Q4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages? Shaquile

 

Construction: final cut pro is the main program I used for video editing. As I was new to this program, initially it was difficult to get familiar with the language and unusual setting however, the more I used the program, the more familiar I became. Most of the language used was in the semantic field of video and so I had to learn about specific terminology such as ‘transitions’ ‘credits’ and ‘titles’. Transitions are the effects used in between clips and they are used to give off different effects. For example, in my trailer I used the static transition to give off the effect that the person filming the clips was using a bad camera. I also used video effect such as the camcorder effect to imply the clip was shot using a camcorder.

I used YouTube to look at video effect tutorials, which assisted me and provided tips to manipulate video clips for a desired effect. For additional help I subscribed to particular YouTube channels so whenever the person uploads a new video clip, my YouTube account will immediately inform me. I also used YouTube to upload my horror trailer as YouTube has statistical features, which inform you of who from around the world is viewing your product. It also tells you which country has viewed your product the most times and it also allows people to leave comments.

Logic pro is the program I used to record my sound effect and manipulate sounds. I also used this program to orchestrate my teaser trailer soundtrack. This was a difficult task as I found it hard to create a sound track which would compete with mainstream horror films, however, I then realised that horror soundtracks do not have to have the most impressive soundtrack and that sometimes simplistic sounds are more effective, for example in the Human centipede trailer the amount of sounds used are kept to a minimal whereas in the ‘Saw’ trailer the soundtrack was orchestrated as a as a music piece with percussion instruments.

 

Blogger is a website which has many functions, it can be used as a personal diary where you can upload your thoughts and ideas, it can be used more constructively to upload college projects and work it can also be used as a personal space to voice your opinions on specific affairs. Most importantly, a blog can be used as whatever you want it to be. My blog was by my production group ‘Tempa Productions’ to keep note of our production, research and planning/ progress of our main project: creating a horror teaser trailer. Additionally it was used to keep progress of our ancillary texts, the Horror Poster and the Horror magazine cover. The blog also allows subscribers and viewers to give feedback in a comments box, which is situated underneath every blog post.

Photoshop is the program used by many professionals such as graphic designers, video editors and art students to manipulate and enhance photos. In my project it was used for many purposes, to create the ancillary texts such as the Horror Poster and the Horror magazine cover. I found it difficult to use Photoshop as I had not used in a long time since my first media project however, as soon as I used the program I became familiar with its language and functions. Interestingly, I used Photoshop to create a significantly interesting mood board where I brainstormed images in a collage format to trigger different ideas and inspirations about horror.

 

Planning and research: Blackberry is a modern technology used significantly by the urban teenager/young adult demographic. It is a ‘Smart Phone’, which consists of the feature IM (instant messenger) also known as BBM (Blackberry Messenger). With Instant messenger promotion for my product has become extremely simple and easy. It has a feature called broadcast where you can type up a message and send it to all the contact on your BBM.  Thus, when promoting my Horror Trailer I was able to copy the video link off of YouTube and send it so that everyone on my BBM can see.

Google is a search engine used by most people all over the world. It contains features such a ‘search bar’ that you can type in any keyword relative to the information you desire and in response the engine will suggest millions of websites related to you search. It is effective as it makes research relatively easy however, it could be argued that it encourages people to be lazy as the Internet is only one source of information, which may deter people from doing primary research with resources such as books and newspapers.

I used Google to find some really interesting images, which helped as inspiration for my group to create the ancillary texts; I also used it to find websites, which provided inspiration for my group to create the teaser trailer such as ‘YouTube’. On this site I was able to search up some existing horror teaser trailer and get ideas on how I could create the soundtrack and ideas on editing. For Photoshop I needed some interesting fonts, so in the Google search bar I typed in ‘Photoshop fonts’ and the website ‘DaFont.com’ came up. On this website it provides a variety of different fonts and font themes. For example, for my product I need a font with a digital format, and so on the website I chose the ‘Techno’ theme which had a category of fonts called ‘LCD’. This is where I found the font for my product entitled ‘Liquid Crystal’. Downloading fonts are free however you have the option to donate to the creator of the font. Similarly, I needed nice brushes for my product and so I types in Photoshop brushes into the search engine on Google and the website ‘Brusheezy.com’ appeared which enabled me to download brushes in the same way I was able to download fonts on ‘Dafont.com’.

