How did you use media technology in the construct ion, research, planning and evaluation stages?

EVALUATION QUESTION 3

When planning for my trailer, I used new media to research ideas and look for inspiration. I used YouTube to watch trailers for fi lms relating to my idea and to gain knowledge of the diff erent approaches to making a horror trailer. The fi lms that I watched the trailers for; I researched them in more depth on IMDB and Wikipedia to help my trailer reviews. Three trailers that infl uenced me on my horror trailer were The Conjuring (2013), Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013), and Oculus (2013). In the trailer for The Conjuring (2013) there is a scene where one of the Perron daughters gets dragged off of her bed by a demon. I found this to be very eff ective and inspirational because it allows the audience to connect with the characters via the bad experiences they are going through.

The cinematography used in the trai ler for Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) is eff ective as there were a good amount of close ups and expressionist angles to show characters emotions and express their feelings. For example when the baby walker moves by itself, we see the mother Renai looking very disturbed. In the trai ler for Oculus (2013) the perfect amount of coll is ion cutting has been used and the trai ler fl ows perfectly from beginning to end with quicker montage sequences in exactly the right place and it plays with your mood perfectly. The trai ler begins with a minor jump scare to make sure that the audience are paying attention but then calms down to establish the narrative, though sti l l doesn’t become boring which is a problem many horror fi lms encounter. The pace then picks up once we are aware of the basic narrative. As more events start to unfold, the pace increases and by the last part of the trai ler the audience is most l ikely on the edge of their seats with suspense. The trailer ends with a very chil l ing scene in which Kaylie and Tim are standing very close to the mirror, the l ights fl icker off and a terrifying fi gure emerges from the mirror. This scene lasts about 1 second which makes it much more tense and shocking to the audience.  I really l iked the style of cinematography and editing that these trai lers use and so they created lots of inspiration for my trai ler.

During the planning and research phase, I used programs such as Microsoft Word and Publisher to write up my reviews and other analysis for the coursework as well as using Adobe Photoshop to create a mood board. In addition to all of this, I used DVD’s and Blu-Rays to watch horror fi lms in class for inspiration as well as outside of class for my fi lm reviews. I watched Insidious (2010) on DVD as well as The Conjuring (2013). I also am a fan of horror fi lms and so have used sites such as Netfl ix to watch them in my own time for pleasure but still taking mental notes to use as inspiration for my trailer.

In the construction stage of my trai ler, I used a few diff erent types of new media. To begin with, I used Adobe Photoshop to create my magazine cover and poster for my horror trai ler. I used a few diff erent fi lters such as a cool ing fi lter (that I downloaded from a copyright free site I found on YouTube) to create a chi l l ing and gloomy eff ect on the image. I also used the opacity and duplicate tool for two reasons. First ly, I used opacity to desaturate the image on my poster to give it more of a horror atmosphere, and secondly to create the ghostly refl ection of Leo’s (Ol iver Butler) face.

For the editing of my trailer, I used Adobe Premiere Pro. I used a lot of the basic editing methods such as cutting the clips and changing the length of them, but also used more complex tools and methods such as brightness and contrast to give a more professional look to the trailer. In addition to this I used stop motion for the knife scene to make it appear to move by itself. I also used the mute tool for the clips that I didn’t want to have sound and fades for the intertitles and some of the clips. The intertitles were downloaded from a copyright free text template site called Templates4AE and the template we used for our intertitles was called Shattered.

In the evaluation stage of this product, we had a focus group screening to receive feedback for our trailer which was very useful. To do this, we had to convert our trailer to another format to be played to the class that were being recorded on a digital camera for the screening in order to maintain HD quality. This recording was then uploaded to YouTube to allow us to embed the video into posts to put onto our coursework blogs.