How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Hardware

In order to record a majority of my trailer footage I used a Sony mini camcorder, it is a fairly basic camcorder, which uses the old tape system. This tended to be a hindrance when filming as we had to make sure the tape was fully rewound and not overwriting any footage we already had. In the future I would hope that it is possible we could use more up to date recording equipment that records into a digital device. Despite being old, it done the job and had a useful flip screen which was nice for filming POV shots as you could see what you were recording. The manual focus also came in useful while filming and there are noticeable moments within our trailer where we have used it to give the effect a POV shot especially. Along with the camcorder I used a Digital SLR camera to take my photographs; the autofocus came in useful especially when I was taking the close up of the eye used in my film poster. For most of the production of our trailer we used an Apple iMac, I found these very easy to use and very quick compared to normal PC’s. They helped greatly in speeding up the production process.

Software

In the production of our trailer we used Final Cut Pro. Final Cut pro is a professional piece of software which is a market leader in video production. It allowed us to easily upload and edit our footage using a multitude of different options which allowed us to cut and join together various scenes using effects such as fades and transitional effects. I think our final trailer clearly shows the vast number of effects that are possible on final cut and these work very well with the style of trailer we were going for. If I had to criticise this piece of software on anything it would be the lack of options for text and inter-titles, the text options were often limited and clunky and because of this we used Adobe After Effects CS4 to create our inter-titles and then imported them in as video files. After Effects allowed for much more in depth options when it came to choosing effects for text along with movement and the actions which the text have. Our group had no training within the programme and we learned slowly how to construct the text and eventually completed a set of inter-titles which looked professional and much better than what could have been produced within Final Cut Pro. In order to create the music and sound effects for our trailer we used Cubase 5, within our group we had several people who had a lot of experience within this program which allowed us to create a soundtrack to a high quality with relative ease. One good thing about Cubase was the ability to import video footage into the program which allowed for us to perfectly match the soundtrack to what was happening within the trailer; this is why the music throughout the trailer seems to develop and change along with the various scenes within the trailer. Having members with experience in sound recording also allowed us to use professional recording equipment such as mics to import high quality audio into Cubase which can be seen in scenes such as the ending in which the whispers are heard.

 In the production of my ancillary products I used Adobe CS5. This recognisable piece of software is an industry standard piece of highly professional software which allows for high quality pieces of media to be produced. This is one program which I personally had a lot of experience in and was able to use to its full ability. Photoshop allowed me to easy edit the still images I took with the Digital SLR. I was able to easily change the levels on light and saturation to change a relatively normal photo into a dark and ‘scary’ looking photo, changing a normal girl into a frightful antagonist. It is also extremely useful for creating and arranging typography, due to the vast number of fonts available and the ability to easily change the size and spaces within text. Photoshop also has a useful ruler and snap system which allows for precise placement of images and text, this came in very useful in creating the perfectly lined up and placed images and text within both products.Photoshop

The Internet.

The internet played a massive role in researching previous horrors. I could browse websites like IMDB. These allowed me to experience a multitude of previous horror movies from throughout the ages and take the very best bits out of all of them and add them to my trailer. This access to pretty much every movie ever made is such a massive tool when attempting to come up with a concept for a movie, as a tool the internet is almost indispensable, it provides a source of information which has proved invaluable. In order to view the trailers of movies I found on IMDB I used Youtube, Using YouTube I was able to view high quality videos and easily generate ideas for my trailer, a large amount of our research came from YouTube and it played a massive role in dictating how our trailer was produced. In order to display my work throughout the project I have been using Blogger, having a blog allows you to combine almost every single type of media within one side website. I am able to post all my progress within our trailer and display images of things which have acted as inspiration along with trailers I have watched. Despite the seemingly perfect description the blog actually performs awfully, it is very to actually display and arranges text and images are they very clunky and difficult to arrange in a way that looks nice. I think that it may be that it is just the specific blogging site we are using which has these problems and a website with up to date publishing applications would probably work much better.