Distribution: Face book and Twitter are both social networking websites where people can publish information, pictures and videos to all their friends. This is a good platform of promotion as you can have up to 5000 friends and on twitter these friends are called Followers. This means that from one ‘Tweet’ or broadcast 5000 people will be able to view my trailer and if they choose to ‘ReTweet’ or ‘rebroadcast’ my post everyone on their friends list will also be able to view my trailer, friends from all over the world!

 

EVALUATION Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages? (Nhung Pham)

Planning and Research (Development + Pre Production)

As part of the planning and research, technology has played a huge part in our project. As a group we planned to use blogger to produce our work and ideas. This is because a blog publishing service would allow us to upload as many blog as we need to without any limit. To illustrate our ideas and plans we needed more space to work with this is why we have decided to create a blog account for ‘Tempa Productions’. We could also design the blog of how we desire it to be, from different backgrounds, colours and themes. Blogger is also useful for uploading videos from either our computer or YouTube to present all our inspiration in working towards the teaser trailer. We are also able to upload pictures in just a simple click, showing different aspects of our ideas and presenting it through multi-media during the process of planning this project. Furthermore the service shows us how many people have viewed our blog, how they viewed it and also what country they are from. Our blog can easily be accessed by people through our link blogger has provided - http://www.tempaproductions.blogspot.com/

Search engines such as Google and Wiki helped us develop our product on the genre of ‘slasher’ horror. These resourceful sites lead us to expand on our knowledge of different types of techniques which we could apply to our horror poster, magazine and trailer. We had to analyse the mise-en-scene, sound, camera shots and editing. We were able explore over a wide range of information and images which allowed us to research into our sub genre ‘slasher’ leading us to look in depth into famous slasher movies such as ‘Scream’ studying the genre where we all felt comfortable to take this forward in the production of our teaser trailer. 
To help us in our analysis, websites such as www.imdb.com gave us all the sufficient details of when the movie was released, the sypnosis, the trailer and starring actors. We were also able to access different magazine websites such as 'EMPIRE' analysing the techniques and conventions of a magazine which we could apply to our own when it comes to making the product.

As we needed to have inspiration for our teaser trailer, we browsed through YouTube to check out different sub-genre horror trailers and figure out the similar conventions seen in most of them. Our trailer is based on a video camera filming through the camera mans view therefore this makes it more realistic and that the audience would be able to relate to it. We searched for movies such as REC, Paranormal Activity and Grave Encounter, where it is similar to our trailer studying the different techniques in the way the video is edited and added effects. We was most intrigued by the idea of how Grave Encounter was edited and took inspiration from it because it is how we envisioned our trailer to be like.

We also found inspiration for the look of our antagonist through YouTube. We browsed through Halloween tutorials where there were makeup gurus and artists teach the viewers step by step how to achieve the look and what equipment will be needed. This is highly useful as we are inexperienced with makeup effects and are able to access through YouTube and take it as a free lesson. We brainstormed some ideas on how we wanted our antagonist to look like. We found the ‘unzipped face tutorial’ most intriguing as it gave the killer effect in slasher movies and tells a story behind the zipped face in similarities to Freddie Cougar where he has a distinctive, scarred and unpleasant face. To create this effect we found a video that simplified it because as we didn’t want it to be time consuming.

For our audience research feedback we used multi media to interview people and came up with 21 questions that are related to horror. As our trailer is classified as age 15 we was aiming the movie more towards students therefore we wanted to know their opinion and aspects of horror movies. We recorded some response via our camera phone, blackberry messenger and gave a couple of questionnaires out.

3. Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? (kieron)

Media technologies played a big part in the making of my media product. We divided responsibilities and from my group I was left in charge of researching, designing and making the horror movie poster. The main piece of software that I used in designing the poster was Photoshop. For taking the image I used a digital camera and for the initial research I used the internet extensively.

