The document describes how a group used various new media technologies in the different stages of creating a movie trailer. In the research stage, they used YouTube to find existing trailers, IMDB for information on films, and Wikipedia for background on trailers. In planning, they used Blogger to write down ideas and plans. They also used Word to get feedback on potential film titles. In construction, they used a video camera to film footage, a still camera for poster/magazine images, iMovie to edit the trailer, Photoshop to edit images, and InDesign for the poster and magazine cover. They also used a marketing video website and uploaded the trailer to YouTube and social media for evaluation and feedback.

1. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?Kate Cronin, Tanya Baker & Katie Brown

2. Research Stages…As a group we all used YouTube as a tool to research existing trailers and teaser trailers. YouTube has access to millions of videos, so it was very easy to use this website to access any trailer we wanted. As a group we each found one existing film to research in depth. The film I chose is Paranormal Activity. Click this link to watch the official Paranormal Activity trailer.IMDB stands for Internet Movie Database and is a huge storage system of information about thousands of movie, actors, fictional characters and much more. We used IMDB to research the existing films we had chosen. I looked up Paranormal Activity in the database to find out information on the actors names, and how much the film made etc.Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia filled to the brim with information about nearly everything you’ll ever want to research. We all used Wikipedia to research in the initial stages, things such as genre conventions and the actual definition of a teaser trailer. This gave us the background information about trailers and set us off to do further research and do our own.

3. Planning Stages… Blogger has been the main source for us all to write down ideas and show our planning. In doing this, we set a target of what to get done. Opposite is a screen shot from my blog showing a plan of our first shooting session of the trailer.Blogger allows us to write down any ideas we had outside of class time when we aren’t together and provides a space where we can all access it easily at home.Click this link to see this blog post larger.

4. Planning Continued…Blogger also allowed us to write down a synopsis for movie in which we are making the trailer for. Being able to write down the synopsis meant that we could finalise our ideas we had for it and have it to refer to so we don’t go off track by changing parts of the storyline.

5. Planning Continued… Microsoft WordWe have used Word from the Microsoft Office package as a tool to find out from members of our class what was the best name for our film. We wrote down a short synopsis of our film and then wrote down the possible titles we had come up with. We printed it off and passed it around the class to see what their opinion was. Luckily, pretty much all of them went for our favourite one too. This shows how Word was a really quick and easy way to get feedback fro others and help with our planning.The winning title…

6. Construction Stages…In the construction stages, the first piece of media technology we used was the handheld video camera. We borrowed one of the cameras from college and took it out on several occasions to get the shots we needed. It took more than one trip to get all the right shots. The camera was a handheld camera, and we didn’t use a tripod because we wanted our trailer to have the shaky effect that is created as it fits the storyline of our trailer and also the horror genre.Not only did we use a video camera, we also used a still shot digital camera to take several images that could be used for both our poster and magazine cover that will go alongside our trailer. On the right is a few of the photos that have been taken over the course of the project. As you can see, they both have a very different feel to them. This is because a camera was used to take a self portrait for the poster image and this had to represent the film in terms of genre, whereas the magazine image was taken to show the team behind the scenes of the film as this is what we chose to have on the cover of our magazine.View all photos for magazine coverView all photos for poster

7. Construction Continued-iMovieiMovie has to be the main new media technology we have used throughout all the stages of production. We used iMovie to upload our footage at different stages, but was still able to edit it all together in the same bit. Once all the footage was uploaded we could start work on finding bits that would be usable in the trailer and bits that could be deleted.We could then start dragging and dropping snippets of our footage into the taskbar at the top which would then be the final thing. Not only could we move bits of footage around where we wanted, but iMovie allowed us to put in transition slides, music and it also allowed us to change the lighting of the whole trailer. We found from our footage the lighting was a bit too bright, so we changed it to their ‘paranormal’ effect they had on the software which gave it a darker effect which really fitted with our ideas and planning for the trailer.Although most of the process using iMovie was simple and user-friendly, if we weren’t sure how to do something we would simply use the iMovie tutorials that were provided in the software to help us.Click this link to view all the tutorials Apple provide for their iMovie software.

8. Construction Continued- PhotoshopAnother new media technology we used in the construction of our work was Photoshop. We used this for the construction of our movie poster mainly. The images I took were a bit too bright and had an orange tone to them so we decided to take out the colour and make it into black and white. In doing so, it fits more with the style of a horror film and fitted in more with the dark, greyish colours in our trailer.BEFOREAFTERWe also used Photoshop to take away the background of the original photograph. As you can see there is a painting in the background which definitely wouldn’t be suitable for our genre and storyline. Photoshop allowed us to get rid of the background and colour it in black. This then leaves a space for quotes and ratings that could be used in our final poster.

9. Construction Continued…Adobe InDesignAdobe InDesign is another new media technology we have used. It is very similar to Photoshop as it is part of the Adobe software, which is useful because it means it all works together quite well.We used InDesign to put together both our poster and magazine cover as it had easy to use tools to put in titles, images and everything else we needed. One of the most helpful tools on InDesign is the clipping path tool as it meant we could have the ‘Empire’ logo without it having a white box around it. The clipping path tool meant we could detect the edges and it would just leave the letters.Movie PosterMagazine Cover

10. Construction Continued… Marketing VideoAnother way we have used new media technologies is through a website where you can upload your own images to appear in a short video.The website allows you to simply pick any image, this could be an image that already exists in the public or it could be your own image, such as a photograph etc. We used this website to upload our first attempt at our poster, at this stage it was a teaser poster and we put it the short video showing the advertising space of a underground tube station.If our movie was being released in the real Movie business, this would be a great way to promote and advertise the film as it is a very busy place where people would constantly be seeing it.Above is a screen shot from the website itself, showing a quick glimpse at what the video looks like. To see the actual website, and other options of videos, including bus rears and bus street liners, click here.This link takes you to the video we made.

11. Evaluation Stages…This link will take you to our finished trailer on YouTube.YouTube is the new media technology we used to upload our finished trailer onto the internet. Once it is uploaded to YouTube, we can share it on lots of other sites and share the link to people to get audience feedback etc. YouTube is a very modern, and extremely popular which means it’s the perfect site for our trailer to hopefully circulate and be viewed by lots of people.

12. Evaluation Continued… Social NetworksIn the evaluation stages, new media technologies we used were social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. All three of us in our group use these social networks and thought that by uploading our trailer onto our profiles, we could get our friends and people to comment on them which would be great for audience feedback.The social networking sites make it really easy for us to post our trailer and get various people’s opinions in an instant.