Q4. TECHNOLOGY

Q4. TECHNOLOGY

-We used a HD Mini DV camera to film, which had an inbuilt screen, allowing us to check what we had filmed and to film extra scenes quickly before we ran out time. Therefore we do not have the planned jump as seen in the storyboard but have another flip instead in our trailer, because we looked over our film and made the artistic decision to change it. As it is a digital camera, we weren't constricted to filming the scenes on order, making it quicker and easier for us to film the trailer because some of our locations were only available at certain times. For example, one of our last scenes to film was the shower scene, this was because we had difficulty finding a shower that didn't explicitly take away from the pun of which the actress is meant to really be dancing in the rain and so we ended up filming this the school showers that was schedualled to be knocked down a couple days later.

-We used iMovie 11 to edit our footage, including our quick cuts, one dissolve edit and to add a feature where it paused on a still from the video. iMovie also gave us the oppertunity to rearrange our shots into the preffered sequence because we didn't film scenes in order. Our ability to quickly change the sequence of shots helped us tremendously as it made our process faster when uploading and arranging our footage. Because of this quicker process we then had more time to look over our trailer and make changes such as regarding the cross desolve. We originally wanted it just be a cut transition, but this made it look more rough and didn't flow well, and so we experimented with different transitions and decided the cross dissolve allowed us give the impression of time passing better then a simple cut. Technology really improved the way we could exacute our creative decisions. The dissolve also let us create our distribution logo credit by using a cross zoom between two pictures. This made our distribution logo credit look a lot more like the professional animations that feature at the beginning of film trailers. These all made our work look more proffessional and helped us to create the fun, exciting and action-pact feeling we wanted.

We used Photoshop to create our film title logo which is explained in further detail previously in our blog (link bellow). We also used it to create the background for our title slates, to create our distribution logo and to put together our magazine cover and film poster. The software gave our products a clean and more professional finish. We had to take the pictures on our digital DSLR camera, upload them and then manipulate them using the gradient toold, colour overlay, spray paint tool etc. This gave us a lot of creative freedom because we were able to achieve impossible situations, such as being able to manipulated the the actresses pose on the poster, by digitally manipulating the image, moving her hand and turning the image on it's side to give the effect of her break dancing. This added to our comedic theme, helping us to really push the exaggeration used in most parodies. We were also able to create our own title slates that help the trailer to seem more colourful, bright and excting by using a simple tool such as the gradient tool and then making it transparent. Photoshop was a fundamental tool in making our print work and trailer seem more exciting and when appealing to our younger target audience. (More information is linked to bellow from previous posts for more specific details regarding all our processes in using Photoshop in making all our products)

Garageband was used to create our soundtrack. We experimented with loops, already exhisting sound on the software and also merged this with the violin piece we recorded and edited on Garageband. We had to make sure our surroundings were completely silent when recording our music and the tools allowed us to manipulate the piece's pitch frequency, length and speed to create our idealistic sound regarding the violin piece and the Hip Hop song. We were also able to merge songs together and transition from one piece of music into another, correlating with our shot changes. Garageband allowed us to then simply drag our music into iTunes and easily add them to our trailer, bringing our ideas to life. Music is a fundamental part of our trailer and so we had to make sure we had all our music pieces on time, Garageband was very quick and easy to use, and to make them all sound fun, upbeat and able to dance to.

Youtube then allowed us to distribute our trailer online, enabeling us to then put it on our blog. There were even features on Youtube the website now where you can quickly make any simply editing 'tweeks' to the video such as adjusting the lighting, putting in music and cutting scenes out. We didn't use any or these but it did help us to think about any other changes we could use to make our product look more professional. We also implemented extra details on the website such as putting it on as an 'Official trailer' opposed to a student trailer, similar to the way a real trailer would post their trailer on Youtube as, adding to the illusion of our product being realistic.

