WEEK 12 – (submit draft main task; update presentation; transfer to www.blogger.com)
How are you using media technologies in the post-production stage of your product?
In order for our footage to be imported onto Adobe Premier, we had to use a wide range of technology including an external hard drive:
This allowed us to store all our footage and photoshop creations that contained a lot of memory onto a hardware that had a huge storage capacity. Not only this, but it also helped us to access our footage at any time depending on what ever time our group was available.
Here is how we transfered the footage onto the hard drive:
Using my USB with a larger storage capacity, we were able to move the video that was uploaded using an administrators account onto the main computer that we were to use which had the user "VSTUDIO23".
The tape that we used to transform on to the computer was a DVC Panasonic minitape:
I used the above manual for guidance on instructions of how to use the camera and what this piece of technology was capable of:
[TALK ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES USED WHEN TRANSPORTING VIDEO TO CD]
In what ways will your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Music:
Reasons why Damian Marley - Welcome to Jamrock was chosen as our second music in the trailer was to over exaggerate the lives underclass youths live. This music in particular seemed aggressive and cultural which was what we were going for. This adds to the feel of domination that the underclass bring to the upperclass.
This poster below may be able to describe why the colours of our trailer were used, bright primary colours portray characters to have loud and bold personalities which stand out. Colour was a great way of showing emotion to the audience and the music corresponded well with that factor.
Everyone world wide is familiar with this song so it can be recognised to our target audience as well as the older generation.
The first music that is heard in our trailer is Wretch 32 - Traktor. We felt that a live and upbeat grime music would best show the culture of South London in contemporary society so that we had one music for the roots of the culture and one that exists today. Having an upbeat loud bass music was important as it draws in the audience, especially a Grime genered music our target audience is familiar with.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
My teacher viewed the trailer for the first time, this being the first draft we had an opportunity for our teacher to give as much feedback so we could get started on our draft two. Here is the feedback she gave to us:
[pic of feedback sheet]
I also got some feedback from family members and friends, using Skype instant messaging and communication gave me the opportunity to talk to friends using the microphone input and speaker output and gather all their comments and feedback, which I wrote on the sheet above.
WEEK 11 – (post-production: introduction to video-editing or re-drafting layouts)
How are you using media technologies in the post-production stage of your product?
Ingesting is a general term for capturing, transferring, or importing video, audio, still images, and metadata to your computer’s hard disk, which creates media files. You can ingest media files at any time, although most footage should be ingested before you start editing. We made sure this was done to avoid any problems.
We used technologies online that were used for emergency back up at short notice moments. For an example, using Hotmail sending service helped us to retrieve our sound and image files and it was a good internet resource to use considering that it was portable and could be accessed on any computer including internet at any time. There were no restrictions, and those factors was what made the internet page useful.
All the media technologies previously mentioned worked for our trailer and all successfully worked with some exceptions. However we realised that if we hand the funds for the most expensive technology and resources, the quality of our trailer would have been better. Nevertheless, we made an excellent final piece.
In what ways will your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Too add special effects to our trailer, we wanted to add two things
1) We wanted the trailer captions to have more movement
2) Add some special effect noises and transitions for the camera snaps towards the end of the trailer
Using Pixlr and Paint Software, we made a mug shot effect. Gathering sounds from freesound.org, we made this more realistic by adding ambient noise searching for 'Camera noises'.
We used Adobe Premier to make our captions have more movement to make the trailer look more exciting as this better demonstrates the youth (active and fast pased). With this we added 'Woosh & Swoosh' sound effects from freesound.org
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
The audience found the footage eye-catching and comical which was what we were going for. I recieved some positive critisisms such as the trailer seems realistic and appears to look like a real product that was being advertised in the market. I also got some negative critisisms such as the trailer should be shortened by a few seconds and there were some uneccessary dialogue that could have been cut shorter to make the trailer flow better. I took this into consideration and proceeded to make my trailer better.
In what ways will your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Towards the end of our post-production journey, I discovered a wide range of books from my local and school library. I thought that using media products like this to develop my trailer was important as it gave me some great tips and revealed the professonal secrets of movie making:
This included books like, "100 Great Home Movie Techniques" by Chris Kenworthy, which included lighting effects, camera and editing illussions, visual effects, sound, weather and makeup. "Editing & Post-production Screencraft" by Declan Mcgrath which extracted very successful movies such as Ben-Hur, A Bout de Souffle, The Godfather and Lawrence of Arabia and shows how they were moulded in the cutting room explained by some of the world's top editors. And "Master Shots" by Christopher Kenworthy which explained the 100 advanced camera techniques to get an expensive look on a low budget movie.
