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

Internet

The internet was almost an essential tool in helping us to create and plan for our production piece in the sense that it allowed us to carry out a vast amount of research from different sources in order to learn about our genre and how to create an effective trailer. Without it, it would have been much harder for us to analyse and learn from teaser trailers for films posted online on YouTube and other such sites and it would have been much harder to create and send out surveys so as to obtain information of not only maximum quantity but of quality also. We used the internet in order to find our location for filming, which would not have been otherwise possible due to the fact that we found it via an online forum specifically focused on abandoned buildings in Britain called http://www.abandoned-britain.com/ . The internet was also incredibly crucial in helping us to find an appropriate font for our poster, as after searching across different sites we were able to pick from a variety of fonts until we found one that fitted perfectly with our trailer from http://www.dafont.com/ . 

Poster

When constructing the poster for our trailer we used more than one program in order to perfect it and achieve the best possible outcome. Although we were familiar with the program Photoshop there was still a lot that we did not know about it and so we were eager to experiment with it and learn more about the program. The base of our poster was a simple photo of the back of our villain with a spotlight trained on him, highlighting his shadow against a peeling wall. However it did not look particularly eerie until we started to experiment with it on Photoshop by editing the contrast and lighting, which enabled us to create a much more professional effect. The internet was a great use within this as well as we were able to download a particular brush that allowed us to make the title on the poster to look smudged and dirty – an effect that greatly contributed to the dark atmosphere we wanted to achieve. It was not as easy to adjust the colour of the image on Photoshop without distorting and blurring it so we chose to experiment on PaintShop Pro – a program with which none of us were familiar with. We chose to buy a book on the program which enabled us to get to grips with the software and after adjusting the colour on PaintShop Pro the image looked slightly better.

Video Camera

As we had to use a particular video camera to film our entire teaser trailer we found it necessary to capture experimental shots in different situations so as to test its capabilities. We decided to film short clips in different lighting conditions and found that it was not particularly efficient in darker conditions, which in turn alerted us to the fact that if we were to film successfully within a dark setting (which we would be doing) we would have to equip ourselves with an adequate amount of torches. We also used the video camera to record sound clips that we hoped we could use within our teaser trailer, for example, we went into a wood and sat down with the camera on in order to capture some animal sounds, and although we only managed to capture bird song it was a worthwhile trip as we recorded the sound of running footsteps which we planned to use within our trailer, and later that evening we tried to record foxes screeching but found that the sound quality was not good enough to use. Another piece of sound that we used from recording through the camera was the cawing of crows which we used at the beginning of our trailer. We also used the camera to experiment with different types of camera shots around our filming location, including establishing shots of the area and close-ups which helped us to decide which angles would be most effective in creating suspense within our trailer.

iMovie

iMovie was one piece of software that we would have struggled without. Although it was not particularly easy to use at first as we were accustomed to using the older version with our coursework last year, it allowed us to be more creative and adventurous within our work. This was particularly so as this year’s work was a teaser trailer as opposed to last year’s being a normal trailer and so there was a sufficient amount more work required in order to create a presentable piece of work, and as our teaser trailer’s genre is horror we found that much more snappy editing was required. The ability to control the speed of each of our shots was something that we were able to utilise and we decided to use it within our trailer at the very beginning in order to slow down an establishing shot in order to create suspense.

Garage Band / Ableton

Sound was a very important factor within our production piece as it was essential to create suspense for a horror teaser trailer. We originally wanted to create our own soundtrack from scratch, and so we downloaded some ‘horror’ sound effects from soundbible.com and started experimenting. After some practise with the different synths and effects within Ableton we decided that the process of creating a sound track from nothing would be too lengthy a process and so we searched online for eerie songs and soundtracks. After finding an appropriate track we decided that we wanted to add our own touch to it and so placed it in Garage Band and cut it apart and layered it until it sounded satisfactory, making sure that it fitted well and in time with the trailer and we then added sound effects that we recorded from the video camera.


Wix


To create our website we used the online website builder, Wix. this proved very successful as it allowed us to create a simple and effective website to promote our trailer. We used the same font that we had used for the trailer and poster which was downloaded from dafont.com and gave it a blood red colour to contrast the black and white background of the abandoned asylum. We were able to embed the video from http://www.youtube.com/ and ensure that it played as soon as the site was loaded, making it easier to access for users.