Since producing the animatic which was used to plan our film trailer and to pitch it to our target to make sure it worked and attracted them, there are a diverse range of areas where I feel I have progressed and improved in. These include areas in directing, editing and cinematography. I’ve furthered my knowledge in shot sequencing especially since last year on the programme Imovie6, as Final-Cut is much more versatile which enables me to achieve smoother shot sequencing, meaning I inevitably found easier to cut edit effortlessly which meant I could accomplish invisible editing, whilst still producing fast pace clips during the montage to scare and keep the audiences attention, and have a slower beginning to build tension and establish the narrative. In the animatic we used a lot of title slides and some transitions which made it a little disjointed, despite providing good establishment of narrative, also still images were used for the anamatic from a digital camera which made the animatic look as if it had lots of jump cuts, this looked unprofessional and would seem to distract the audience, which is not what’s wanted in a horror film as the audience attention must be gripped to a specific point; which is why a common convention of horror films is that the mise-en-scene must be kept uncluttered and purposeful. In our final production however we were able to choose transitions to make the film run smoothly and appear professional. Although we only used simple cuts, this was chosen for a reason, this being that it fitted with the conventions of the genre.
- Although Final-Cut is much more versatile than imovie6, with its many more tools, filters, transitions, effects and applications it can still be a little difficult to navigate and a bit time consuming, in making sure all the clips and sound are cut in the same place.In addition there is not a huge area to see the timeline on, as oppose to Imovie 6 where all clips are clearly and largely seen weather being used or not, however Final-Cut is very precise seems to be much more advanced than Imovie6.
- I also advanced my knowledge in the use a SONY camcorder; where by I demonstrated my practical skills in cinematography. I have shot a number of different framings, angles and movements. Through the animatic and rough cut for my film, trailer, I have been able to develop my skills in each of these three areas. I have learnt how to use the camcorder to more precision whilst also developing my own skill and innovation away from the screenplay in both angles and framing's. The main areas I have improved with the camcorder are in zooms, pans and tilts (movements). When shooting both the animatic and rough cut I found that I always made these shots quite jerky which would distract the audience. In our final production I had become more competent with the technology and found that I was able to shoot each of these to appear steady and smooth, however still being purposely jerky when I needed to be; for example the camera movement would need to be a little jerky in zooms and stalking scenes of the victims, to give the point of view of the murderer which makes the audience feel as if they’re really there more, and also to feel more empathy with the victims as it scares the audience more.
We have used a digital camera this year to take images of our cast, propps location etc whihc we uploaded via a lead to our blogs, we feel this is a much quicker way of getting our picture onto the blog than using the scanner like last year.
To research films we used websites such as IMDB, play and the search engine Google, out of these I found IMDB to be the most helpful as it included lots of information about every film which was cleverly layed out in easy to find sections and links includng characters images/names/information, plots and even trailers it also gave information about similar films, prequels , sequels, sppoffs and re-makes, this made our research much simpler and more acessible to navigate.
- For most people a daily visit to the internet is normal especially with incresed use of social networking websites such as Bebo, Facebook and the recent 2 year boom of Twitter.'According to research by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, movie trailers rank third in popularity among the 10bn videos viewed online every year, after news and user-created video.' (from website)
This has been further advanced with the growth of viral marketing, in which movie trailers are cleverly used to target their audience either as a climax, launchpad or campaign. For example 'Cloverfield' (JJ Abrams) which was released in july 2007, this trailer was shown in American cinemas before the huge blockbuster; 'Tansformers' this trailer manipulated footage of people running and screaming in New York city with explosions to give the effect of it being filmed with a normal camcorder as a home movie, which incorporated a lot of jerky movements to make the audience feel as if they were really there in a realistic world and also because it was so jerky and was only seen through one set of eyes it left the audience in much suspnse only bits of scenes could be seen.
Due to re-shoots and more footage needing to be taken than just a short film would need, as a full length feature film must be established and advertised within 90 seconds, we encountered a few problems such as our camera/tape malfunctioning half way through meaning we had to change them to a newer version of Sony cam-corder, and because unfortunately the window to see what’s playing is so small on ‘Final-Cut’ as opposed to the near full-screen on Imovie6, we were unable to see the various shoots being shot on various settings, however we feel it isn’t that noticeable or detractable for the audience, never the less if we had done it again it would of course all been on the same setting of ‘standard 4:3 or wide screen 16:9’. Below is an example of each setting to illustrate the difference, the difference however is much more subtle on the trailer as it uses only short takes.
Standard 4:3
Widescreen 16:9
- As this year we used more programmes with the soundtrack as well as ‘Dance Ejay’ there was a ‘keyboard’ and ‘Cubase’ where the sounds were incorporated together, these media technologies were new to us meaning some of our louder drum beats are mostly all meant to be incidental on actions or murders to emphasise them to the audience increasing tension and shock felt, however not all of them are exactly right and may be a tiny bit off, although still being quite effective if we’d had more time and knowledge of the software used for soundtrack we would have made sure that the sound was a little bit tighter and clean cut.
- Our voice-over was quite well heard as it was recorded right next to the camera, however sound wasn’t as clear when the two female characters were talking we liked this idea and partly purposely chose not to use the boom microphone apart from not having a means of transport for the expensive equipment, as ambient sound was achieved and is a part of everyday life meaning it creates verisimilitude for the audience, making the film all the more real to them as the sound in the background of the film is the same as in their lives.
- Final-Cut also helped with the sound problem as we could lightly adjust the soundtrack sound down, and the dialogue up so to clearly hear both without any huge noticeable dips and dives in volume, to distract the audience, the soundtrack volume being ever so slightly lower also connotes that the dialogue being exchanged must be very important and crucial for establishment of film narrative.
- To upload my final film and rough cuts onto my blog i used a website called Photobucket which i signed myself an accont upto and uploaded thses chosen clips to from Final-Cut and Imovie6 in school, meaning i could access them on any computer with internet access, this made it asier to complete my coursework as i could add a clip as and when needed and didnt have to be at school to do so, which meant all my blogging didnt need to be done at school. This was very helpful.
To do my media corsework write up essays i used the new technologie of a blog on the website Blogger. I found this to be easy, simple to use and mostly reliable however it had its faults for example saving a post which included a video clip didnt seem to work as a result of form errors as did my post on 'genre research and intertextual links' which i had to make a new post for in order to work, also when thevideo ws first uploaded on half of the screen could be seen on my actual blog, i therefore think tht the space for writting uploading images videos etc should be of the same measurements as whats seen on the blo, as my purposeful layout was lost when published as a much larger space had been shown when editing, this was most unhelpful.- We also used the combined technology of a 'vodcast' to effectively help evaluate our work, it worked well as a vodcast is the combination of a podcast and a video, meaning as we evaluated our work using a voice-over recoreder we were able to demonstrate visually with images and film stills at the same time.
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