WEEK 9 - (POST-PRODUCTION: INTRODUCTION TO VIDEO-EDITING)
How are you using media technologies in the post-production stage of your product?
We used online technological websites such as the use of http://www.pixlr.com/ . Not only did we use this as a quicker alternative to Photoshop software, as it was easier to understand and required less technological knowledge. But we also found it interesting in providing different types of effects that we needed in order to make our trailer look more successful and professional. We used http://www.pixlr.com/ for creating our storyboard.
Using the 'retro vintage effect' we were able to select different colour versions of the image to provide different results. Because we wanted to show the use of our bright oranges and reds to get the feel of the characters, we used this website to our advantage. Creating images like the ones below.
In what ways will your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
To add to the comedy feel, we also added transitions that were taken from the other trailers I had looked at during the pre-production stage where I had researched real media products. Using transitions such as fade out and wipe made our trailer look more professional. Here is how we added it onto our timeline.
I clicked Edit > Project that was selected from the different options on the top of the screen. Then this window appeared:
You could simply click and drag the effect to either the beginning or end of the timeline.
How I decided which effects I were to choose was from watching the trailers, for example, analysing Anuvahood gave me a fair idea of what we were going for and what was to be the result.
The arrows were put on to make it easier for me to understand which direction the screen was to move. This also helped me decide which transition I was to put on e.g. 'wipe up' or 'wipe right' etc.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Another part of my audience feedback during adding the sound effects to my trailer was to see what my target audience expected to hear from the trailer. So I asked 10 people one question which allowed them to have multiple answers:
After calculating the responses I had created a bar chart to make it easier for me to view which sound was to be most expected and what sound was to be least expected:
Judging from the results the most expected sound expected was a record scratch sound, drums, fast paced music and woosh/swoosh sound effect. I considered this and this is how I came to the conclusion by downloading these sound effects found on the website along with other effects I thought would go well with the storyline.
WEEK 8 (POST-PRODUCTION: INTRODUCTION TO VIDEO-EDITING OR RE-DRAFTING LAYOUTS)
How are you using media technologies in the post-production stage of your product?
I figured that the only time I could fix up on my trailer was when I was at school because I didn't have the software at home or knew any other place that had the same Adobe Premier software that we were currently using. So, I thought that during the time I was away from the editing suite I could prepare for other things that would be using in the trailer, for example, the caption background that would appear every 10 seconds of our trailer.
This was the first design I came up with:
I created this on Photoshop software. I used this youtube tutorial that taught me how to make it:
After creating this I didn't think this was the ideal caption for our trailer. For one it was multicoloured which wasn't so representative of our characters, and secondly it was fading to black which gave it a dark effect which I didn't like. So looking back at my inspirations from other trailers, I took some ideas from each of them and created a new background for my caption:
This time I used my previous skills and knowledge on Photoshop and created my own design and colours that I thought would best suite the trailer. This was the final result I wanted to stick to:
The use of colours were chosen as I thought it was what best represented the teenage girls with feminine colours. I also thought it was what represented class. You have the red dominating the soft yellow which is significant for the lowerclasses domination on the working class. This doesn't however mean that most of the trailer will be based on the lowerclass class but shows how strong and what powerful status they have not neccessarily being economically which is how we think we have challenged the prejudice stereotypes.
We took some of our ideas from Anuvahood as we liked the idea and wanted to use some of their conventions.
In what ways will your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I used the use of sound effects to make my comedy trailer more professional and give it a funny effect. Using funny sounds such as a record scratch, woosh & swoosh sound effects was what I discovered in the previous trailers that I had studied.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Part of my audience feedback was already looking at secondary data for a change, to view other students approaches at getting feedback. I found a powerpoint presentation done by a previous media student who looked at comedy targetted at teenagers and to point out it's history and how it evolved and the previous / current characteristics:
In what ways will your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
During the last part of our production, Post-Production, we used a variety of technologies in order to show off our skills and knowledge on this area. Overall, I had the most experience in Post-Production than anything else so Ii thought that using the right technology was vital. My group and I had used this software to edit:
Adobe Premier is an editing software that we used in order to crop our previous footage taken during Pre-production (shooting the trailer). We also used this software to add transitions, sound and image effects, text and other elements that would help our trailer grow to look more professional and well put together.