In the construction stage the first thing that needed to be done was to create a useable image for the poster. I took the photo for the image by using a Canon EOS 400D camera. This is a digital single lens reflex (SLR) camera made by Canon in 2006. It took me a little time to get used to this particular camera as I don’t usually use SLR’s to take photos. At first I had the shutter speed at a really low setting so my photo came out really blurry but I found out how to change it and got it to the right speed that would work with the aperture setting. One big problem that I had to overcome was that the image of the killer was consistently out of focus; this was because we wanted the image to have low-key lighting. We found out that the shutter speed was too low (1/6 of a second) this shutter speed will only be used in a photo where moving light would be captured, also to get an image in focus it would have to be on a tripod or on a surface that does not move. This shutter speed makes the photo to too light as well, this lead me to making the killers face a bit smaller than originally planned.

The other piece of camera equipment I handled was a Canon EF-S 10-22mm lens; This is the lens in the photo on the poster, however it was featured more for its size than for a technical reason as it was the widest one I could find and therefore allowed me the largest space to place the image of the killer.

Probably the most useful piece of software that I used in laying out the poster and am still learning about is Adobe Photoshop. This piece of software allows you to edit images. Although my Photoshop skills are quite good I was still learning new things about the extent of the software and how it can be applied. One of the new filters I learnt to use was a cloud filter, this allowed me to make my image very spooky and I used it in my poster experiments. I also learnt a lot about colour schemes and how to have colour around the text.

Another vital piece of software I use was the internet for my research; Google is a search engine that started in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google images was the most useful thing about it as that’s where I could find images for inspiration, research, the conventions of horror film poster design, I was also able to compare images with my own poster design.

As well as Google I also used http://www.imdb.com/ (an online movie database) launched in 1990 by Col Needham, ‘imdb’ was good for researching film trailers at the start of the project for conventions and ideas. http://www.dafont.com/ (a font sharing website) Dafont is one of the best website to download fonts and find font, this is where I got the font (Liquid Crystal) for the title in my poster and the ‘Steel Tong’ Font for my credits.

3. Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? (kieron)

Media technologies played a big part in the making of my media product. We divided responsibilities and from my group I was left in charge of researching, designing and making the horror movie poster. The main piece of software that I used in designing the poster was Photoshop. For taking the image I used a digital camera and for the initial research I used the internet extensively.



In the construction stage the first thing that needed to be done was to create a useable image for the poster. I took the photo for the image by using a Canon EOS 400D camera. This is a digital single lens reflex (SLR) camera made by Canon in 2006. It took me a little time to get used to this particular camera as I don’t usually use SLR’s to take photos. At first I had the shutter speed at a really low setting so my photo came out really blurry but I found out how to change it and got it to the right speed that would work with the aperture setting. One big problem that I had to overcome was that the image of the killer was consistently out of focus; this was because we wanted the image to have low-key lighting. We found out that the shutter speed was too low (1/6 of a second) this shutter speed will only be used in a photo where moving light would be captured, also to get an image in focus it would have to be on a tripod or on a surface that does not move. This shutter speed makes the photo to too light as well, this lead me to making the killers face a bit smaller than originally planned.



The other piece of camera equipment I handled was a Canon EF-S 10-22mm lens; This is the lens in the photo on the poster, however it was featured more for its size than for a technical reason as it was the widest one I could find and therefore allowed me the largest space to place the image of the killer.



Probably the most useful piece of software that I used in laying out the poster and am still learning about is Adobe Photoshop. This piece of software allows you to edit images. Although my Photoshop skills are quite good I was still learning new things about the extent of the software and how it can be applied. One of the new filters I learnt to use was a cloud filter, this allowed me to make my image very spooky and I used it in my poster experiments. I also learnt a lot about colour schemes and how to have colour around the text.



Another vital piece of software I use was the internet for my research; Google is a search engine that started in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google images was the most useful thing about it as that’s where I could find images for inspiration, research, the conventions of horror film poster design, I was also able to compare images with my own poster design.



