Evaluation

In what ways does your media project use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I believe that my trailer uses all the necessary conventions of a Film Trailer, in the terms of the mise-en-scene sound and following of the three act structure. The idea of the trailer is to attract an audience by making the trailer interesting through the plot and selling the story, i believe that the trailer successfully accomplished that
I believe i have challenged the conventions of traditional vampire based media, by taking the perspective of a modern vampire to create an interesting story. Also in my film the vampires are also the heroes, whilst other vampires are the villains in contrast to other films where all vampires are evil.
I believe i have developed on the genre of thriller by making an old genre new by turning it on its head and using it differently to the way that anyone has before, by taking this new approach i believe it makes the film a bit more sellable.

I clearly used rules of continuity throughout my project including the 180 degree rule and shot reverse shot. I also used tilts, pans and shaky handheld work where appropriate. I used appropriate lighting for each scene.

I have used adobe after effects to create muzzle flashes for the gun fights rather than leaving them blank as others may do. I wanted to make my film look as professional as possible and this is one of my chosen methods for accomplishing this.

My magazine cover also followed the codes and conventions for its medium, such as a masthead, cover story and model.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?

I think that i have created effective cross-media-convergence and synnergy between my products, this is largely created through the use of the film's logo which shares the same font and coloration across the products and is rather recognisable as one product fairly well.

The purpose of the magazine cover was to advertise the film through the medium to tell them that it was a good film as "Film Reel" told them, and were told this through the cover being engaged by the model image.

The website also employs the use of engaging images and the use of attractive imagery. Together i believe that together the products work well and are easily associable with one another as a franchise.

Within the film industry the ability for a film to be easily recognised in other forms of media is key to the advertising campaign for otherwise the film's hype would not spread as quickly and overall income would be minimised over the opening weekend which is the prime oppurtunity to gain profit as it does not entirely rely on how good the film actually is but the advertising campaign and movie hype.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From my particular target audience the trailer met expectations, and some commented that they would watch the film as they found the trailer interesting. I have learned perhaps that it may be best to have a second opinion when editing and creating the project so that i can get a better result from the production.
When filming on set outside of controlled conditions, such as in the car park where the majority of my film was shot, i need to keep the quality as high as possible as when i darkened the footage using the full quality camera the footage appeared fuzzy as the set was so dark. I need to keep quality to the maximum.
To use other set pieces, as said before largely the only place i filmed was in a car park, my audience wanted more sets within the trailer as it was slightly repetitive and could become boring.

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


In the planning stages I used iMovie to create my animated storyboard so that i could visually picture the finished product, this helped in editing so that I could create the trailer more efficiently and more quickly.


FInished product and audience testing

After people were shown the product of the target audience the general response was positive with some constructive comments.

Film Trailer

• A bit too long, perhaps cut it down a bit more to grab the audience's attention better
• Some of the sound is a bit clippy, this is a general problem with garageband and not really my fault.
• There was general praise for the effects used and said they looked reallistic enough

Magazine cover

• Do a bit more with the background, it was black and maybe a bit too blank
• Overall it looks like a magazine cover, was the general comment

Website

• There could be a bit more content, I only had so long to film and couldn't produce all of the content that i would have liked

Production of the Trailer

The trailer was the headlining piece of my project and was going to be by far the most difficult to create. For the creation of my trailer I used iMovie 09 to create my trailer as it is a more modern technology than iMovie 08 and has the effects of iMovie HD 6.

I began to upload my clips to iMovie by importing from my camera, a useful feature of this version of iMovie is that your entire clip library is right in front of you, so you can select any clip you need almost immediately.

The basics of creating the film remain the same as using the old iMovie i kept all of the outtakes from the clip as the best bits could be kept for later in the case that the outtake actually appeared better than the real clip.

As this was a trailer and therefore very different to creating a fight scene, i was forced to create a new style of editing, the purpose of a trailer that i had decided very early on was "A collection of clips cut together to attract an audience to see the film without giving away the plot elements of the story". This therefore meant that i had to be more creative on set than i was in the editing room, I would have to come up with an idea for a cool shot at home or even on set and film it. Sometimes i relied on actor input for cool shots.

First I created the storyboard version of my trailer on iMovie, then as I added new clips from filming i would fill in the storyboard with live action. This process worked rather well as it created my trailer in the original format.

