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.