4. Software explored… All of my research, planning and production of my work was conducted on an Apple Mac. Its variety of software already included allowed me to explore with different programs to decide which was best. Some examples of what I found out were Final cut express was a better software to use then I-movie. In-design was better than photo-shop for designing my poster whereas photo-shop was better for my magazine. The grab software was crucial in helping me evaluate my clip bit by bit and receiving helpful audience feedback.
5. Blogger Crucial in documenting my progress, any mistakes I made, any problems I came across was blogger. It allowed me to document research to refer back to, upload my ruff cuts and other shots I have taken to create polls where people could vote on which clips they preferred. It was a great way to post all of my work for fellow students and other target audiences to come across and leave comments on. I could also organise myself through this and refer back or see what I have missed out that may be crucial to my development.
6. BBFC This website helped me to research the guidelines and what was acceptable to have within a film. I ensured I researched this before writing about my target audience as I didn’t want to set it to low but neither to high so I ensured the maximum target audience. There are many changing guidelines to ratings lately, some may not be consistent but, for every film maker it is crucial to take on board these and ensure your film is suitable. The site itself, also helped me with research in grasping the correct expectations of what a teaser trailer is.
7. You Tube This was crucial in every part of my research, planning, production and evaluation. I firstly went about researching general trailers to get an overall feel for them with things like 500 days of summer and remember me “TV teaser trailer”. To then looking into psychological thrillers and reading comments on the already made trailers to see what it was people liked or found cliché. Mostly all my work went through You tube to get uploaded onto my blog. A lot of practice shots, audience feedback, and my final trailer were all uploaded and some annotated to help me with my own criticism and improvements I felt I could make during ruff cut. Apple website was also used for teaser trailer research.
8. Video camera All my footage was captured on a Sanyo camera. I had no problems with using this or converting clips when putting them into final cut express. The camera also had a camera function where I could take still images along the process. A lot of experimenting could be done with the colour settings, the zoom button and portrait/Landscape shots. All clips were filmed separately so I had to ensure lighting was the same as this picked up a lot of detail. It also produced the right looking gritty clips I was aiming for to give an independent movie feel.
9. Sound track Pro I began my soundtrack using garage band using sound effect clips and loops. I found this hard to do as you couldn’t have the video in at the same time as producing the music so timing was hard. After many attempts, I went onto soundtrack pro. It took me a few lessons to get the hang of it but You tube again helped me with tutorials of how to get the most out of soundtrack pro. I again used sound effects by searching things like “electric”, “static”, “lighter”, and “flickering” to loop together and fade in and out a soundtrack that worked. I had the video besides the sound track bar in which I had to remove all of the clips sound and place over it the effects. I found this much easier yet it was a much more advanced piece of software then garage band. I was very happy with my music overall.
10. Final Cut express I used final cut express as my editing software. After I had imported all my clips I went through them all deciding the ones that were successful to then following my story board with the order of clips. After this I carefully looked at transition effects and also slicing tools to create fast paced shots that linked. Then I also looked at clip editing where I could change the pace to slow motion or put a filter over them to make some clips distort which I tried out on my ruff cut but didn’t like. Furthermore I could also add live type documents in easily and these slotted in to create my inter titles.
11. Photoshop For any images I changed, photo-shop was my manipulation tool. I also downloaded specific brush styles such as cracked and used “dafont.com” to download other fonts that may be more relevant to my piece then what was already given to me. This was used to create my magazine cover as little white lies are known for there hugely manipulated image, or live drawings. As it hardly consisted of type, I created my static front cover and the logo all within this program. It was a great piece of software to experiment with different filters, fonts and backgrounds.
12. In-Design This was very useful in the creation of my film poster. I did all the image manipulation in photo-shop as this is better software for such a thing. Then dragged it over to add all my text and strap lines. I tried within this piece to follow but also break conventions by having the overall look and the font slightly distorted. After feedback from target audience, I made some of my text clearer, as it was smaller and harder to read but kept the title and actors names in “cracked” font.
13. Other crucial software Facebook and other social network sites for feedback A lot of my research and planning were through slideshows or created videos in windows movie maker in which I had to upload to slide-share which was easy and very useful and allowed me an embedded code which then went into my blog posts. Live type allowed me to change font, size, colour, effects a lot of things in order to create a suitable inter title relevant for my genre but not to distracting.
