Evaluation: Part 3

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

I used YouTube a lot for my research and planning which included watching other real horror trailers which gave me ideas and influenced me in the making of my trailer. I also used imdb in order to help me find out which trailers were effective on their audience. Both allow ordinary people a massive amount of information on films, and save having to search through books or DVDs. These sites also let you comment on videos and articles, which is called "democratisation".

The three trailers that influenced me the most were:

1) "The Blair Witch Project" inspired me to film my trailer using a handheld camera, and also led to ideas for intertitles. These quickly establish the narrative of the film, as well as creating a sense of both realism and tension with lines such as: "In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittville, Maryland while shooting a documentary... A year later their footage was found."

2) "Paranormal Activity" cleverly used CCTV footage and also some editing/transitions that we recreated using the “Bad TV” filter on Final Cut Pro. I also liked the realism of the trailer, and hoped to recreate its naturalistic dialogue.

3) "The Tunnel" had a powerful jumpy part at the end of the trailer, and this inspired me to recreate this use of collision cutting at the finale of "The Possessed" trailer. I used Final Cut Pro to edit the trailer, Adobe After Effects for the final morph effect on Ford’s face and also I used Photoshop to create my magazine cover and poster.

In terms of the construction of my final pieces, I used new media programs such as Photoshop to create my poster and magazine, and Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects to edit together my trailer and add effects.

With the construction of my magazine cover, in total I used 28 layers in Photoshop in order to put it together. An example of some effects and editing techniques I used were:

·         I used the sharpen tool in order to enhance the scars on Ford’s face, it also made them look more realistic.

·         I added a grain effect over the image of Ford to create a rough amateurish handheld look. I did this because the characters in the narrative are all teenagers so you wouldn’t expect them to have top of the range cameras of the highest quality, which adds a realistic aspect to the trailer.

·         By clicking on image – adjustments, I altered the brightness and contrast of the image. I brightened his face to make the scars stand out over his pale skin but at the same time I increased the contrast to enhance the shadowing under his chin and cheek bones and also to add darkness to his eyes. I also made the image black and white as in the film when Ford is possessed the recordings are in black and white ‘night mode’ so it makes sense.

With my poster of The Possessed, I used 25 different layers in Photoshop. Here are some examples of some editing effects and techniques I used:

·         As I did with my magazine cover I added a grain effect to make the picture quality look more amateurish and realistic. This reflect the picture quality of a camera fairly poor college students would have.

·         With the text on the wall which reads ‘The Possessed – Who is your mind?’ I added many effects to hopefully get the desired effect which was to try and make the text look like it is on the wall, or even scratched. The effects I used were; inner shadow, gradient overlay and stroke. I used inner shadow because although I wanted the text to look like it was on the wall I also had to make it so it was actually readable to the viewer, so the inner shadow effect helped it stand out. I used gradient overlay to add a rough and natural effect to the text to make it blend in to the wall. And finally I used stroke which adds a surrounding shadow to the text and if used correctly, helps the text blend into its surroundings. This was the hardest effect to create, but I'm happy with the final result.

·         Another effect I used on the poster was on the ‘August 2012,’ this is when the film is set to come out in cinemas so I wanted it to stand out on the poster but in a subtle way, so I simply added the stroke effect which gave the text a hard but thin black outline to make it stand out, it also gave it a professional look.

In order to receive feedback from my target audience and peers I used new media to evaluate my products. I set up a Blogger account and uploaded my final pieces to it, from there I was able to link my work to my friends who could then visit my blog and have a look, and they could then give me feedback. Blogger has a lot of benefits. It makes your work available to a worldwide audience and it also means you cannot lose any paperwork. I had used the website for my first year coursework too, but I feel I definitely improved my use of it in the second year. I added a horror styled design, with an eye-catching logo at the top. I also divided my blog into clear section underneath the logo which made it really easy to navigate. Blogger is very popular in the real world and I can now understand why.

My trailer was uploaded to YouTube where anyone was able to watch it, this potentially could provide us with negative feedback as there is always a chance of random negativity on YouTube as there is a problem with ‘trolls.’ Trolls are people who dislike and write hate comments on videos for no reason; they are the people on YouTube who are very hard to please. We have luckily not received any abuse yet. From YouTube I was able to link my trailer to my Blogger account where my target audience and people more suited to provide me with useful feedback I needed were able to watch it. I also added a gadget on Blogger which could provide me with audience feedback with a rating system where viewers could rate "The Possessed"out of 10. I was pleased by the high scores we got through this.