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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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 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 eye-

catching 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.