Week 7

WEEK 7 –  (POST-PRODUCTION: EDITING; LAYOUTS; RE-DRAFTING & PRESENTATION SESSION)

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.