Final Post-Production Questions

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
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3. What have you learned from audience feedback?
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4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction, planning and evaluation stages?

In answer to this question we used the website 'Pinterest' to create a visual pinboard answer:

Editing our Teaser Trailer

 

During the editing process we had to overcome a lot of difficulties, below I have stated why we used certain things and what happened during cutting.

Here is a 'Photosnack' presentation of photos from the editing process and some screen shots of some edited clips and the process:

The cutting down process:

The cutting down process took a very long time. Originally we had over seven minutes of footage, and once edited and put into our trailer, we had 3 and a half minutes. We had to cut down our trailer to about a minute and a half. We ended up cutting out a large scene that involved Annie( our main character Katie) attempting to take her life. It was a very emptional scene and would go great in the film, but we had to cut it from our trailer because it was so long(about a minute) and gave too much away of the story, so we decided to cut it out, and allow the audience to guess what happened, and get the information from our green screen scene, where our news reporter explains what happened. We cut down a lot of the scenes that are currently in our trailer also. We did this to make it fast pace and quick to the point, like a trailer should be. It then also only includes the information that we want our audience to know, these enigma and action codes leaves a sense of mystery and entruiges our audience, but mainly helps our audience create meaning. We are overall glad we started with so much footage and was able to cut it down, because it allowed for us to have a lot of footage to choos from, so we could choose what worked best.

Effects, pace and transitions we used/added:
 

We included many effect and transitions to make our trailer easy and exciting to watch and understand.  We used fast pace editing such as fades to black and white, cuts, wipes and sped up some scenes. We used effects to highlight improtant scenes and make them exciting. Using the shots quickly and editing them so it appears to be fast pace, it doesnt give the outcome or end of that shot to our audience, leaving an enigma. The use of our face pace clips creates a montage for our audience, this collision of images and emotions forces our audience to feel for the character and create a relationship with her. This creates meaning for our audience and encourages them to watch the film. We also included a static television (black and white) screen to our trailer. We used this short clip of static to allow for an easier transition into our green screen news reader clip so it didnt look out of place.
 

How long did it take?
 

The total editing process(not including filming time) took around a month.
 This is because during the editing process we were challenged with several problems, and we had to overcome these. Given the chance to start again, i would allow us more time to edit our trailer to take into account these problems, and allow us to experiemnt more in order to get our trailer to a higher standard.
 

Special effects and music:

We used a camera effect over a shot of our character to make it apparent that she is talking into a webcam. This action code allows our audience to make severe links between the title and the image, and shows the audience that her talking to a webcam will be a main feature in our production, because we have included that in our trailer. Our soundtrack very much supports our narrative and is used in sync with our fast pace editing. We used a piece of music called 'Half Moon Bay - Long' that we found on iMovie. We used different parts of this music to co-inside with what was happenign on the screen. We used the more powerful and slower parts of the piece to overlap our emotional scenes, and then used the ending of the song which is a lot more uplifting and cheerful at the end to reflect the triumph and happiness of our character, and make our audience feel happy for her and how far she has come. We also used sound effects such as a bottle smashing to add effect and power to the scene, and make our audience more involved with the story. We used a voiceover narrative to add to the atmosphere. Usually this voice is a male, however, we have challenged these typical covnetions and used our main character which is a female. This challenge surprises the audience, but also allows them to develop a relationship with the character and feel her emotions, before they meet her on screen. We chose to have Katie's voice running parallel to our trailer to help the audience keep up with the narrative - it'll be as if Katie is telling the audience about her life and her daily struggles. The audio used will then join with a shot from the goodbye message, thus linking it all back from the start. We thought that adding this element will make the trailer more emotive and personal. It would help the audience understand Katie's side of the story and make it more likely for the viewer to sympathize with her.

What software did we use?
 

We used iMovie to create our trailer and put it all together. iMovie is a film or video making app on an apple computer, and we used this to do all of our editing. We had some difficulties with this software during our editing process such as, problems with putting our green screen together, problems with sound( it being too loud or too quiet, and it deleteing our clips when wanting to put music over it). However, overall iMovie was a good app to use, as it allowed us to experiment and try different titles and transitions and see what worked best with our trailer and change it if necessary. Learning to use the software was the most difficult task, as the programme had changed when we came to use it again, but we were albe to overcome this.


 

Our Teaser Trailer

Here is our finished teaser trailer for our film
'Inside My Reality':



Textual Analysis:

At the beginning of our trailer we showed a shot of our production company logo zooming out into the full production company image. We did this because featuring the production company at the beginning is a main convention of a typical teaser trailer. It also makes our audience aware of who we are and makes our production company rememberable and iconic.

 

The character is representated as lonely, this is because she is only seen alone at the start, she is never seen within a certain amount of space to another character, and any characters close to her and seen abusing her.

 

On one shot we added a recording effect in order to link in the use of technology in the film as well as to ensure that there is an emotional connection between the main character and the audience. Because the character is speaking directly to the camera/viewer it gives the story a much emotive and intimate feeling.

 

We used extreme close up shots of facebook messages to make our audience feel like the messages are directed at them. This makes the audience feel sympathetic for the character as they are aware of how tortured the character is and puts them in the characters position in order for them to form a relationship with her.