There was only one problem, I nor my group had any experience with this particular software. I had previously used editing software such as Apple Final Cut Pro and was unfamiliar with this particular software. I didn't however let this jeopordise our groups chances of producing an exciting trailer and used all my spare time to gain a better understanding of the software and how it works. To do this, I used internet technology YouTube to watch editing tutorials and gain a better understand from other peoples presentations:
Watching videos like the above clip only gave me more confidence during my first week of filming as I used their techniques and skills to use on our trailer which I found very useful and educational.
On the other hand, YouTube wasn't the only help we had with editing. During class learning, our teacher helped us to understand the basic usage of Adobe Premier, what you would use it for and where on the timeline it is most appropriate to use. Our teacher also showed us examples of previous work that we found very interesting in what exactly we are suppost to be creating. In order to show us the clips and the actual software, our teacher used a projector that was connected from his computer and the entire class was able to view what exactly our teacher wanted us to see:
Put in a class similar to the one above, we were able to both use our own individual computer and at the same time view what the teacher is trying to explain to us which was particularly useful as we could immitate his teaching and practice it on our own work. Getting a first hand experience helped me to rememeber what was taught and how to wrk the software. Beside me was a note pad which I used to note down all the important points that I thought would be forgotten so when they were needed I could easily look back on the notes to help me during times of misunderstanding.
Other technologies I had used was Photoshop, shown on the above images, to make production logos that would be shown before the trailer, and also using captions that would be used in between the trailer. Using this software was important as it maintained a very good quality image full of colour options to grab my target audience's attention. Here is how I made each production logo.
Production logo 1:
Using the gradient effect I made the text slowly fade giving it a production look. Then, using simple white font capital letters created the 'Films'. To make sure that the production logo fitted well into the trailer without any parts of it being cut down, my teacher helped me to use the right format and I changed it into 'Widescreen view' by using the settings.
Production logo 2:
With the second production logo, we decided to use a gun to represent the idea of the trailer and youth life. I drew the gun shape from scratch using photoshop to get rid of any unwanted errors. Then, I added the colours to make the production logo stand out a lot more. I made the setting the same as the last production logo as they will be all the same size, making sure they all fit onto the trailer.
Production logo 3:
With the third logo production, I felt that making it would be much easier and therefore used MS Paint to create it. I drew a simple character, coloured it in a light yellow and used this font website to create the graffic text:
This was the final result that I had saved to use during the editing which I saved to be used and added on the timeline during the creation of my post-production.
The most important factors of my production logos that had to be looked over was the colour, font type and choice of icons to be used. It all had to be related to my target audience or in my case, the representation of my target audience that I am trying to project.
Caption background:
Preparing the caption background was difficult as I had to move one photoshop file to another in order for it to fit into the Film / video size setting. The picture below shows how this was done:
Making sure that the setting were perfect was important as when it came to importing the final caption onto Adobe Premier, if it did not fit the screen it would not look in proportion with the other clips which is important as the timeline must flow and in order to do that, everything must be the same size. By doing this I opened a New Document > Changed the settings to 'Film / Video' then selected 'Create New'. Then, from the previous document I highlighted and dragged it to the new document. Then I saved the new document and imported it onto Adobe Premier.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
During the first week of editing I had to plan some of the production pictures and caption pictures that would be prepared and shown between our shooting clips. To make it easier for myself and my group during editing, we thought it was best to get all of the hard elements of our trailer out of the way which included the pictures previously creating, making sure that it fitted and suited the trailer style before we went on. I imported the production logos used and added transitions. I left the sound last however as I felt that this was a touch up that could be left till last, it was the least important. So far, the production logos took roughly 5 seconds of the trailer. Before I went on I wanted to hear what the audience had to say about how the trailer started and whether or not a real professional comedy trailer would start of so fast using the same transitions as I did. So I asked my teacher what he thought of it:
"Hmm... Very interesting, I like the way you used your skills and found some interesting transition effects. The speed seems suitable to me, however, why have you decided to use these production logos in particular?"
I explained to him that these logos was to exaggerate the representation of the youth of today, and my target audience being the youth ages 15 - 30 would become familiar with our representations being projected. He agreed and gave me more tips and advice on how to better it.
