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

During my research sector of the project, I used Youtube as an online trailer library and embedded my case study trailers into my posts and analysed them. By doing this, it automatically becomes easier for the examiners to follow my study and understand my opinion more clearly. Another tool that I used was the Internet Movie Database (commonly known as IMDB) to find out more about the films that I focused on and to really understand the outlook of the film and the directors vision before I could use it as inspiration. In retrospect, using IMDB helped because I was able to show my homage to the films in the trailer more clearly because of how IMDB helped me gain a greater understnding of the films context and its development.

The editing stage of film production is the most gruelling part of the process. But for our trailer to be the best it could possibly be, my group and I would have to work hard.

The first stage of the editing process was to select useable footage. To help us do this, we used iMovie's scanning tool which follows the mouse movements over a clip and plays through the clip to preview its content. This made it easier for our group because it helped us go through things quicker without having to select and play each clip. We also used a wide range of different media editing tools and video software in the editing process. These range from Adobe Photoshop, to iMovie, to video converting programs.

iMovie was the definitive tool and the main source of editing in this project because it is the most reliable video editing software on the market. It has an automatic memory drive and does not require the user to manually save their project as the program does it for you.

Photoshop was used to create the media poster and the website interface (which I will talk about later). The poster is pretty much a layer cake as it has had endless amounts of tweaking and layers of different elements added to it. We used the burn tool, slice tool, dodge tool, the marquee tool, the magic wand, the polygonal lasso tool; we duplicated layers, we made layer masks and vectors. We used adjustment fill layers and several other adjustment tools to create our desired poster style.

We actually designed our website page on photoshop and inserted it into Macromedia Dreamveaver MX and left it as that. Reason being, the style we wanted was not anything that Dreamweaver can operate so we decided to be smart about it and used our inspiration by Black Swans website and made it very similar to our poster. If we could choose any program to have built our site on, it would have been Adobe Flash Professional because we wanted an interactive or non-static website that would catch the viewers eye.

Our group used a HD camera for some of our shots and when we were ready to upload them to iMovie, the program could not recognize us; this sent us on a one week hunt to get the video clips converted. I took the clips home and found a program online and used it to convert our clips from MP4 to AVI.

Overall, my group kept our technology use very closed and basic but concentrated our efforts on using advanced tools on the programs because I personally see no point in using one hundred programs to try difficult things when you can use one program to do one hundred impressive things.

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

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Audience feedback is a very important attribute to the progress of a project. With the responses from the audience, you can make your product the best it can be based on what they have requested or pointed out. In the case of our Horror trailer, I think that we have been given good feedback and helped us realise what was good and what needed improvement. Most of all, we have learnt that our trailer conveys a very unusual horror film style and is successful in taking the viewer out of its comfort zone.

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

In todays cinema, producers are pumping out big budget horror films that are filled with all the conventions of a horror film twisted and turned into their own rendition of a horror film. But if you look back at the Horror film industry from 30 years ago, all the typical conventions of a horror film were included somehow in the films plot and style. These often included a young, naive female character, a possessed child and a suspicious mature character. But what happened when an older film challenged the forms and conventions of the genre?

The Shining was released in 1980 and was a 'breath of fresh air' to the Horror industry. It brought a new outlook on how far you can branch out of the predictable style of horror movies to aspiring film directors and birthed the new 'Ultimate Horror' also known as 'Psychological horror films'.

In The Shining, male gaze was used to make Jack (Jack Nicholson) seem as vulnerable as the coinciding female character when. When Jack walks into the bathroom he sees a beautiful woman in the bath, he is left in awe of the female.  Whilst Jack stands there phased out in mind, body and soul, the bathing female is in control of him because he is giving in to her advances. Female characters are usually the ones used in a male gaze sequence. But the Director Stanley Kubrick was able to challenge the conventions of horror cinema and reverse the roles.

In our horror film trailer we have used the same method. My group & I challenged the conventions of real horror movies and purposely turned the male gaze into a rough view of the female characters rage. The female character was more powerful and dominant whilst the supporting male character appears weak and helpless in comparison. This works for our movie because it helps express the female characters harsh emotions and unprovoked anger against the male. Also, we were able to convey a metaphorical view of the male characters vulnerability and how defensless he appears.

POST STILL OF PAUL RUNNING.

POST STILL OF THE MAN

By using the male gaze as a tool against the male character, We were able to develop its original use so that the male is inferior to the female character.

Another aspect that we challenged was how the viewer  reacts when watching the media product. Traditionally, horror films are designed to make the viewer uncomfortable and make you feel distant from your comfort zone. For example, The Shining features many disturbing images that does would not  make the viewer feel comfortable whilst watching. But my group & I wanted to draw the viewers in and make them want to know what is about to happen next; without using the 'fear factor' of wanting to crawl out of your seat.

By using the art of storytelling in a less shocking way, we were able to challenge the typical gorey identity of horror cinema.

Making The Poster

The film poster is part of the advertisement strategy used in a film campaign. It is visually eye-catching and grabs a viewers attention whilst they are going about their daily business; which is a way of mass exposure of a film.

The idea behind our horror film poster is one that will appeal to a viewer who is interested in more 'out of the box' horror convention. Our idea will have to somehow integrate the canvas, the paint and the red lipstick. Taking this into account, we went ahead with shooting the pictures for the photograph. These are a select few of the best ones.

Through process of elimination., we finally chose our favourite photo to work with.

What can we do with it? Well, I would like to play around with the colour channels and the luminance so that the painter seems more 'unlife-like'. So once I had taken this image on to Photoshop and played around with it, this was the end result.

What I like about this poster is that it looks intense. I used the burning tool to define her jawline and her eyebrow bone. I used the dodge tool to make her lips look more glossy and deeper in colour. I used the sponge tool to desaturate her skin colour in most areas. I used an overlaying blending option to give texture to the canvas.

Final Cut: "That's a wrap!"

This is the final cut of the teaser trailer we made!

• this is wicked guys!!
  kamkane 2 weeks ago
• love it!!!!
  heruchuku 

The Editing Process

Once we had finished the production side of things, we went on to upload the footage on to iMovie to start the editing process. At first, we briefly experimented with cropping the shots and trimming the clips for our chosen scenes. During this process, my group and I kept disagreeing on what shots were useful and what shots were not. We came to an agreement by all choosing our favourite few shots and then using the process of elimination until we were all satisfied with the best shots.

The next step was adding the music. This was, I must say, the most grueling part of the editing process. The end product can turn out to be not quite what you aimed for if you choose the wrong music for the trailer. The two other members of my group found the song that would become our chosen music for the trailer on Youtube and we extracted the mp3 audio and altered it to fit to our trailer.

Finally, the last step on iMovie was adding the text. When adding the text we had to make sure that we had fonts that would work well with the phrases in between the shots. We needed a font that would help link the trailer to the tagline without the viewer knowing the films title yet. We searched on www.dafont.com for a suitable font to use for the trailer. We tried italic, old english, calligraphy, arial and bold fonts but none of them worked well. We settled for a text called 'WC Mano Negra Bta' which was very chilling and fit in really well with the trailer theme.

The last thing to do was to export it on to the desktop as a movie file and upload it to Youtube.