Throughout the project I used a wide range of technology
that aided the success of my final trailer and ancillary texts. I found that
having these facilities was really important and had a vital role in
influencing decisions in the planning stage and techniques in the construction
stage.
Research and Planning Stage
The internet was the provider of the vast majority of
research accomplished during this task as it was the most convenient. I was
able to visit numerous websites that enlightened and influenced what i produced
as an end product.
The phenomenon that is Youtube was the website I visited
most during this whole project. Here I would spend time watching various film
trailers as research and because of it’s humungous library of videos, I had no
limitations. I also used Youtube to upload my own creations because it was the
handiest way to upload videos onto the blog. As I had my own account on Youtube
already this was not a problem. A slightly more unusual use for me with Youtube
was to watch tutorials on certain techniques using the editing software i used
for the construction of our groups trailer. This was how to create a cinematic
film look to your own videos and came in really useful as it enabled me to
apply this effect to our trailer.
Another aspect of the internet that I used was the Google
images search engine. I used this to research into existing film posters and
magazine covers. Looking at these professionally made media texts I was able to
see what made them successful and professional looking, which I then applied to
my own.
iTunes is an online music library with a world of music
which can be downloaded straight to your computer. It was this programme that i
used to download the tracks that featured in our film trailer. With a useful
search tool i was able to select particular soundtracks that i though would
best suit the moods included in the visual elements of our trailer.
Throughout the project i used blogspot.com which is a
website designed for blogging. It was here where i uploaded all of my work,
whether it was research, planning or my film trailer progress and ancillary
tasks. I found blogging a really useful way of keeping my work organised and
communicating it with the teacher or other students for feedback. One of the
useful features of blogspot was the ability to create labels; for each thing
posted up onto the blog you can select with label to categorise it in – this
being an example of how it made it easy to organise my work.
Construction Stage
A major piece of equipment used in the construction of our
film trailer was the camera. The school had provided each group with a standard
video camera, however these were considerably lower quality in the image they
produced. The group and i chose to use my Nikon D5000 digital SLR camera which
has a high resolution film capturing feature – and although not fantastic, was
still much better than the school cameras. The camera was light weight and easy
to use, with the ability to be attached to a stand which came in handy for shots
where we needed the recording to be steady. The footage would record onto an SD
card which made it incredibly easy to transfer the footage onto the computer,
ready for editing. On top of using the camera on a stand for various shots, we
also used various ‘less-technical’ attachments to the camera, which enabled the
effect we wanted.
By using a trolley, formally used for transporting chairs, we were
able to keep up with the characters in the running scenes – rather than having
an unsteady image from someone running with the camera after them.
To get the shot of that’s looking down a sniper scope I devised
a transparent circular disk with the sniper cross hairs drawn on, which was
then taped to a lens flare lid and put on the end of the camera.
Again, when it came to editing software, the school supplied
an editing programme on the school computers. However i found this software
rather limiting and chose to use iMovie software that i have installed at home.
iMovie is so intuitive and simple to use that it made the whole experience much
easier and the effects available aided greatly to the success of our trailer. A
notable effect was the notion of being able to edit a video to playback in
reverse and alter the speed of it, which i used in the ending of the trailer to
build up the pace before the end title exploded onto the screen. Another
brilliant feature in iMovie is the sound effects library and the ability to
install various audio files, which was useful for including such sound effects
as gun shots and screeching brakes. Having this software, i feel was a major,
or be it, most important factor in the professionalism and success of our film
trailer.
CorelDraw was recommended to us to use for the production of our film posters and film magazine covers. However after researching well known film magazines such as Empire and Total film, I was determined to make mine at a similar level as much as I could. I felt that the Corel Draw programme was far too limiting and that it had relatively amateur results. Instead i used software that i was very familiar with from previous experience. Photoshop, with its vast opportunities in manipulating images and adding text, enabled me to produce a quality designed magazine cover and poster. The ability to layer several images and control the opacity of them and use precise tools was vital to the outcome of my ancillary texts. When it came to creating the flames surrounding Mark Steele on the magazine cover I needed to freely alter the flames and cut precise parts from the image – this would not of been achievable on CorelDraw.
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