As well as Google I also used http://www.imdb.com/ (an online movie database) launched in 1990 by Col Needham, ‘imdb’ was good for researching film trailers at the start of the project for conventions and ideas. http://www.dafont.com/ (a font sharing website) Dafont is one of the best website to download fonts and find font, this is where I got the font (Liquid Crystal) for the title in my poster and the ‘Steel Tong’ Font for my credits.

Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? (Kieron)

Media technologies played a big part in the making of my media product. We divided responsibilities and from my group I was left in charge of researching, designing and making the horror movie poster. The main piece of software that I used in designing the poster was Photoshop. For taking the image I used a digital camera and for the initial research I used the internet extensively.




In the construction stage the first thing that needed to be done was to create a useable image for the poster. I took the picture for the image by using a Canon EOS 400D camera. This is a digital single lens reflex camera made by Canon in 2006. It took me a little time to get used to this particular camera as I usually use SLR’s to take pictures. At first I had the shutter speed at a really low setting so my picture would come out really blurry but I found out how to change it and got it to the right speed that would work with the ISO.

One big problem that I had to overcome was that the image of the killer was consistently out of focus; this was because we wanted the image to have low-key lighting. We found out that the shutter speed was too low (1/6 of a second) this shutter speed will only be used in a picture where moving light would be captured also to get an image in focus it would have to be on a tripod or on a surface that does not move. This shutter speed makes the picture to too light as well, this lead me to making the killers face a bit smaller than originally planned. The other piece of camera equipment I handled was a canon EF-S 10-22mm lens; This is the lens in the poster, however it was featured more for its size than for a technical reason as it was the widest one I could find and therefore allowed me the largest space to feature an image.

Probably the most useful piece of software that I used in laying out the poster and am still learning about is Adobe Photoshop. This piece of software allows you to edit images. Although my Photoshop skills are quite good I was still learning new things about the extent of the software and how it can be applied. One of the new filters I learnt to use was a cloud filter, this allowed me to make my image very spooky and I used it in my poster experiments. I also learnt a lot about colour schemes and how to have colour around the text.

The most vital tool in my internet research was Google; Google is a search engine that started in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google images was the most useful thing about it as that’s where I could find images for inspiration, research trends, industry conventions and also to be able to compare images to my own poster. As well as Google I also used http://www.imdb.com/ ( an online movie database) launched in 1990 by Col Needham and http://www.dafont.com/ (a font sharing website) Dafont is one of the best website to download fonts and find fonts is this is where I got the font (Liquid Crystal) for the title in my poster.

Q4 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Tyler Mason

The web 2.0 has been essential to our group in terms of gathering research and innovating ideas.
Video Site youtube has helped us come up with ideas as it allowed us to watch trailers and analyze them to full affect so we could see what we wanted to use in our trailer. As well as this it has also provided helpful tutorials on editing using final cut as none of the members with the group has had experience using it.Before we started to create out trailer we used you tube quite a lot the tutorial provided us with an idea of how we would edit the video and how we would go about doing so.Out of all the technologies used I have to say this was one of the most important as it allowed us to be creative and helped with the design for the antagonist of our trailer.How ever there was some flaws when using you tube.We found that the videos did not give us all the information we needed in terms of were to purchase equipment.For instance we got the idea of the zip face from a video tutorial via youtube how ever the video did not tell us were the equipment being used was available for purchase so we had to find out are self.
Secondly despite having a lot of videos on editing it did not have all the information we needed for example we originally wanted  a dark blue colour grade similar to that seen in Batman Dark Knight how ever it was very difficult to come across a video that showed us exactly how to do so.


Black Berry Messenger and Facebook were used in order to gather our audience research the use of instant messaging allowed us to contact people of different ages and groups instantly so we could get feed back on what they are interested in when watching a horror film.The responses they gave were then typed up and posted on blogger.I personally found the use of blackberry more efficient then the use of Facebook. This is due to the fact that Facebook seems to have died out among our age group and that who our trailer was aimed at.How ever on the BBM service it allowed us to have instant communication with people our age and we got a instant response which allowed us to get our research quickly and rapidly.As well as the speed of getting the research, it was also easy to extract the information from BBM and place it onto a computer.As blackberry has a feature called screen capture which allows you to take a picture of what ever is on the screen, you can then upload it to the computer with ease.Despite this facebook was much more use full when it came to getting feed back on our media products as it allowed people to instantly view it with out having to click to links to alternate sites.

