Thursday, 16 April 2015

Evaluation activity 4

Computer software - IMovie.
As a group we decided to go against the schools software (Adobe) and went with a software we felt that we knew best from previous movies we have made, this was IMovie. By using IMovie it meant that we were able to know everything on there well as we used it last year for our Opening Two minutes. This meant that we saved time as we didn't have to get to know the software and we could edit our film quickly and successfully to make sure our final product looked professional. Initially we were going to use one of our team mates brother to play the Ukulele for our soundtrack however, we were able to find non-copyright music and many sound effects on IMovie which went with our trailer well and made the production as a whole a lot more successful. We were also able to create our own institution which was very good for us as it meant that everything that is shown in our trailer has been created by us. For example, some of our classmates found a non-copyright institution which meant they were restricted on how they wanted it to look and come across to the audience. This was not a problem for us as we were able to design it the way we wanted it to look. By using IMovie we were also able to edit out some mistakes that we did whilst shooting the film on set. For example, in some clips we did not have the correct exposure (too light or too dark). However, this was not a problem as on IMovie you can edit this to get the exposure/lighting just right for the mood that you want to pursue to the audience.


Camera - Nikon D3100.
We used the Nikon camera for all of the elements that were involved in our A2 media course (magazine cover, poster and trailer). This was a great choice for us as this camera allows you to change exposure which was a great help as sometimes we were not able to film at the same time which meant the lighting was slightly different. Another good thing about this camera is that it had a manual focus, this meant that we were able to change the focal length lens which allows you to put different things in the shot in focus. For example on one of our shots we have the background in focus which shows the antagonist walking and we foreground blurred which shows a close up of the protagonist face. We also used this camera to decide on what we wanted our final location to be filmed in. We went to various different locations and took short panning films of it and took some pictures so that when we got back to school we could refresh our memory on what it looked like and pick our favourite.

Wednesday, 15 April 2015

Evaluation activity 3


This is our audience feedback for our trailer 'Betrayal'. We asked our peers to watch our trailer through and comment on certain aspects of it and tell us our strengths and improvements that we could have done to make our trailer more successful.
This was very useful to us as it allowed us to find slight mistakes that we have done in our production and will help us develop our skills when we make videos in the future.

Positives; 
- Fast pase editing was successful
- Music art the beginning worked well with the target audience.
- Sound effects worked well throughout the trailer.
-Enigmas are shown well a couple of times throughout the trailer.

By having these positive feed-backs, it helped us realize that we did meet nearly all of the conventions for horror films which allowed our trailer to be successful.

Negatives; 
- Sound could flow a bit better (when the girl screams - could have let it sound bridge over into next shot)
- Could have used more of a range of camera angles.
-You are introduced to a character and then don't know what happens to her (narrative could be quite confusing)

These negative feed-backs that we were given were things that we had already looked upon however decided to do it this was as we thought it made our production look better. For example; The girls scream we decided to cut short because we thought that when we used a sound bridge to link it into the next shot, it got rid of the adrenaline that the fast pase shots were giving the audience. This shows that we trailed and errored this part of the production.

We do agree that we could have used a higher range of camera angles to make our film come across more dramatic and link into the conventions of horror films - we will be sure to do this in future films.

However the reason we decided to leave one of the protagonist characters out of some of the trailer after introducing her is because we wanted that to be an enigma, leaving the audience asking questions, which we have proven successful as from our feedback they picked up on this.



Evaluation activity 2.

This is our film 'Betrayal' running commentary. During this commentary we talk about how our trailer links into our final film poster and final magazine and the reasons as to why we chose to do specific things to make our trailer link into the conventions of horror films.