Research

We used Youtube and Google to research dance and parody film trailers, posters and magazine covers. Youtube allowed us to take screenshots of the trailers so we could document the conventions used in that genre and pick out what we would potentially use in our trailer. Youtube made our research a lot quicker because we were able to find all our trailers on it and also easily refer back to it because the website is easily accessible on Smartphones, iPads, all of our laptops and computers, making it an easy reference tool, aslike the blog. Similarly Google images allowed us to also quickly access the dance posters and film magazine archives such as on the Empire official website and imdb quickly, where we could then analyse them and find both the formal conventions of posters and magazines themselves, but also the creative conventions that the genre chooses to use, such as colour and actors facial expressions etc.

Planning

We used Blogger a lot when planning. It was a place where we could list all our research and our schedules and it could be easily accessed by the whole group.We were then able to all add and change any details and so not only were phones through text messages and emails used to comunicate, but the blog was also useful when doing this too. This was vital for making sure we all knew what we needed to do, for example we would often post what we would do that day of filming on our filming scheduals on the blog. As it was accessible online, the whole group also knew when we were to start focusing on editing after filming because we put dates and weekly time frames of when we were going to get things done on the blog too. As everyone knew what they were doing, we were able to get the trailer filmed quicker and have extra time at the end to make any minor adjustments to our products, like adding in a voice for the Facebook and Twitter page, which really was a last minute decision to increase the comedy and pace of the trailer.

Evaluation

When evaluating our work we used Mac computers iTunes and iMovie to showcase our soundtrack, our trailer and our print works. iMovie and iTunes were helpful as it allowed us to show our work without finalising it and then giving us the chance to edit it by going back into edit mode or dragging the iTunes track back into Garageband. We could then get feedback and easily change our work. Youtube, Blogger and Prezi also are helpful when evaluating our work in general as well. It allows us to present our work in a more interactive and dynamic way such as using hyperlinks, presentations and including videos

Our Project

CONSTRUCTION

Camera/Smart phones were also used to take pictures of our location shots, actors and pictures while we set up our equiptment, to help us to document what we did and to plan who and where we were going to film with. This medium was easiest to use because it was always available, even when a normal digital camera wasn't. This proved useful because quite often our chosen actors weren't always available, however, we were able to get all their pictures because of the easy accessability of our Smart/Camera phones. It was also easy to upload the pictures straight onto a computer through bluetooth and then easily upload onto the blog. This made it faster for us keep our blog posted visually and meant we were able to blog more often than last year.

Prezi

Slide Share

Prezi- an online powerpoint system that I am using now. It was useful when presenting the storyboard as it allowed us to zoom in and out of images, see the whole storyboard in one go and see the detaileed descriptions clearly throughout in a more creative way instead of just having peice of paper. The storyboard then reflected the feel of what we wanted to produce, making it seem more exciting to film and giving the whole group the same concept of the trailer too. It is also helpful in the way it makes our blog posts seem less tiresome to read and helped us to experiment with different ways of presenting our ideas.

Slide share is another way we could express our ideas on the blog by uploading our powerpoint presentations. This proved useful when we were presenting our researching and presenting our storyboard. It helped us to make it look more interesting, more interactive and helped is to show how we developed our ideas from one idea to another because of it's flowing and methodical way of showing the powerpoint presentation. Such when we were researching our magazine cover ideas, it helped us to show our thought processes better, helping our minds to be clearer on what the final product was going to be

Word and Powerpoint allowed us to create questionnaires for our audience research and to collect the data into graphs so that we could clearly see who our target audience would be. For example we used colourful pie charts that allowed us to quickly see where the majority lied, such as when we looked at our target audiences occupation, in yellow it clearly presented itself as the largest result and this made it quicker for us when we refered back to our research. Powerpoint also gave us an easy reference tool to look back at during our production stages. Our questionnaires being produced on Microsoft Word made them look more professional and allowed us to create a simple and clear layout, producing a more willing attitude within our audience towards doing the questionnaire, and so we were able to get more people to do it, more results and so a more accurate results.

Assets

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Important

Details

Stockholm

(cc) photo by Metro Centric on Flickr

(cc) photo by jimmyharris on Flickr

Budapest

(cc) photo by Metro Centric on Flickr

San Francisco

(cc) photo by Franco Folini on Flickr

doodles

Notes

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