How did you use new media technologies in the construction

and research, planning and evaluation stages.

Research

• To get some good research done I had to use the internet a lot. I had to try and find out what I’d need for a horror movie teaser trailer, a poster for the film and a magazine front cover about the film

Google

• Google was the search engine that I used to find all the websites I needed to get my information. Google was key to helping me find what I needed as quick as I could.

• I used Google image a lot as well to find images I needed of the magazines and posters that I was researching the conventions of. It really helped me see what I’d need to do to make my work look professional.

IMDb

• The international movie database helped me in my research by giving me a direct, easy access to all the films I needed to research. It helped me find films like F, Cherry Tree Lane, I Spit On Your Grave and Eden Lake which all helped me design my posters.

Empire

• Empire magazine’s website allowed me to easily review and examine their database of their magazine front covers which I believe to be of an exceptional standard. They gave me something to aim for and to base my work on.

Total Film

• Total Film also allowed me to look at how they create their front covers and this also helped me craft my work into something that looked professional.

YouTube

• YouTube was obviously where I spent a lot of my research time; I looked at a lot of horror films to get inspired, to see how they run, how fast they are, characters used, dialogue used. YouTube allowed me to see what horror conventions I may have to keep to, to make a professional teaser trailer. My trailers ranged from Saw to The Strangers, F to Them and The Blair Witch Project to One Missed Call.

Wikipedia

• Wikipedia is where I researched the possible subgenres of horror that we could possibly go into:

• The recent Hoodie Horror- F• Slasher- Scream• Torture Porn- Saw• Psycological- Silent Hill• I personally am very afraid of films like Saw

because of the idea of total control that the villain has in it and I wanted an element of that to come into our trailer.

Planning• With the planning, we had to

decide what our film was going to be about; it’s genre conventions, subgenre, characters, plot, narrative, setting, available props. We’d also have to look into possible actors, who’d do what. What music we might use, the tempo of the trailer, would we use a lot of suspense? Would we use dialogue?

• For my magazine and poster I had to plan the ideas I would have, the images I might use, styles I could follow, layouts I might use.

Word

• I used word to plan out what we were all going to do; our set tasks for set deadlines, dates for specific filming, what we still needed to do.

• Word was really good for this because it was clear, easy to read and understand and we could print it off and all have a copy.

Blogger• We used blogger to show our research and planning about what

subgenre we would go for, the characters that we would create, how the plot of the film would go, the set narrative we would take, the possible settings we could use and any available props and mise-en-scene we could also use. We could also use blogger to put down possible actors. We could use it to examine all the films we had been researching and their conventions that we should use, the music we might use and even ideas about things like the tempo of the trailer. Furthermore, we wrote a couple of basic scripts that we thought of using for some ideas. For my magazine and poster I used blogger to plan out what I needed to do. I used it to show my research and then used that research to plan out what my magazine and poster would look like; I had to plan the ideas I would have, the images I might use, styles I could follow, layouts I might use. Any and all ideas I had would go on it.

A digital camera

• We used a digital camera to take stills for our story board, to find out what settings looked good and to plan what we thought would work for characters and to take pictures of shots.

Construction

• The construction was where it all happened. It was filming the teaser trailer, putting the music on it and editing it. It was taking the photo’s for the magazine and poster and editing them. It was writing the cover lines and titles and tag lines. It was putting it all together.

InDesign• InDesign was where I created my poster and magazine. I used it to

pick a good font and chose a good colour. I created a layout that I thought looked very professional for both pieces. Using it’s text function I wrote both titles, the magazines cover lines, the banner and bar for the magazine, the posters tag lines, the posters date and the posters credits. I used the place function to add the images I wanted and then put them where I needed them and to make my layout look professional.

• I put the cover lines on the left hand side of the magazine which is a common convention of magazines.

• The bar across the bottom is advertising a special article on Hancock to make people want to buy it. The banner at the top is also used to advertise that the magazine is a special horror issue and so is offering a prize to the London Dungeons. I used the top part of the clacker board to create the banner.

• I used some of the image effects to edit my images to exactly how I wanted e.g. using the basic feather to soften some images.

Photoshop

• Photoshop is where all my editing took place. I had to edit all my images to make them look professional and allow them to slot perfectly into my texts. I used the gradient changer for the first time and used it to good effect to allow my images to blend into their backgrounds. I did this by directing the light on the exact place on the image that I wanted to keep bright whilst making the outside of it get darker and darker. This was quite hard to master but then I became able to even change the gradient options to make it exactly how I wanted.

• I used the magic wand a lot to cut out my images from their original backgrounds, then to neaten them up before being able to place them onto my ancillary texts.

iMovie

• iMovie was where I edited our rushes into the teaser trailer. I’d never used iMovie or any movie editing software before but instantly became the main editor and took to it like a duck to water.

• I think I became really good at stitching pieces together so finely that you could not see any bumpy transition; everything flowed well.

• I was able to find the rushes we wanted, place them together and change their options e.g. make it darker or mute the sound. I also added transitional pieces like fading to dark, title pieces, put sound (both music and additional sound like screaming) onto it and then edited the sound to fit. I also put a filter on the last scene which is of Dean tied up- it’s supposed to look like amateur footage off a phone camera.

A Camera

• We used a camera to film everything that we thought we might want in the trailer. We filmed in a range of locations- not all of them worked e.g. poor lighting. We tried running shots, points of view shots, over the shoulder shots, close ups and pan shots to try and create the various range of images we thought we may need. We also blacked out the camera to record just audio like screaming.

An iPod

• We used Dean’s iPod to video him being tied up. We did this for a specific scene in the film in which Alex finds the iPod and watches the movie of Dean, it would cut between the iPod camera footage, normal camera footage of Dean and normal camera footage of Alex but in the end we went for just normal camera footage of Alex finding the iPod, you see the paused image of Dean on the iPod and then it cuts to normal camera footage of Dean tied up.

DaFont

• I used DaFont.com to find a good font for my title and tag lines.

Evaluation

• In evaluating my work, I had to go through everything and see if I was happy with it, was my potential audience happy with it, what would I or they change about it. What’s its strengths and what’s its weaknesses.

Youtube

• We used YouTube for our evaluation by putting our drafts onto it and trying to get responses off of it. However we only got an incredibly limited response this way.

Questionnaires

• We used questionnaires for our main audience feedback. This allowed us to get the exact information we needed and in an easy format to process onto our blog.

• We asked family and friends to comment on our teaser trailer and got back useful information which helped us adjust, develop and advance our work.

A Dictaphone

• Our group used a Dictaphone to record our answer to evaluation question 1, this fulfilled one of the requirements of the evaluation and also allowed us to work together and help each other to give the best answers.

Word

• I used work to write up my evaluation for question 3. I did this because I thought it would allow me to explain and show how I used my audience feedback in an easy to see format. I had already used a recorded evaluation for question 1 and used PowerPoint for questions 2 and 4, so word for question 3 seemed appropriate.

PowerPoint

• I used PowerPoint to write up my evaluations 2 and 4. I did this because it allowed me to create separate, easy to read and well presented slides for each of my points.

Slideshare

• I used the website Slideshare to get my PowerPoints onto blogger. It is a simple website were you log on, upload your powerpoints or videos etc and then can copy their html codes to embed into whatever format you need; in this case Blogger