Evaluation Task 4

• Blogger
• YouTube
• Gimp2
• FinalCutPro
• Camera - Sony ...

Blogger was used as all of the students HUB for all of our progress throughout the entire year. This meant that from our planning through to our final product and evaluation tasks such as this, would all be found in this one location. This makes it easy for the students to be able to refer back to previous work and to collect previous data from the past year.

YouTube was used as a location for both publishing our final products and also for research. Youtube allowed us to look at trailers that fitted the same genre as we were going for and to be able to take inspiration from shot ideas, camera angles, soundtrack and character types. Allowing us to make reference back to these trailers as examples as research that we have done into our genre. Later when publishing our products this site allowed us to embed our final product into a blog post and post this on to our pages of Blogger.

Gimp2 was the photo editing software that we used to edit and create our film poster and magazine covers. This software allows the user to manipulate the image in any way that they need. When creating our poster there were a few things that we found that we didn't like about the image, like the colour. But this was easily altered using the programs colour editing, meaning we were able to pick out the different sections that we wanted to alter and change them to what we felt stood out more. When it came to a week before the deadline for our work, it was pointed out to me that within our poster it looked like Matthew Burges' character was the main focus of the poster, upon looking back at the image this became apparent to us. This was a simple thing to alter as all that was needed was for me to get another image of the background without the character

Final Cut Pro, This software is the most recent update from Apple of what used to be the industry standard in video editing. The update however lost many features that made the software a good editing tool. the similarity between final cut pro x and imovie are almost identical just allowing you to tweak individual aspects such as colour gradiation etc. Although the software felt limiting there was no other option as i had already updated the machine from the previous final cut. 
For the first time using final cut pro x i referred to lessons online regularly to be able to understand the software.Some audio EQ is also available, but we used dedicated software for creating an editing the soundtrack. During the editing process many of the available features offered by Premiere Pro were used, we thought that of we are going to use the best software, why not use as many of the features as possible, within reason of course. The actual editing process went very smoothly due to the software's well thought out and laid out design, the timeline at the bottom, a preview screen to view the changes made to the trailer and the effects window where all the effects are changed and managed.

The main camera we used was the Sony Nex-7. The reason being that i have heard many different reviews of this camera and the other option my nikon D7000 is a bulky camera that is not easy to get some of the running shots or high angled shots.

Evaluation Task 3

• Close up on Micheal
• Soundtrack - contrast, music fades towards end fitting in to clip that was being shown, consideration of other soundtracks
• Camera being zombie (Final Scene)
• Typography - use of text in between shots, text supporting the clips shown (justify why they were used), consistency (He's changed/The world has change)
• Use shot from trailer before Company
• Conventional, revealing some plot but not giving too much away
• Chaos within the scenes gives the audiences something to think about and gives them questions
• Reality of ammo. Limited ammo, teenagers using guns, ect
• ADR quality - White noise, background sounds, difficult to sync the sound with lip movement
• One continuous shot, could have used a series of fast cuts to show the chaos within the scenes, the one long clip seems to slow and drags on

The use of the close up on Micheal Bird towards the beginning of the trailer was well received. They found that this allowed them to get a close look into who the characters were so they were recognizable within the trailer. But this was not kept consistent, Micheal Bird and Matthew Beacham are the only two characters who get a close up of their face.

The soundtrack received a mixed view, on one hand people thought that it worked well as a contrast, the slow, solemn playing over the top of clips that showed high emotion and intensity. While others thought that this didn't work as well because it was too much of a contrast from the clips used within the trailer making it hard for them to understand the trauma and pain that the characters were going through. The reason that we chose to use the soundtrack how we did was because of the intense contrast that it provided. The music is used more to physicalise the emotion that Jay is feeling, rather than the intensity of the scene being shown. As shows in previous blog posts, there were many different considerations for soundtrack of our product. Starting off we wanted something that did show the high impact and intensity of the scenes that were being shown, we wanted a rocky guitar and drum beat to give the trailer that added aspect of a fast passe beat and heavy guitar riffs.

Another aspect that was focused of within the talk was our use of the final clip using the camera as a first person view of a zombie. This had positive as they found that this played with the idea that our trailer never did use a full view of zombies, only ever short clips that either only showed their shadows or the image being slightly distorted, making it harder for the actors to be seen by the audience. The main concern of this clip was the fact that the reality of the shot meant that the characters were just running back and fourth  from nothing.

