1. How did you use new media
technologies in the construction and
research, planning and evaluation
stages?
KATIE GRAVETT
2. Production
When it came to producing our teaser, we used lots of
different equipment to get the look that we aimed for. We
recorded all of our work on the new Canon 80D's which
produced high quality shots and clips that we could use in
our teaser. A definite strength of using the camera is that we
were able to choose various functions that allowed us
to create the specific look we were aiming for. An example of
this is the ability to use manual focus, this came in useful
when we wanted to mix up the scene and is a feature that
stands out above the rest.
The lighting that we used consisted of lightboxes and
spotlights which could both give us different impacts. The
spotlight in particular helped us to zone in on the gun
near the end of our trailer, it drew attention to the
particular area that we wanted that a normal lightbox
wouldn’t be able to do.
3. Sound
When I looked into sound there were many avenues I
could have taken however I decided to begin searching
on https://www.freesound.org/ to fill the silence of our
teaser. Although there was a huge selection of sounds to
choose from it became a challenge to try and find the
exact sound that I was after. I found a few pieces of non-
copyrighted sounds which came in useful for the final
product, these were sounds for different effects we
were creating. Finding sound on these types of websites
is a quick way to get sound however Garageband is a
more creative tool so maybe it benefitted us to look
elsewhere.
I then turned to Garageband - which I had no previous
experience in – to try and put something together that
would fit our teaser. This proved to be quite
difficult as the wide range of sounds, instruments and
loops made winding it down quite hard. I put loops
together to try and create a soundtrack that would run
through half of the teaser, despite doing this I never
felt like they would fit with our teaser.
After looking for about two lessons I was near to giving up when I found this loop
which replicated that of a sound in the film Prisoners which we were keen on using, this
was very encouraging to finally find something that was useful.
4. Post-Production
During post-production we used Final Cut Pro X to edit our teaser trailer, I had used this tool before in the previous year
however as it was group work did not have the best of skills. Final Cut was the tool that we spent the majority of time
on, it formed the bulk of our teaser and enabled us to create the final product.
The first thing that we did once our clips had imported
onto Final Cut was to favourite the ones that we wanted to
use, this tool allowed us to clearly see all the footage we
had and what worked best. The blade tool came next, this I
found to be one of the most useful tools as it helped us to
split up longer clips that only had a certain section we
needed and could use elsewhere.
A challenge that I found from using Final Cut was the huge
amount of functions and tools that are on offer, many of
them I have no idea what they do. Choosing title screens
became time consuming as there was such a wide
selection, that finding the best fit for our genre took longer
than expected.
Although challenging at times, I found that using Final Cut more and more helped to improve my skills which now leaves
me with a better understanding of how to use it. Final Cut was the perfect piece of software to use for the purpose of
creating a teaser trailer, with the selection of tools and overall quality that you can achieve from it I would definitely use
it again.
5. Post-Production
YouTube was useful in both the research & planning stage as
well as post-production, I first used it to find the teaser
trailers of thrillers like Gone Girl, Skyfall and Prisoners to
compare our own one to. It also allowed me to see example
company idents and title screens so it benefitted me
throughout the whole editing process.
I also used YouTube to find tutorials on how to
create a mist effect in Photoshop, this was
because me and Lauren were creating the poster
and wanted there to be a mysterious element to
it however were unsure on how to go about it.
The tutorials came in very useful and I followed
it step by step, it helped us to create the look
that we wanted – albeit taking us a few times to
get it right – and it was a free way to get the
information.
Photoshop and Illustrator was the platform in which the poster and magazine were made, I had previous experience
using this in Art & Design however that was 2 years ago. When I was creating my rough poster and magazine cover I
played around with tools such as the magic wand and lasso tools to cut out an outline of our characters, I much
preferred using this software as I like the simplicity of it and how it enables me to be creative in every aspect.
