I think after doing most of our filming one night that we would put together a rough version of the film trailer and that is what we would show people, and for good reason to. The main reason was because if all people had to focus on was the clips and the story the clips conveyed when put into an order, it would give us an idea of what clips we needed to film, how we would do it and also what changes we would make to the film trailer project. This was something that both myself and Tom found very useful because it meant we had a chance to give the audience a bite of our idea, then have the audience tell us what they want to see from that idea, it also meant that when we had a final product, it is something very much targeted at the audience. Having a fresh pair of eyes looking at the trailer always helps as well, because if the story line isn't translated through the clips in the film then it's going to be very difficult to bridge that narrative to the viewers.
In using this early audience feedback as our main feedback as opposed to the traditional feedback of showing them the final product meant we could really dig down to the problems with our film trailer and its story. We learnt that our story was weak, we knew it was weak. But with the right planning and the right trains of thought we managed to think of a method where we replace a few clips and delete others to create something completely different, but manage it to be almost the same, it meant heading in a completely new direction, adding a third, main character, but it meant we had a solid story line that people liked the sound of. This taught us to think outside of the box, instead of working with what we had and messing around with the clips we'd already filmed, just by adding some simple touches and a few more seconds worth of clips meant we turned our idea completely around. Another thing it taught us is that names, logos, songs, places and other minor details aren't important, getting a story line sorted so it is a solid bit of script writing is the main thing, and we learnt the hard way by sorting all of the little details of the film trailer first without sorting out a solid plot, story line and characters. In the end we dropped most of the details of the trailer in pursuit of a more suited story line to the Horror genre.
Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
When we started off during our construction, research and planning stages of our project we tried not to focus on the social media side of things, using only blogger, which didn't prove fruitful when we were in the first stages of making our film trailer. To find real, truthful feedback, which is what we needed with our project is incredibly hard online, no one wants to watch a half made film trailer, or comment on a status about an idea for a media project, so we thought it best not to bother with it, only asking people face to face, people who understand the project.
Other than the social media side of things, we did use a lot of technology as far as planning and research went. Tom and myself spent countless hours getting stock images, looking at horror trailers, magazines, posters etc. just so we got a feel for what a final product should be like for a horror trailer. During the research we used a lot in the way of IMBD, Youtube, Empire, Trailer Addict's various websites etc. so we got a feel for what this product should be like, this also helped us get through the planning stages for our film. After we decided to change our story line, we looked at more videos and trailers for inspiration so we could finally construct the storyline for the trailer and how the trailer would end up like.
Construction of our final products boils down to a small handful of programs. For our trailer I used Youtube to get some of the clips, like the Viewing Audience certificate, this was to give it some legitimacy. For actually editing the film trailer together I used the latest edition of Windows Movie Maker on Windows 8. There were several reasons for this, and it was risky using movie maker, one of the reasons is that the software for the editing should be in line with how it was filmed, with what we had, and Movie Maker is what we had, another is that it is quite a basic video editor, but Microsoft have done some work to it in recent years, I gave it a go to see if it was worth keeping and using in future or retiring it to the recycling bin, and to be honest it wasn't too bad, some things drove me nuts, but it was fairly easy to use with its drag and drop system. Some of the stills such as the two stills at the end were both created in Photoshop, as was the poster that Tom designed. I used InDesign to design the magazine cover, but Photoshop to edit the original image. This was because I find it a lot easier to use InDesign for adding images onto other images, but Photoshop easier to edit one particular image.
In the evaluation stages of our project we decided to split the questions between Tom and myself. Tom took questions 1&2 and I took questions 3&4. Tom decided to take the route of using Prezi, a well known, cloud presentation software. This meant his part of the evaluation was a lot more pleasing to go through and read as the audience, but also meant the work load on his part was manageable. Instead of choosing the route of using cloud based software such as Prezi, I decided to use the normal format of a blog, by using pictures and text to give a message to the audience, I felt like the evaluation is the most important part of this film trailer project, so to shrink all of the information needed in an answer to an evaluation question right down to a powerpoint presentation with 4 or 5 slides on it I thought was a bit too little in the way of information. Had I done the project again I would have tried more online sources of presenting information, but I'd rather have avoided using other methods of presenting my evaluation rather than spending less time on something else such as the magazine cover.
-Ben
Construction of our final products boils down to a small handful of programs. For our trailer I used Youtube to get some of the clips, like the Viewing Audience certificate, this was to give it some legitimacy. For actually editing the film trailer together I used the latest edition of Windows Movie Maker on Windows 8. There were several reasons for this, and it was risky using movie maker, one of the reasons is that the software for the editing should be in line with how it was filmed, with what we had, and Movie Maker is what we had, another is that it is quite a basic video editor, but Microsoft have done some work to it in recent years, I gave it a go to see if it was worth keeping and using in future or retiring it to the recycling bin, and to be honest it wasn't too bad, some things drove me nuts, but it was fairly easy to use with its drag and drop system. Some of the stills such as the two stills at the end were both created in Photoshop, as was the poster that Tom designed. I used InDesign to design the magazine cover, but Photoshop to edit the original image. This was because I find it a lot easier to use InDesign for adding images onto other images, but Photoshop easier to edit one particular image.
In the evaluation stages of our project we decided to split the questions between Tom and myself. Tom took questions 1&2 and I took questions 3&4. Tom decided to take the route of using Prezi, a well known, cloud presentation software. This meant his part of the evaluation was a lot more pleasing to go through and read as the audience, but also meant the work load on his part was manageable. Instead of choosing the route of using cloud based software such as Prezi, I decided to use the normal format of a blog, by using pictures and text to give a message to the audience, I felt like the evaluation is the most important part of this film trailer project, so to shrink all of the information needed in an answer to an evaluation question right down to a powerpoint presentation with 4 or 5 slides on it I thought was a bit too little in the way of information. Had I done the project again I would have tried more online sources of presenting information, but I'd rather have avoided using other methods of presenting my evaluation rather than spending less time on something else such as the magazine cover.
-Ben
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