Media Evaluation - Part 3

Question 3: How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Using media technologies in my research and planning stages

Media technologies helped a lot in my research and planning as they allowed me to access the areas I needed to gain further knowledge. Also it allowed me to experience things first hand, rather than be told in class.

YouTube helped me to gain a basic knowledge of trailers as it allowed me to watch many, all my different time eras. -This helped me discover what works in a trailer, and what I should stay away from. The downside is YouTube can provide as a distraction when working. You can end up going off on a tangent and losing variable lesson time with too much viewing time. After looking at so many trailers I found 3 that help me planning the most.   

After looking at so many trailers I found 3 that help me planning the most.

The first of these key pieces of research was “Day of the Dead”, and this helped me for all the wrong reasons. It showed me how not to make a horror trailer. The trailer comes across as a cheesy comedy and nothing to take seriously. However, after viewing the film I can say it’s nothing like that, with it being a heavy body horror. This is one scene in the film where we see a man get ripped in half, and is eaten by the zombies. Something that audience wouldn’t have expected from the trailer. This showed me how I needed to make all the conventions of my action horror to come through in the trailer, I needed to make people got the right atmosphere from my trailer. Or people would come see the film and be annoyed because it’s nothing like the trailer.

“Land of the Dead” was the genre as my trailer, with it being an ‘action horror’. This provided a good template for my trailer and gave me an idea of how to get across the themes in my trailer. It worked in building a small narrative but showing of a lot of the action. There is no doubt what type of film this is going to be, it has a clear target audience and it knows who it wanted to attract. This direct style was something I wanted to get into my trailer.

 

Finally the re-make trailer for “Evil Dead” showed off how to make a trailer which just works for everybody. Watching this is class everybody was in awe of it. This was the trailer that everybody wanted to make. The perfect balance, between ‘action’ and the narrative, and the increasing pace made for an unsettling by impressive viewing. This was the trailer that I wanted to really shape around and have something similar to with my finished product.

Outside of YouTube, Blogger was also extreme useful, as it allowed for quick sorting of all my work. I didn’t need to worry about loads of paper and different folders for trying to find my work; it was all there in one place. It also allowed me to access my work from any computer, maximizing chances for completing work outside the class-room. However if you don’t have access to the internet you cannot get to Blogger, and your work. If you lose connection you can’t complete work with pressures from many different A-levels builds up.

DVDs were also extremely useful during the research and planning stages. It allowed me to grow more of an understanding on the horror conventions, and also discover what I prefer as a type of horror: action horror, body horror or psychological horror. The many different DVD’s allowed me to see content that isn’t online, due to copyright. However the only problem is that you have to buy these DVD’s and there isn’t every chance the content you want will be on there. The effort and money was worth it with the Eli Roth interview on the Cabin Fever DVD, which allowed us to see how the modern director plans to scare a modern audience.  

Using media technologies in my construction phrase

Photoshop was a major tool in the construction phrase of my coursework. It allowed me to create the ancillary texts from scratch, and my improving understanding it helped me bring them to professional standards.

The simple addition of a lighting effect (using the Filter/Render menu) allowed the killer to stand out from the rest of the poster. The direct lighting on the centre of the image gives the poster much more of a professional look, and makes the text around the edges stand out more.

Layers were also very important on Adobe Photoshop. The ability to place layers on top of each other using the simple layers menu on the bottom right of the screen meant I could add smaller logos and text, helping creating a realistic looking poster and magazine cover.. Bevel and emboss features for texts (using the FX menu underneath the layers) allowed for texts to stand out from the picture. Headlines and quotes can be brought out to be more of a focus with the simple tick of a box. These simple features help you pick up Photoshop with ease, and to give the feature a much more realistic edge.

DaFont was also a useful in creation because the college computer did not have a wide of fonts. Instead, we this huge database in which I could find a style of text that would fit the bill perfectly. We used "Bebas Neue" in our trailer to give it a broad standing font that wasn't as cliche as Impact, and to make sure letters stood out and could be read clearly. On the poster I used the "Evil Dead" font, for a much creepier atmosphere on the poster, without the text the poster wouldn’t stand out in the way it does now.  Finally, for my magazine I used "Arial Black". This text was bold and defining, every letter stood out and made the magazine headline clear to read and to understand. Without this text I wouldn’t have had the bold headlines which help all the detail of my magazine stand out. 

Adobe Premiere Pro was a new programme which I had never used before this year but it helped hugely with the creation of our horror trailer. This allowed us to have a professional feel about our trailer. It allowed us to add filters to our work (contrast and brightness was particularly useful to make the trailer seem more at night) and it helped “Harvest on Crepsley Hill” look less like it was shot on a HD camera. By simply increasing the contrast it looked more like a film than a video, Adding music and sound effects of SoundBible with ease also helped. Our intertitles were also to the industry standards. These shots didn’t look like a PowerPoint slides, but more of a blockbuster feel. Using thr “emerge text” tool on Adobe After Effects to add an effect of Richard spitting blood on the camera, using the blood on one layer in front of Richard, just like working on Photoshop.

Lastly, the still and HD camera allowed us to capture with ease. They were so easy to get use to that we were all using them to the best of their ability, they were always close by so nothing ever went amiss.

Using media technologies in my evaluation stage.  

A Focus group for the rough cut of our trailers was recorded on an HD camera and let us see the true reaction of the audience to our trailer. This recording allowed us to see what moments of the trailer worked and the audience enjoyed. But also allowed us to see what they didn’t like-, and we could re-watch this focus group on YouTube to help remind us where we needed to improve.

Issuu allowed me to present this evaluation in a much more professional manner. Through this program I feel that the overall look of my final piece of work on this subjects look up to professional standard. This format allows for ease of navigation. You can easily find questions and response to areas on the course, and I chose to enhance this with embedded YouTube videos of my own work and various trailers that inspired me.

Finally, sharing the rough and final cuts of "Harvest on Crepsley Hill" on Facebook allowed me to broaden out to see opinions on the trailer outside of my media group. This simple sharing process helped me a lot to see how more of my target audience felt about my trailer. This twinned with a survey showed me a physical response from my target audience on my trailer. These methods helped me a lot in the overall improvement from the rough cut to the final screening, which can also be seen on YouTube as it was filmed on an HD camera.