Friday, 13 April 2012
Progression from AS to A2:
I think this year has challenged me and Manny more the last year, reasons for this include that this year we had to make a trailer rather than a opening sequence and a trailer is not a continuous story and therefore more locations,shots,and footage was needed, which was actually quite difficult. But we planned our locations from the start so that was OK and even though the grave yard that we initially planned to be one our main settings wasn't available to shoot in we opted to film our footage in 3 or 4 different locations which is different from last year as we only used one or two locations. Also this year we have to produce print products which means we had to divide our time more between the two as essentially we are doing two projects, whereas last year we only had the opening sequence to concentrate on so that made it tougher. Also from last year we learnt that a lot of things can go wrong during editing and shooting processes so we tried to be more careful with our time this year.
I used more technology than was used last year we used a new program called sound booth to correct sound, which was an issue because we shot some of our footage outdoors and therefore some of the sound came out unclear and we had to change that. I also used photoshop and fireworks which i had very little if any experience of those programs and i basically edited the poster and magazine through the method of trial and error and now know editing techniques such as the feathering tool which i used for the blurriness and mist on the poster. On the magazine i learnt how to layer things correctly so that everything was in the right order as at first things like fonts kept changing colour when i put them onto the canvas, but soon found out this was due to them being under another layer and that i needed to bring it to the front by putting that layer at the top of the menu on the right hand side of the screen.
Overall this year was much more work heavy and more planning had to be done so that we could fit everything in to the time frame that we had and admittedly it was much more of a struggle towards the end, this is because there is more to think about when making a trailer and you have to compare it to others more than you would a opening sequence i think because you have to have the horror themes running through it as well as having a clear narrative and a clear structure as well as linking in the print products with the trailer. I think this year because we were doing a horror genre piece we had to concentrate more on the mise en scene than last year as this is essentially what makes the genre obvious and attracts the audiences attention so quite a lot of thought was put into that.
I used more technology than was used last year we used a new program called sound booth to correct sound, which was an issue because we shot some of our footage outdoors and therefore some of the sound came out unclear and we had to change that. I also used photoshop and fireworks which i had very little if any experience of those programs and i basically edited the poster and magazine through the method of trial and error and now know editing techniques such as the feathering tool which i used for the blurriness and mist on the poster. On the magazine i learnt how to layer things correctly so that everything was in the right order as at first things like fonts kept changing colour when i put them onto the canvas, but soon found out this was due to them being under another layer and that i needed to bring it to the front by putting that layer at the top of the menu on the right hand side of the screen.
Overall this year was much more work heavy and more planning had to be done so that we could fit everything in to the time frame that we had and admittedly it was much more of a struggle towards the end, this is because there is more to think about when making a trailer and you have to compare it to others more than you would a opening sequence i think because you have to have the horror themes running through it as well as having a clear narrative and a clear structure as well as linking in the print products with the trailer. I think this year because we were doing a horror genre piece we had to concentrate more on the mise en scene than last year as this is essentially what makes the genre obvious and attracts the audiences attention so quite a lot of thought was put into that.
What i Have learnt from audience feedback
After doing some audience research in order to find out if people appreciated the trailer and print products that both Manny and myself made i found that there were quite a few improvements that could have been made to the trailer in order to make it better.
I found that people couldn't here some of the sound clearly, for instance the scene where i am standing at the top of the stairs, i think i am too far away from the camera and this is the reason that people can;t here that part of the dialogue clearly enough. We could have used sound booth more to bump up the volume of some of the quieter sound that people found hard to hear. Although many people found that the voice overs were very clear and that they cleared up what the narrative was a lot of the time and definitely gave the plot shown by the trailer a sense of direction. Overall many thought it was a decent trailer and that they would go and see the film because the suspense attracted them and they were eager to see the ending which is what we wanted when we were making it.
I think there was a slight lack of narrative in the trailer, and this was down to us not planning well enough ahead and we didn't give ourselves enough time to shoot enough footage to establish the narrative well, this is the reason why it is a bit rusty. This was detected in audience feedback, although people knew the trailer was horror they sometimes asked me after watching the trailer what some of the story was meant to be, they were clear on most of it , i think the trailer just needed something extra to show how the boy was linked to the death of his parents and how the thing that possessed his parents is the same thing that has possessed the boy. In order to do this we would have had to film more footage and in hindsight i think it was down to the planning stage. The trailer was an overall success but there are elements that i would change if i did it again.
People were generally quite impressed by the print products, i think people liked the magazine the most out of the two which was a surprise for me because i actually preferred the poster, so this educated me on what other people thought. The only thing they would have changed was some of the font colours on the magazine because they blended in with the background image too much. Also with the poster they thought the lines around the image could be blurred out a bit more. but overall they thought the print products looked quite professional.
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I found that people couldn't here some of the sound clearly, for instance the scene where i am standing at the top of the stairs, i think i am too far away from the camera and this is the reason that people can;t here that part of the dialogue clearly enough. We could have used sound booth more to bump up the volume of some of the quieter sound that people found hard to hear. Although many people found that the voice overs were very clear and that they cleared up what the narrative was a lot of the time and definitely gave the plot shown by the trailer a sense of direction. Overall many thought it was a decent trailer and that they would go and see the film because the suspense attracted them and they were eager to see the ending which is what we wanted when we were making it.
I think there was a slight lack of narrative in the trailer, and this was down to us not planning well enough ahead and we didn't give ourselves enough time to shoot enough footage to establish the narrative well, this is the reason why it is a bit rusty. This was detected in audience feedback, although people knew the trailer was horror they sometimes asked me after watching the trailer what some of the story was meant to be, they were clear on most of it , i think the trailer just needed something extra to show how the boy was linked to the death of his parents and how the thing that possessed his parents is the same thing that has possessed the boy. In order to do this we would have had to film more footage and in hindsight i think it was down to the planning stage. The trailer was an overall success but there are elements that i would change if i did it again.
People were generally quite impressed by the print products, i think people liked the magazine the most out of the two which was a surprise for me because i actually preferred the poster, so this educated me on what other people thought. The only thing they would have changed was some of the font colours on the magazine because they blended in with the background image too much. Also with the poster they thought the lines around the image could be blurred out a bit more. but overall they thought the print products looked quite professional.
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Presentation: again
Here is the presentation, unfortunately there is only half of it here because it wouldn't load up other wise because the file was to big so i split it in half using windows live movie maker, this took an absolute age to upload using vimeo, therefore i will try and upload the other half if i have enough time, but you get the gist of what the presentation was like from this :
Presentation Manny and Beth from Beth Graham on Vimeo.
Presentation Manny and Beth from Beth Graham on Vimeo.
Slight Delay
Whoops! just realised that my videos haven't fully uploaded and only 2 minutes of each have uploaded, i have just realised and remembered the limit on the video for that site is only 2 minutes , so now i am uploading the videos, the presentation and the commentary in vimeo after i have just made an account which i should have done in the first place. It seems to be taking quite a while but they will still be uploaded by the end of the day. Also i am editing my audience feedback and that will also be uploaded by the end of the day :)
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