 

 We used a 'facebook pop' sound that you receive when you get sent a message on facebook. Using this when the messages come on screen provides audio recognition for the audience, because they immediately associate the sound with social networking.

 

Throughout we also used three black screens displaying one word messages. These included 'BULLIED', 'ABUSED' and 'LOVE'. We used these to show the audience how to feel. It makes the characters feelings and lifestyle apparent to the audience quickly. These frames also allow our audience to see what the main themes of the film are so they are albe to connect with the storyline and the character.

 

Using a point of view shot from our character when she is looking down at the alcohol makes the alcohol seem like a prominent icon in our film, pointing out that this is an issue for our character and is important within the storyline. Alcohol bottles connotate drunkeness, which can lead to abuse and distorted thoughts. These connotations allows our audience to automatically makes links when seeing the bottles, to the idea of someone in the family being an abusive drunk.

 

We used other title frames that displayed quotes from magazines, this makes our production look professional and  successful making our audience want to watch it.

 

Featuring a news report (the green screen section of our production) makes the story seem more realistic, as the news is so prominent in our everyday lives, it increases the verisimilitude of the text and makes the themes of the film seem upsetting so we feel sympathy for the character.

 

We incorporated the tagline from our poster into our trailer through our characters voice over to show our characters journey of struggles to eventual happiness. It also links to our poster so our audience can associate the two products.

 

The music overlaying our trailer emphasises the emotions felt by the character, as it starts off slow and reflects depression, but then picks up at the end when she finds love. Also, using sound effects such as a bottle smash intensifies the themes and adds emphasis to the action on screen.  

 

At the end of our trailer we added in the film title, billing blocks as well as 'coming soon' all of which are a must for a teaser trailer. However, we created and personalized the design to suit our storyline better. 

Filming Device Used In Production

To film our production we ended up using an iPhone 5. We originally began filming on a hand held camera, but due to the bad quality images and the humming/buzzing noise we got in the background, we decided to change and use the iPhone to have a better quality production. 

Below is two screen shots taken from the counselling scene of our production on the camera:

And here is a screen shot taken from the same scene when filmed again on the iPhone:

Clearly it is better quality and the sound came out better too, which is why we chose to change our filming device to make our production clearer and more professional looking.

Using Extreme Close-ups In Our Production

Earlier on in my blog I referred to the fact that we would use extreme close ups of messages/texts to display emotive language and highlight the fact that our main character is abused over the internet. Click here to visit my previous post
We have decided to do them similar to the way they do it on the TV show Catfish. We have decided to this this style in the creation of our teaser trailer for our film ‘Inside My Reality’. We will use these shots to display the daily cyber-bullying messages and abuse our main character Katie gets through social networking sites such as Facebook. These messages will say things such as: UR A WASTE OF SPACE, GO DIE, U WEIRDO, FREAK, KILL YOURSELF, EVERYBODY H8S U, ect. We have chosen to use slang/abbreviated words to reflect the way youth often speak on social networking. We’ll have the messages flash up quickly on the screen, one after the other. By doing this we’re aiming to make the audience feel overwhelmed and distressed, just like our main character, because they feel like it is them receiving and reading these messages, because they are so close to the text. This flood of negative language will be accompanied by the loud Facebook inbox pop-up sound. Below is a rough example of how this montage would look(without the sound):

Despite the fact the shots look of poor quality(we tried filming on several devices, phone and cameras and they all turned out the same), we liked the look because it looks as though it is being read through tears or blurred emotions and emphasises the power and impact that the messages has on the person reading them. The montage above show a variety of different shots and we aim to use them all in our final production.

Production - Risk Assessment

Below is a risk assessment created for the production of our teaser trailer:

Sound Research

The music we will be getting our sounds and music from is - http://freesound.org/

 

We have researched and found a few sounds/music clips we would like to use in our teaser trailer or something similar to what we have found. Below are are a few sound clips that we would use because they would be particulary helpful in creating the right feel for the audience:

 



* A tense sound which could be used when Katie is taking the pills and slowly loosing consciousness: CLICK TO HEAR SOUND

* We could use the beginning of this temnse heartbeat like sound for the scene where Katie is overdosing: CLICK TO HEAR SOUND

* An uplifting piano sound/music clip could be used as a background track throughout the end of our trailer when our charcter is recovering and her life is getting better: CLICK TO HEAR SOUND

* This positive and ambient natural sound could be used on top of the shot where Katie and Charlotte are walking holding hands together: CLICK TO HEAR SOUND

* We could also use this hopeful sound when our main character is recovering when she meets Charlotte: CLICK TO HEAR SOUND


UPDATE 25/03/14:
During production we changed quite a lot and cut out many scenes so many of the sounds above were not used. We found a song clip on iMovie that fit our trailer perfectly. We added this in and had it playing throughout the majority of our production. Adding music to a trailer allows your audience to feel the emotion you want them to feel. Our music starts off slow and depressing, reflecting the themes of the story up to that point. Our music then picks up and becomes quicker and more joyful at the end, reflecting the way our storylines climaxes and changes dramatically from abuse and torment to love and peace. The name of the song is 'Half Moon Bay - Long'. We also added in sound effects such as a bottle smashing, static sound, and a Facebook 'pop' that you receive when you get sent a message, we used these to make our production seem more realistic.