Google has been very useful as it has allowed us to search up information on props for example the cost of fake blood and latex.It also allowed us to research directors of horror films and gain knowledge about there history and were they got there ideas from when creating films. Also we used google to research the conventions of horror which was vital in order to create our teaser trailer.As mentioned before we could not find information about the equipment via youtube so google allowed us to search for the products we needed  and showed us exactly were they could be purchased.

Evaluation Q3: What i have learned from my audience feedback on the trailer - Shaquile

Here is a list of some of the positive and negative comments made by my target audience after releasing my horror trailer...

Good feedback:
unusual title
"good documentary style"

"good transitions with static effect"

"good POV shot"

"good grading"
"good filters"

"suitable soundtrack"
"clock ticking built suspense"
"strongest point was the 'POV' shot with girl running towards fence"

Positive Criticism:

unusual title
"not sure about zoom at the end"
"too long"
"could of sped up the end"
"deeper scream at the end"


My target audience did not comment on my products genre however, there were signs which showed that they acknowledged the conventions used and challenged in my trailer. For example, someone commented about the length of my trailer, they said that the duration of my trailer was too lengthy. Teaser trailers are usually between 30 to 60 seconds and my trailer was 60 seconds. The genre of my trailer was a monster horror, there was a comment from my target audience which commented on the documentary style i used with the voice over. This feature seemed popular as it directed the audience towards the narrative of the horror film however, i tried not to give too much information away by making the voice over very vague.

There was mixed feelings shown about the horror film title '3.15'. One person commented that they did not understand the title however, another person said that although they did not understand it, they liked it. This may be because the title '3.15' is very abstract, it gives the audience no hints towards the narrative, however, the voice over clearly tells the audience that "three school students were abducted from the school gates at 3.15" and so this may imply that the target audience did not effectively listen to the voice over or that the voice over was not communicated clearly enough.

Another convention that was acknowledged was the convention of building suspense. Someone from my target audience commented that they liked the ticking sound in the soundtrack as it builds suspense. This feedback shows that the ticking sound had the desired effect on the audience that i intended. Additionally, the audience liked the static transition that i used to give off the effect of a camcorder, yet they did not like the zoom transition that i used at the end of the trailer on the antagonist. this transition was used because i did not want to show the audience too much about the film, i wanted the antagonists identity to be hidden in order to tease the audience and make them want to go and see the film.

Based on the audience feedback there are a variety of ways which i could have made a more effective product. Firstly, i would have made my trailer shorter in length as i feel that the audience were given too much footage for a teaser trailer. Secondly, i would have experimented with more horror sounds used in most trailers i.e dark synths or more diegetic sounds like screams. I probably wouldn't do another voice over because i believe that teaser trailers shouldn't reveal too much information about the narrative and my voice over did. I also would experiment with the clip speeds by using the re time feature as this was a skill that i learnt after creating my teaser trailer. Using the re time feature i would have speed up the shot of one of the students being pulled from underneath that table to give off dramatic effect, i would have also used the same feature on the last shot of the antagonist instead of using the zoom transition as this was not favoured by my target audience.

In order to accumulate more effective feedback i would have changed the way in which i promoted the trailer. my main platforms for promotion was Facebook and twitter, in future i would have used more platforms such as Bebo, Myspace, Instagram, Skype and Blackberry.In addition, i would have made an online  multiple choice poll, asking the audience what aspects of my trailer they preffered and why i.e the soundtrack, the camera shots or the grading. this is because a lot of people don't have Youtube accounts and so allot of my target audience will be unable to leave comments on Youtube as you have to have an account to leave a comment. It would have also been possible to do a written survey however, the Internet is a much faster and efficient way of promotion if you can persuade your target audience to watch your product.