2. HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES WITH THE
CONSTUCTION, RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION
STAGES?
Section A:
The first examples of new media I used for my research and planning are the websites YouTube and imbd. When
using YouTube I was able to search for other horror trailers to gain ideas and influences for when I made my own
trailer. Examples of trailers I viewed and found useful were where „Mama‟
This particular trailer influenced my main product as I tried to remake the psychological
style of it, the trailer builds up tension effectively and the narrative is put across in a
slowly building, teasing manner. I found the use of young children a clever aspect as
they usually represent innocence; however when placed into a horror trailer, this goes
against the stereotypical representation and makes us feel uneasy.
Another trailer which I drew ideas from was „Silent Hill‟. In this trailer, I was drawn to
the image used for the young girl, with her jet black hair and pale white face. This use
of mise-en-scene created a washed out, unearthly feeling. The use of flickering lights
as the man and woman are standing in the house was also a clever technique as it
creates panic and uncertainty as to what is happening. I consciously replicated this
into my own trailer as I thought it was an effective technique.
Imdb was useful for other reasons. Firstly, it gave me information in order to make sure
both my research and planning was accurate. It allowed me to search via the horror
genre, as well as making the plot lines clearer and being able to see the directors and
auteurs who were involved in making them. This helped me explore certain directors, such
as Christophe Gans, who made Silent Hill but also Brotherhood of the Wolf. On the
internet I searched and looked at many horror poster‟s and magazines to understand how
to make the products, and I also found typical horror images to add into my horror mood
board to try and get across the style and my ideas for the horror trailer I was making.
3. Continued…
Section B:
The media technologies I used for the
construction of my products consisted of
Photoshop, Adobe Premiere and Adobe After
Effects Pro C56. Photoshop was used for the
creation of my ancillary products. This software
enabled me to use many editing tools such as
cropping, merging, manipulating images with
eraser and blur tools, and adding in layers to
create certain desired effects. With the crop tool
I could take text from dafont and add it into both
my poster and magazine.
is used to make the text pop out more on the page and to give it an
added shining effect.
Within the
magazine, layering
allowed me to place a
subtle skull image behind
the director‟s face and
also layer the text so that
it placed behind the
image of the director. My final ancillary products
had over ten layers of effects, images and text.
The eraser was useful in cutting out
the main signifying images making it
quick and easy and not taking up too
much time. Within the poster I used
the blur tool for the „coming soon‟
text. It has two layers and in the
back one a blur effect
With Adobe Premiere the main
focus was the construction of the
horror trailer. Within the software I
could cut pieces of footage to
certain sizes, manipulate the
colours of shots using contrast
and brightness, reverse shots for
supernatural moments and also
including music. Some of the footage was quite
lengthy so we cut shots down to
the majority of 1-3 seconds, the
lighting was not always consistent
throughout so we altered this
through the contrast and
brightness tools to give a regular
look. Shots such as the hair
movement and Joe being dragged
up the stairs were all done byreverse shots (using the speed/duration button and
then
typing -100) and then manipulating the speed. I was
able to add in copyright and royalty free music found
on YouTube on this software and alter it in a ways
such as speeding it up and slowing it down. We also
reversed some of the music in the jump scare at the
4. Continued…
Section C:
At the final stage of my trailer, I also used media technologies to help me in the
evaluation of my products. The most vital one was Blogger which allowed me to
save information in the “cloud” online and also made it visible to other people. This
led into other social networkingwebsites such as Facebook and putting the rough cut of the trailer onto YouTube. I had to set up blogger
account and once I had done this I was able to post my work onto a blog. Each post was labelled under a
section depending on what area of the work it was.
As you are able to see in this
print screen the orange text is
the labels and the blue text is
the title of the blog post.
Facebook was helpful in gaining feedback from friends, and they gave insight into what they liked and also
what I could do to improve my products. Once I had shown the rough cut of my trailer to the class, it was
then uploaded onto YouTube. Here people were able to view my trailer and offer their opinions about it. We
also had an evaluation screening where people would contribute their opinions about the trailer once they
had watched it in class. This was filmed so we were able to look back at the evaluation, again providing a
digital record of an actual event that we could refer back to whenever we wanted.
