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.