was essential for us as it was not just a case of putting the shots in order; we added special effects to almost every shot to represent the effects of the drugs on our main character. Here are some examples of the shots we edited:
We edited the trees with a Ripple effect, as this was a POV shot from our main character where she was high, and so we wanted to show her hallucination and warped reality.
For this effect we looped the same shot over each other on the timeline and made one slightly behind the time of the other one and made it less opaque to create the representation of the double vision and ‘coming up’ that our protagonist was experiencing.
In this shot we filmed on the tripod so that the two separate camera shot would be exactly the same and then looped the two shots we filmed over each other; one of my friend sneaking up on me, one of me sat still and then turning; we then added the transition of a fade, so that the antagonists faded away when our main character turned to look at her.
This sequence of shots did not turn out how we originally planned, because it was impossible to edit. Originally we wanted to have me taking one long pull on the ‘spliff’ and smoking it all the way down, however I moved too much, so we edited a 8/9 minute long clip down to just *TIME* seconds and had the joint going down very quickly with fade in and fade outs to give an impression of time and our characters state of mind and then we cut to a shot of me blowing smoke at the camera when the joint reached the end.
We also needed Final Cut to edit transitions into our trailer between each shot, mostly we used fade to black as this is a convention of horror films to include darkness to keep the audience confused and of course to represent that bad things happen in the dark, an ideology that is ever present in media texts. We also needed the programme to edit our titles in our trailer, as titles are almost always completely virtually created.
We needed to include titles as a convention of trailers and to pose questions to our audience that would interest them in our narrative.
As well as this we needed to edit in the title of our film, we downloaded the font from the website dafont.com and entered it into our trailer. We chose a font from dafont.com as the fonts available on Final Cut did not seem to fit the genre of horror that our film fit into and so we opted for a distorted looking font conventional for horrors as seen below.
Sound – we also needed Final Cut to edit our music onto our trailer, we used two different songs composed by friends of ours (who gave us permission to use their work) as otherwise we were only left with the option of ambient noises created on another Mac programme or copyright free music, which we did not want to use as we were unsure of finding any that would fit with our trailer and we wanted to specifically use music that our core audience of drug users would listen to. We downloaded the music and edited it onto our trailer, changing from one song to the next at 00:49 seconds into our trailer, which was the change into the more
conventional horror based shots such as weapons and running shots, the editing also picked up pace with the music and we tried as much as possible to cut the shots with the beat of the music to make it easier for our audience to take in the visuals and to make the trailer more engaging for them. We seemed to have achieved this quite well in most cases and I have improved on the editing programme Final Cut, as I was only used to Premiere Pro (which we used in high school). I can now upload, edit, cut, add effects, change speed and add sound on a programme I had never encountered before. I have also become more confident with using a camera to film and now know the importance of researching and planning in order to create a successful media product.
Anciallry texts:
To create our Poster and Magazine cover we used the programme Phototshop cs5, which I was not confident on at all. This programme allowed me to take existing screenshots from my trailer and edit them into my poster and magazine cover. Here are some screenshots of the effects and techniques I used to construct both texts.
My key idea of a shot in my eye was taken from another poster of a film by Vertigo (poster shown below) and so I took a famous shot from my trailer and edited it into my eye in my poster. I did this by using the Warp effect and manipulating the image into my eye, to make a striking and unsettling image.
In order to add an image into my eye that was big enough to recognise, I had to use the Liquify filter in order to ‘bloat’ my eye (magnify) this also helped to represent the fact that my character was high due to her incredibly dilated pupils.
I also used the tool sharpen, which brings certain aspects of the image into focus more than others, I therefore sharpened the eye and the amin Title a great deal, as well as Blurring my skin and the cut, which then gave my skin a waxy looking texture and adds to the unsettling effect of the overall image.
The cut I used to represent some of the violence featured in my film, I took a picture of a cut from Google.com/images and edited it onto my face, then blurred it and positioned it coming from my eye, as if the character was crying blood. This will help to indicate the genre to my audience.
I am quite happy with the end result of my poster. I was unsure on layout of the title and the names of the actors, however I decided to put them in the generic places where they are found in most posters but I think they look a little plain and unfinished and could have had more effects added to them to make them more interesting such as more bevel and emboss effects and drop shadows etc, however I think the colour choice of red was accurate as it clearly indicates genre and follows conventions well, as red has long since connoted blood and violence. I think that my poster is not as good as it could be, for instance if I had more time and skill I would change the cut on my face and add blood splatters and dirt instead, as this would look more natural and effective and although I included it to indicate the genre I think it looks armature and shows my limited skills on the programme and so takes away from the overall effect of the poster, as it is clear it has been edited on. I am happy with the font used and the tag line, as well as the image in the eye, but my tentativeness with the programme let me down, although I am grateful that my skills have been much improved and I now feel more confident and am able to edit more effectively now I have experimented with the effects and have learnt what works and what does not from creating this media text.
Here are some more screenshots or creating my magazine cover and the techniques I used on Photoshop.
I wanted to show the other two characters in my film cover, as this way a progression of information can be seen from my poster, to my magazine cover and then in my trailer. I positioned them both slightly behind my main character and changed their opacity down to make them translucent and represent the part in my narrative where you are unsure if they are real or not. The opacity can be seen from the arrow showing how to change it for each image.
I added Text Boxes to my magazine cover to show the other stories covered in the magazine, which is conventional for all magazines. I then added affects to them such as Drop Shadows and Outer Glow to make them more interesting to my audience and to make the overall effect more professional.
I took screenshots from my trailer to compose my ancillary texts and cut out what I wanted from each shot by using the magic wand tool and selecting parts of the image I wanted to transfer to my main magazine cover.
I am pleased with the end result of my magazine cover, although a professional looking layout is my weakest point as I have never been very good at eye catching designs and layout, it is rather generic and unexciting, however following the conventions of a main image with text boxes around the outside of the main image, the magazine title at the top and the main story just below the main image and in slightly different text to mark it out as different is a good way for a beginner on this programme to learn, as at least I had a rough template to work with, by simplifying other magazine covers. I am still not quite happy with the layout, as I do not think that it is the most eyecatching it could be. However, I am pleased with the main image and the editing of the trees and main characters, as well as this I researched new and upcoming horror films to include as stories on my magazine cover that would be covered in the magazine to make the magazine cover more professional looking, as well as having an overall theme for my magazine as indicated by the lower masthead of ‘The Dark issue’ which indicates that this issue concentrates on horror films, as film magazines have been known to release collectors covers and have themed issues.
Blogger is the programme that I have almost no skill on whatsoever. I only just know how to log on and post the bare minimum and am frankly sick of the fact that you cannot achieve top marks unless you ‘integrate technology’. I cannot do this as I have not got the money for these technologies and have therefore never encountered BlogSpot or Flickr before and do not know how to make my blog look ‘interesting’ as personally it’s the content that counts surely? But no, instead I’m barely capable on the programme and rely on several teachers and pupils help to put my work on there.