For the Typography, the text used was there to once again provide a contrast to the intensity of the scenes used within the trailer. The text used was downloaded from the internet because we found that it provided the plain look that we were looking for. We wanted something that looked similar to the text used on the news channel, but also different to show the change that the world has gone through. This gives the idea that the characters do still have some form of way to communicate and find out news about other areas of the country, but is hard to locate and use. This is shown by all the text being directly linked to our main character Jay, as he is having someone/something talk about him and tell his story, while he has no idea of there being anyone else out there. The words that we chose to have appear were chosen because it emphasizes our theme of isolation, saying such things as 'He's alone' giving the audience that direct knowledge to this characters situation. But this is later contradicted when he can be seen with two different groups of survivors. This provokes questions to the audience they want to know who these people are and how they fit in to the story. The reason that we felt that the text could still be used was because we found that idea of Jay being alone didn't have to apply to his direct physical world, but rather he has lost his family and his friends, meaning that his world is no longer the same and he is alone with his memory's of the past, as there is no one within this new world that knows his story.

Another aspect that was brought up within our talk was the fact that we chose to use a shot from the trailer before having the company logo appear within the trailer, this plays into our film as logos were something that people cared about in the past and now in the age where technology has died no one really cares about what things are coming from, just focusing on getting what they need. So by having our logo appear after a short clip it links this idea that the past is going to be a focused subject within our film.

Our trailer did stick to the conventional aspect in the concept of revealing story line. We wanted to allows aspects of the plot to come through without giving too much away as this unknowing is what would bring the audience to see the film. We wanted the audience to understand some of the characters within the film and some of the relationships that are going to be formed within the film itself. Plus some of the trials and tribulations that our main character would go through within the film.

Our film sticks to the idea of reality. We wanted a film that applied to the idea of survival and the high risk of being found. This means that the characters within the film would not want to use weapons as the sound that they create would attract unwanted attention, which could cause them to get into increased amount of danger. Also adding to this is the idea of limited ammunition. Within some film or TV shows, such as The Walking Dead, the ammunition seems to never run out and weapons are able to fire mass amounts of bullets without needing to reload. For us this takes away from the reality of the film. This meant that we were eager to move away from this idea, showing the characters having to make weapons and such from things that they have found, as people most like would if this was a real situation. Feed back given told us that this was a good choice as it added to the trailer and gave the audience the idea that this is going to be a film where people are pushed into a last stand moment before they risk using a loud weapon such as a gun.

One main note that came up within the feedback session, that both me and Ryan noticed as well was the quality of the ADR. The sound quality from the original footage was too quite to be heard, and had too much background noise within it to be able increase the volume of the footage. This meant that we needed to re-record the sound to later put in over the clips. This proved more difficult than we thought as it was difficult to match the sound exactly to the lip movements from the clip. This meant that we were unable to use that section of the ADR and so with little time left before the deadline of the project we decided to ditch it and move on. On the other hand we were able to get some ADR which did sync up to the lip movements. But because the actor that we used for the visual clip was unavailable we needed to use someone else that could do his voice.

Finally we were told that we use too many long lengthen shots. That because of this at times within the trailer showed these clips the audience began to turn off and stop paying attention. It was said that this could have been avoided by cutting those longer clips into a series of shorter clips that could have been quickly cut between to speed up the longer ones.

Evaluation feedback

You have made a start on your evaluation, with work on task one (although you should add in how you have conformed to/subverted the conventions for each point). You have applied theories of audience. You must post regularly - there has been nothing uploaded since 13th March.

Targets:
Titles of posts - make sure all are titled 'Evaluation Task x'
Evaluation task 3 - re-upload the audience feedback for your finished trailer - you should sum up what you have learned (positive and areas to develop) in your analysis
Evaluation task 2 - record a voice over/interview style footage where you discuss how the three tasks combine effectively to create a marketing campaign
Evaluation task 4 - Upload images of all technology used and explain what you learnt about it/from using it. The software you used to create your poster/magazine cover, blogger to record your work, YouTube to view other trailers, the camera etc. Make sure all of this is discussed.
Remember to also upload any written responses you complete for exam preparation to add to your evaluation