WEEK 6 - (PRODUCTION: WRITING AND SHOOTING; UPDATE PRESENTATION)
How are you using media technologies in the construction of your product?
During week six, we were using two different cameras at different points of the trailer. This was the main camera that we used:
The camera recorder that we were using wasn't the greatest, as we did have trouble trying to upload the tape onto Adobe Premier which took a lot of time, stress and effort. However, this camera is what the professionals used and we wanted to be taken seriously so we tried to use this piece of digital technology. Working the camera took a bit of time but once we got the hang of it, we put in as many skills and techniques we knew into the tape and tried our best to make our trailer appear realistic. Along with the camera recorder came the tripod, charger and tape. The first time we had recieved the camera corder we couldn't get filming straight away, due to the fact that the tape was not put in the overall package. However, we overcame this problem by desperately searching for the same kind of tape that was being sold in the market. We found it, paid for it and began eagerly filming.
Here is a picture of myself using the camera in action:
In what ways will your media production use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Now it was important that we got tips from other media production organisations on lighting, sound, camera shots/ framing and mise-en-scene, in order to incorporate the most important elements into our trailer to increase the professional look of our trailer. So after studying these by watching youtube tutorials, I taught myself the importance of each element and how they can be better developed.
Lighting:
This video taught me the importance of position of light and how much of an impact an overhead light can make for example. This would help me during the filming of the characters when they were indoors. E.g. the parent scene during the beginning of the trailer.
Shots:
This video taught me the different shots I can use in my trailer. I didn't use all of them but I only used those that I thought were suitable for a comedy trailer. I thought that shots were the most important element in my trailer, not only shots but the characters position as it can reveal alot about the character and his / her status to the audience. After watching this video I had a fair idea of which shots I would like to use during shooting.
Using my skills from GCSE's and other work related
experience, I was able to also use a tripod to steady filming; however this year I became more confident with the movement of the tripod and experimented during filming with panning and titling shots. It also helped to steady the shot so the mise-en-scene was framed perfectly within the screen and kept the filming line straight. We noticed a significant difference in the footage when not using a tripod- with this piece of equipment, the film looks well cut and shot.
Also, small gadgets like my current phone helped me a lot when it came to contacting my group in order to arrange a meeting time and place. Apps such as Blackberry messenger which was used on my BlackBerry Curve saved a lot of money with group communication and made it easier to get together in terms of filming. My Blackberry had also helped me to note down any reminders or important notes that couldn't have been forgotten. But most importantly, as well as being compatible and it saved information of pictures and videos that would give us ideas during filming that would remind me not to forget. Video's were viewed from the internet via Blackberry on http://www.youtube.com/.
My 2GB Sandisk Cruzer Slice Memory Stick also helped me save memory and transfer files from one place to another. This was important as documents that were needed for filming e.g. Filming Script, Storyboards, Example of trailer videos could be taken from one computer and printed / viewed in another so this helped a great deal when transferring files as it was compatible.
In what ways will your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
During writing and shooting, we took film trailers such as Anuvahood that I had previously analysed and used their forms and conventions. We liked the way they took panning shots constantly and slow zoom-ins. This gave the audience the effect that they were apart of the trailer and were moving along with the characters, if not zooming close to characters to really get the sense of belonging in the movie. We liked their techniques and like the effect it had on the audience so we decided to repeat this into our own but with a twist. We wanted it to be about two complete different worlds turned upside down so in order to make this metaphor show, we panned, tilted and added all types of different shots to make our trailer sharp and edgy.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
I surveyed 50 people who all fitted into the audience I was targetting. I asked these 50 people one question, "Do you think the clips shown in a comedy spoof trailer will be fast-paced/ slow paced. Here are the results:
96% of people thought that comedy-spoof trailers should be fast-paced. So we took this advice and considered it when filming. This was useful as the expectations of the target audience had to be considered as they were the people we are advertising our product to.
On the other hand, these 4% of people had a different perspective. I was eager to hear what they had to say and why they had decided that a comedy-spoof type genred trailer would be slow-paced. Here is the response I got back,
"Yeah, It is quite fast-paced I guess. But I was thinking about the beginning you see... Because, usually right, you have a slow-pace at the beginning, then towards the end is when everything starts taking speed and then comes the cliff hanger at the very end..."
This was an interesting perspective from one of the people I had surveyed (who were in the range of my target audience). I kept this noted on my BlackBerry for an extra technique that could be taken into consideration when shooting.