As storyboard was filled over the course of five shoots i began to familiarise myself with the new editing software of iMovie.

I most commonly used the inspector tool on the far right. This enabled me to change various things about the clips, it allowed for Clip, Video and Audio to be edited all at once. Clip was most commonly used to change the speed of a clip to speed it up or slow it down. Video allowed me to adjust the Brightness, Saturation, Exposure and light colour of the clip with ease. And audio was mainly used to turn off the clip's volume as I would add it in later in Garageband.

The crop option went largely unused except for still frames where i may have needed to crop an image to include everything i wanted. This was only really used when flashing images of vampires occurred.

Another tool that was used to a great extent was the image stabilisation option. This enabled any shaky camerawork to appear more stable. This was used in the point of shot where the undead fencer is walking towards James from behind. It was also used where the stalked girl is running from the side.

The transition effects creating the flashing white transitions on their own, these were made more atmospheric in iMovie by adding a boom effect that i created.

The muzzle flashes for the guns were created by using adobe after effects. Originally i experimented with the present effects on the program, this gave me more of a grip with the software and taught me how to cut the effect at the appropriate time and that effect to be matched to the gun. Here is the gun shots with the 'Holy light effect'.

I realised rather quickly that the effect that i was using wasn't going to be quite up to scratch for all of the shots i was going to be using. Some of these shots being created were filmed from the side of the actors and the holy light effect could only really be used from face on.

I then was left with a decision of whether to discard my other shots and leave the film looking bland and unrealistic, or seek outside help. I used losmarkoss's tutorials to create an effective muzzle flash for the guns. It worked surprisingly well with a bit of personal modification to make them look a bit more realistic. Also this allowed me to make gunshots from the side, by using the same effect but with a modified flare. Here is the same shot with and adapted version of losmarkoss's effect.

I exported the final versions of these effects off after effects, and uploaded them to iMovie in the highest quality possible.

I then exported the full trailer to my desktop in full quality before adding it to Garageband to begin the audio editing.

On garageband i created the majority of the audio based clips. This was done by opening the file of the finished film from iMovie exported onto the timeline of Garageband. This enabled me to watch the clips as i made the audio and made it far easier to match audio to the clip, one of the things that the new iMovie is notoriously bad at.

I first created the music by using gargeband's software instruments, i used some synth based instruments to give it a modern and slightly eerie feel. I used the musical typing to create the music i needed by recording.

I could then further edit this by changing the pitch of notes, their length and their timing. This helped to make the video more effective.

I then added Foley effects such as the sword clash, this was done using the iMac's mic. Interestingly enough i used a pair of chairs clashing together to get the right ringing sound.

I then added the guttural breathing and deep voices of the "Feeder" vampires by creating a new track, using real instrument and vocals. I then changed the vocal effects to deep voice and made the sounds myself. At one point i had to add many tracks of this to make it sound like there was lots of them.

I then added the voiceovers that were done by Sam Taylor and me, we had scripted these beforehand and simply read them off into the mic. I then adjusted their timing to fit it in.

Finally i added a snippet of "Rage against the machine"'s "Wake up" to the atmospheric clips.

I then removed the film track and exported the Garageband file as an mp3, i then added this mp3 to the iMovie file. My reason for this being i could not export it at best possible quality through Garageband.

Production of the Website

The website was entirely created through wix.com and my own input from the other parts of my project. Wix provides an easy base to work from to create the website and makes things relatively easy to create websites.







I created my titles and a sense of continuity within the site by adding text using the sidebar, and always using the font Optima Princeps as i believed this to be the most suitable font.







I uploaded photos using the media sidebar, this automatically helps you to upload photos and creates a gallery skin of your choice to put onto the site. I chose game as it looked the most modern to fit in with my movie

I could also add effects to the sites text and pictures, for example when scrolling over photos the pictures blur, and when scrolling over text it enlarges.







The mini pages sheet allows you to create multiple smaller pages to the website. It allowed me to create a page that flashed between other pages via a toolbar

To add the movie i first had to upload the video onto Youtube.com and then add it to the website.

The Production of the Magazine cover

I began my magazine cover from a basic idea used from my analysis of other magazine covers.This was rather basic as can be seen from the picture below.

