1. How did you use new media
technologies in the construction and
research, planning and evaluation
stages?
FILMING STAGE
2. Final Cut Pro X
• Final Cut was the most important technology
we used throughout planning and
construction stages
3. Planning
• In our research and planning, we used final cut to
edit together our focus group
• This allowed us to practice and remember skills
from AS and refresh our memory of editing
shortcuts
• It also allowed us to familiarise ourselves with
adding text and Ken Burns on top of footage
• We also used Final Cut when editing our recce
footage. For this, we added voiceovers which
proved useful as practice for our actual trailer
when we used voiceovers for our characters
4. Construction
• When actually constructing the film, Final Cut allowed us to
use a number of effects and transitions for our shots, such
as ‘fade to colour’, ‘cross-dissolve’ and ‘romance focus.’
Transitions were extremely important for our genre as the
fade to black transitions slowed the pace of the trailer
which appeared in every other trailer we looked at.
• It also allowed us to change the colours of our shots to
make them look more professional and stop them looking
flat. The main effects we used were ‘hard light’ and ‘heat
wave.’
• We also layered sound on Final Cut and recorded voice
overs as we found these were clearer than the sound in the
footage we filmed. For the music, we used the tools to
change the volume throughout certain dramatic bits which
emphasized the character’s emotions
6. Graphics
• We took inspiration from other trailers to create slow
moving, but interesting graphics on top of footage we
had filmed with a camera.
• Our footage of candles was mainly red and orange so
we edited our fonts to change colour with the
background, making it more interesting than black and
white fonts used in ‘Blue Valentine’ and ‘Revolutionary
Road.’
• We also played around with the movement of the font
and this resulted in us using the zoom effect to create a
steady but subtle movement and enlargement of the
text which was more interesting.
7. Ident
• For the ident, we looked at a number of particle generators
which we could manipulate to fit with our original plans for
our ident.
• We then used the ‘lights swirl’ generator but played around
with the speed and direction to form an ‘O’ which was the
beginning of our production company’s title. We then
added simple font effects which made the name flash
which was more interesting than low budget idents we had
looked at, which tended to be static images.
• We played around with the colour of the generator to fit to
conventions of other idents which changed colour. This
made it look more professional as the swirls started out as
white and changed to blue to match the title.
8. Blogger
• Blogger has been key in our planning and research stages as
it has allowed us to post our stages of work so we could see
what there still was to be done.
• It also allowed our audience to give us feedback by looking
at our stages of production and thus helping us to improve.
• We could also see our classmates work and share with
them ideas for further feedback.
• This year we were more familiar with online technologies
such as Prezi and Slideshare so we could embed these onto
our blogs and they were easily accessible to the public.
• Prezis allowed us to express our ideas in a more creative
way and therefore we could look at our plans in a mindmap
which was easier for us than always making blog posts.
