Question 4: Media technologies in the construction ,

research , planning and evaluation stages

Construction

The main product of my coursework was

a movie trailer, and I used a Panasonic
Full HD HC-V250 video camera to film this.
This was a lightweight handheld camera,
so it was easy to transport, which was
particularly important when we were
filming the scenes of our trailer set in
Central London. Our trailer also included
many handheld shots, as we needed to
give the impression of the main character
being watched, so the small size of the
camera made this easy to film without encountering any difficulties. For the scenes
that required a more stable shot, we used
an X Pro PR 500 Tripod.
Two ancillary tasks were also required for my
advanced coursework portfolio; I created a movie
poster and a magazine front cover. For both photo shoots required for these tasks, I used a Canon
SLR 600D, as this provided high resolution images
which helped create a professional look. It also
allowed me to explore more camera settings to
really refine the images. I used two different white
balance settings; for my poster photo shoot that
I took outdoors, I used the cloudy setting, as we
shot on an overcast day in order to set the eerie
mood of the poster. Alternatively, in my magazine
cover photo shoot, we shot indoors in a studio
shoot set up, so I set the white balance to tungsten as this is the type of lighting we used to light
the shoot. Furthermore, I explored the aperture,
in which I used a wide aperture (low f/number) so
that there was a shallow depth of field being used,
and only part of the image in focus was the foreground.

I used Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign to create my two ancillary tasks. After manipulating my
photo for my magazine front cover in Photoshop,
using the Paintbrush tool and Clone Stamp tool to
perfect my models facial features like existing magazines do, I took the photo into InDesign. This was
then just a simple task of placing and organising the
text around the photo to give the look of an indie
film magazine. I spent a lot more time on creating
my movie poster on Photoshop. First of all, I refined
the Levels in my photograph, so that it was contrasting and dark, as the movie has a dark and fearful feel
to it. To enhance this, I used the Saturation tool, and
set the turned the saturation of the photo down to
around -20 so that the photo looked cold and eerie.
I then used the Selection and then the Brightness/
Contrast tool to give the photo a vignette edge, to
finalise the mood of the photo. Then, similarly to
InDesign, I placed text to give the look of an indie
movie poster. However, I encountered difficulties
using the layers in each of these programs; as each
piece of text was placed on a new layer, I found that
I had a high number of layers, and I would often lose
the layer that I was looking for and have to search for
it, as I did not correctly name them. This was far too
time-consuming.

FILMSKETCH
EV E RY T H I N
G T H E R E I S
T O I N D E P E
N D E N T F I L
M

30

STARS OF
INDIE FILM
SUNDANCE

20 14

&

WES ANDERSON
SOFIA COPPOLA
QUINTEN TARANTINO

Volume 12

HANDWRITTEN NOTES

December 2014

FILMSKETCH AWARDS - THE

Abigail Swineld talks

about her new star role
with ROS Entertainment

UPCOMING FILMS OF NEXT

YEAR

I put my trailer together in iMovie, on an Apple Mac computer. This was when I encountered my biggest technical difficulty, as it took me a while to come to terms with the way
the Mac worked. I struggled to use the command key as an alternative to a control
key, so my progress started off slowly. I used the tools on iMovie to cut and organise the
clips to form my trailer, and I often struggled with this, as I found that I would often cut
too much of the clip off as I was so unfamiliar with this software. When it came to placing music into my trailer, I had to use import my music through iTunes, and this resulted
in another difficulty, as on multiple occasions, the music file was moved and then I would
have to relocate and relink it for it to work.

Research and Planning

I completed a lot of research when planning for my trailer and ancillary products. IMDB
was the best website for this, as I could search movies, actors/actresses and directors
to find films that related to my chosen genre of a drama. It allowed access to the movie
trailers, which I analysed in detail, and important information about the films. I placed
all of my research and planning onto a blog which I created on Weebly. This allowed me
to present text, videos, slideshows and photographs, which I organised with Weeblys
features such as dividers, spacers and titles.

First hand research was important when I

was planning my trailer, and my main was
of doing this was creating a survey focusing mainly on genre research on Survey
Monkey. This was an easy task as Survey
Monkey has a simplistic and easy-to-follow
website layout; but I encountered difficulty
when gaining survey responses. As this
website creates online surveys only, advertising it through word of mouth did not
work well, as I would have to read out a
complicated link for the survey. I combated
this by using social media sites. I placed
the link to my survey on Facebook, Twitter
and Tumblr, and this resulted in over 50
responses.

Handwritten Notes
Coursework Trailer Plan

I carried out a lot of my planning using Microsoft

Office; particularly Word and PowerPoint. This software is easy to use and familiar, so I completed
my planning quickly and to the standard that was
needed to successfully create my trailer. I used Word
for most of my pre-production work, using the table tool to create Shooting Scripts, Call Sheets and
Storyboards. I used PowerPoint for the more visual
side of pre-production work, using it to create mood
boards and case studies.

Evaluation

Throughout my evaluation, I used a variety of different technologies to present my answers to the question. For question 1, I used an interactive online presentation platform
called Emaze to present my answers. I included photos and screenshots, and made it
look visually pleasing by using different transitions of between slides. I presented question 2 on Prezi, an online presentation technology that uses advanced layouts and presentation techniques. I laid out my answer on a Prezi template that resembled a board
with post-it notes stuck on it, as I felt that this was relevant to my trailer storyline. The
path tool allowed me to number the elements that made up my Prezi onto a path,

so when presenting it, it created smooth transitions and zooms.

This made my work easy to read and interesting. Question 3 was
based on audience feedback. I created a questionnaire and asked
10 people to watch my survey and give feedback. I worked with
my team to create an overall summery of the responses and then
typed these up. To present them, I placed them onto a cork board
alongside props from my trailer, so the piece as a whole resembled a prop from my movie. I then used my Canon DSLR 600D to
photograph this, and then took the photographs into Adobe Photoshop to refine them. Finally, I used Adobe InDesign to present
the response for the final question. To make it visually pleasing, I
created Vector illustrations of objects relating to my movie trailer
idea, by using the pen tool to draw them. I also placed in photographs and screenshots from my trailer to help give the reader of
my question a good visual idea of the types of technologies and
techniques I used throughout the production of my coursework.