Evaluation Q4

During our research, planning and evaluation stages for our A2 coursework we had to use a number of new media technologies in order to help create our trailer. This included specific software programmed associated with Apple Macs, e.g. Final Cut and Garageband. Also YouTube - which helped us research our film trailer inspirations, and blogger which is where we've shown all of our working progress up to the finished products. It was a learning curve working with the different programmes, and they were all very helpful as part of our coursework.


Final Cut-

Final cut was the programme used to put all of our film clips together, and for editing purposes. When uploading the clips onto the Macs, Final Cut isn't the programme we put them on first. To begin with we had to put them onto iMovie and drag them down into the box so they were all together. This didn't take too long, and once it was done we were then able to import them to Final Cut from there. The editing process was fairly straightforward from there, we dragged the individual clips together and began cutting them down to the correct size, as well as adding in different transitions to make the editing run smoothly. We didn't have many problems when doing this,only when we tried adding in further clips from a different camera but we eventually got that sorted out so we could carry on with our trailer without any further issues.

Garageband-

Garageband is a programme on the Macs specifically designed to create music from scratch. As we're not allowed to feature any existing music in our work (e.g. chart music) this gave us the opportunity to create a musical piece to fit the genre of our trailer and allow us to be creative and explore the different styles of music. In terms of our trailer we wanted to create something that gradually built up and reached a climax towards the end so it would fit in nicely with our plot. We began creating the piece and the main instrument was a piano, which started off quiet and began to get increasingly louder throughout - when the tension was high. Another feature of Garageband was adding beats into the background, so the music didn't sound shallow or too quiet. It was fairly challenging to find the right pace to fit the piano but in the end I think it all fitted together perfectly. We also added in a couple of sound effect near the end of the piece, which also fitted into the plot. It was important to make our music long enough to fit the duration of the trailer,and thankfully when importing our music into final cut it was just the right length to fit.

YouTube-

YouTube was extremely helpful and allowed us to search for inspirational trailers when thinking about our preferred genre of film. This helped with our research at the beginning, when eventually we found 'Prisoners' and 'Hours' which we used to inspire us for our trailer later on.

Overall I think we have done a great job on our trailer and promotional package. The audience feedback we gathered was great and compared to last time we have more views and opinions.
We have improved many skills and knowledge since last year.

Evaluation Q3

 

 

 

Evaluation Q2

 

Audience feedback for both of these were good, although we do have a few things we could improve on and if we get a chance, we will do this.
Overall, I think they both turned out better products than our first initial ideas. Taking inspiration from real posters and covers really helped us to create these, and having great actors to model go a long way.
To improve, I think it would be darkening the image of Emily on the cover and adding in a real billing block on our poster. This would be ideal.

Evaluation Q1

Magazine Cover Final

 

 

This is our final magazine cover, We decided to go with this image because she seems to be looking for her younger siblings in the dark. This is where we did add in a moon above her head. We think this looked very effective.

From our audience feedback they did like the cover, this is what they stated, exactly:

"The images and text work well together and are contrasting against the dark background"

Although we liked this positive feedback, we asked on what we could improve, this was said:

"I think there needs to be more images added onto the front, maybe shots of the trailer or film itself to give an insight?"

Another point of negative feedback we got was that the image of the main character is too light, and needs to be darker. She looks too washed out and we will improve this next time.

We wanted to only put Emily on the front, since she is the main character and I think that her posture works well for her character.

We will definitely be taking into consideration the negative feedback and improve on this, however we did like the positive comments we had.

Compared to real magazine covers, I think we need to add more onto the front, but this is something we can improve on.

 

Garageband

These are screen shots from our creation in Garage band. We took inspiration again from 'Hours'. We felt that it would work well for our genre since its starts slow and builds up towards tension.

To start off we knew we needed to include some grand piano loops, this gives off a soft vibe whilst the voiceover is playing. We didn't want something to overpower her voice.

To pull this together, we placed a soft bass in the background of everything, this needed to be done since the piano alone wouldn't bee too professional for this. Once the tension builds up, we place some soft beats in the beginning and add onto this with some bigger ones, but not too much so that they distract from the piano. There are a few times where the music will become tense and slow down again, this keeps the audience intrigued.

Altogether we used four different types of loops to create this-

Piano

Beats

Bass

FX

We cut some beats and moved a few notes by double clicking on the loop, to change the original loop into something we wanted, to make things flow a little better.

The use of the beats in the mid section did add some strong tension to this and this was the aim we were going for. We added a stronger bass to the very end to finish everything off. The FX sounds we used were to polish everything. We used the sound of a disappeared caller and the sound of thunder which also relates to our Summit Entertainment institution.

Feedback from audiences said that they liked the music and they way it rises then back down again to create the tension build we wanted to portray.

Film Poster Idea

 

This Is our final film poster, We did edit this on Photoshop. This wasn't hard but it wasn't easy, since when we put the image of Conor into the image as another layer, he somehow became pixelated which we couldn't fix, so we tried our best to get this looking as natural as possible.

We first chose a background to work with on Google and found this darker one with clouds, we felt this would work perfectly because it goes with our genre well.

We then put in the picture of the toy box and bear, taking out the background using the magic wand tool then increasing the contrast.

We took the background out of Emily's image and also increased the contrast. We thought that her eyes needed brightening so we selected these and increased the brightness. This did look better than before. To fix any errors and making things look smooth, we used the blur tool to go around the hair and outlines. We also used this on their faces to give them flawless skin, but not too flawless it was completely noticeable. Taking the background out of Conor was the hardest part, since he has glasses which is hard to go around the edges. His top was black with 'Call Of Duty' written on the front, so we had to take this out using the clone stamp tool. We then increased the brightness of the top so it stands out from the dark background.

We felt that out images worked together and balanced out perfectly fine. We placed the title at the bottom above our tagline. We used white font, this contrasts the black. After discussing the age ratings, we placed this in the top left hand corner to balance everything. The main actors name is also in the top right hand. We made the headshots bigger and smaller depending on their status.

After this, we found we didn't have enough time to create and put in our own billing block, so we searched this on Google and found a template version. We felt this was better than nothing so we placed this in.

Overall we feel our poster does look professional, although some areas such as the pixelating couldn't be helped even though we used a high quality camera for this.