I had decided early on to call my magazine 'Film Reel' the cover largely took inspiration from the covers of magazines such as 'Empire'. Note the titles indicating the content in bold "impact" font that is all the same to keep the same codes and conventions. The magazine cover is meant to attract an audience using its cover as a hook for the reader, by giving information about certain stories.

After a short amount of tweaking with some of the fonts and the layout. Here in this version 'Not Human', the original name of my film, is in a separate font to the others highlighting the fact that it is the cover story of the magazine. Also the font 'Teaser trailer released' has been changed in colour to yellow as to make it stand out. Also i have added a price tag, date and tag line "The film news magazine' to make the magazine seem a bit more real.

In this update I have added a white block behind 'Not human' by creating a layer lower than that of the text as to make it stand out better, more so at least than the other text. Subtlely I have also increased the size of the text for the 'Not Human' article and decreased the size of the other text. I have also changed the colour of the title text of the other articles to make their respective film stand out. I have also added "Free Eclipse Posters" as another motive to buy the magazine as a motive for twilight fans to broaden the range of the target audience. Also i have given the lower information bar a colour re-do with the white and red theme.

Here in this version i have made the addition of the twilight themed poster images by opening the image in photoshop and copy and pasting it onto the magazine cover. I turned on the scale option whilst transforming them so the images were not distorted. I also changed the text of 'Not Human' to 'Almost Human' so to match that of within the trailer. This also meant recolouring the Almost to white and the Human to red. This creates a synergy with the film product and the magazine. The other text that has been subtlely darkened is so to draw less attention to it rather than that of the main articles.

As can be seen here, I have layered the text and the image so that the image will actually go over the text. This is important as it makes the image the main focus of attention.

I have also done the same with the image below where i have a small bar at the bottom of the page. The text here overlaps the image but the bar fades out.

Also for the poster images i created a small white outline so to make them appear more like photos. I also added a small amount of rotation to the pictures so it appeared less formal.

Here is the finished product of the Film Magazine Front cover:

Here is the magazine cover after the response from the target audience

The Shoot

The film trailer was shot over a three week period in different locations so as to look like a real trailer.

Shooting Day 1: 8th November 2009

4:30pm -6:00pm

Cast to be called:

Edmund - Sam Taylor

Girl - Pretoria Potter

'Feeder Vampire' - Seb Robertson

Summary of the shoot: The shots filmed here were largely for the purpose of creating the short teaser trailer that had been originally planned. Once it had been established that I could create a full length trailer this was moved to be as an intro to the beginning of the film, which on its own is the girl running from the stalker.

Shooting Day 2: 15th November 2009

1:00pm - 3:30pm

Cast to be called:

Joe - John James

Edmund - Sam Taylor

Sophia - Stephanie Egre

Roland - Richard Knibb

'Feeder' Vampire - Seb Robertson

Extras - Rebecca Curtis, Ashley Butel

Summary of the shoot: Unfortunately some of the cast did not arrive to the shoot so it was unfortunately compromised to an extent. This shoot was intended to be that regarding the majority of shots included in act 4 of the trailer. However this was in a sense lucky as some of the shots upon viewing were not to my satisfaction, so a re-shoot was planned on a far larger scale

Shooting Day 3: 22nd November 2009

4:00pm - 8:00pm

Cast to be called:

Joe - John James

Edmund - Sam Taylor

Sophia - Steph Egre

Roland - Richard Knibb

'Feeder' Vampire - Seb Robertson 

Extras called: Rebecca Curtis, Ashley Butel, Edmond Webbe, Guy Walton, Myles Wilson, Anamelia Reagan,  Joanna Starkie, Rekina O' Reagan, Pretoria Potter, Chris Le Cornu, James Robinson 

Pre shoot notes: This is by far the largest shoot that I have ever attempted, and using the largest number of on screen extras that I have ever used. This shoot will probably require the use of a set manager and a couple of other people to help me get everything right. 

I had to arrange this shoot to be out of the way of the public so that we won't be a major disturbance. It involves the use of two floors of a car park so keeping order may be a problem. I am also considering the use of a second camera to speed up the shoot.

I also notified local law enforcement that i would be using BB guns in the process of making the production to clear things for filming and only when i had approval did i begin filming

Magazine Plan

This is my current plan for the magazine and at present it is very basic, I have decided to name to magazine "Film Reel". The cover story text should be larger and be a brighter or different colour to that of the side stories to make it stand out more. 

Website Plan