Candidates

A + Eee Entertainment candidates are as follows:

• Emma Cottee (3051)
• Amy Gallacher (3079)
• Elizabeth Boulamatsis (3026)
• Emily Wright (3234)

Evaluation - Elizabeth Boulamatsis

Media Evaluation

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Wednesday's Child Teaser Trailer

Here is our completed teaser trailer for our multigeneric mystery/thriller Wednesday's Child:

Magazine Front Cover

Again, within our group we all were allocated different pictures for our magazine cover, therefore my image was a mid photo shot of 'The Villain' wearing a black hoodie which is worn within our teaser trailer and looking up to the camera with an eerie star to his eyes. Looking like a stereotypical 'Yob' makes the audience think, what has he got? or what is he hiding underneath that hoodie of his?
In the end i chose to do my magazine cover in style of Little White Lies Truth and Movies UK which is an independent film magazine and website company. That explores the various world's of music, art, politics, movies and pop culture, modernising the original forms and conventions of a film magazine such as 'Empire'.
Every issue of the magazine is set in style of 'Pop Art' giving an cartoon effect to the image.


Therefore I have tried to portray this within my poster since one of our researched films 'Gone Baby Gone' is included in one the issues of 'Little White Lies'.

This image above is the 'Gone Baby Gone' issue of 'Little White Lies' it displays one of the main male characters who is an detective within the film trying to find a missing young girl. The magazine cover like every other 'Little White Lies' cover has been set in the style of pop art to create a pop cultural, vintage effect. It also includes a white circle in the top centre of the page with the bar code, cost, name of the magazine and website to advertise there product. The cover also includes the name of the film; 'GONE BABY GONE ISSUE' in typewriter styled writing, this is consistence throughout any 'Little White Lies' magazine, also sub headings for extras within the magazine have been included on front.Therefore I attempted my own version of a 'Little White Lies' cover for our teaser trailer.
As you can see above, is my final magazine cover I created this by using Adobe Photoshop CS since Corel Paint shop Pro X3 didn't have the tools and effects i needed to make it in the style of 'Pop Art'. To do so I had to duplicate the original image, invert, blur and change the original blending mode, threshold which gave the image the black lining, colour dodge, add new layers to create the skin colour, eyes, lips, red backing and colour of hoodie, also to create the small dots, I filtered the image and added the effect halftone pattern this created the pop art style. On a new page I cropped and cut around the 'Little White Lies' circular logo and copied and pasted onto to my design and added the title of our film 'Wednesday's Child' by using the text button, I was able to pick the font 'Courier New' to make my design cohesive. One main problem with the text was that I couldn't overlay it on middle part of hoodie since i had added a black layer over it, so i had to place just below the 'Little White Lies' logo.

I thought my design really stands out since i kept to same colour arrangements; red, black and white to make it cohesive and fit with the other magazine covers that the other members of our group created. I decided to a use a red background since it makes the villain character look like he is has a red silhouette symbolising danger which is a signifier throughout our production.

Movie Posters

When advertising our product, we noticed the more variety of posters we have for our audience the better, since we can then have a wider audience income taking into consideration; sexuality, race, age, disability etc. Therefore within our group we all were allocated various memorable scenery and main characters from our teaser trailer to try and fit in every category above.

As you can see below, my final poster design is an image of 'Chloe' our main character within our teaser trailer.


To create my poster i used Corel Paintshop Pro X3, which i was enable to edit the image of Chloe that i initially started off with, by addding text and color etc. Firstly i started off with a plain image of Chloe (the image shown below)



To get the image of Chloe looking vulnerable and innocent, I blacked out all the background scenery within the photo. With the pale skin and vibrant shade of blonde hair contrasting against the red scarf made Chloe stand out against the black backing making her eye catching.

I got the idea of displaying Chloe to the left hand side of the poster, from the 'Shutter Island' movie poster. Since i thought it added tension and mystery to the character, also 'The Shutter Island' poster used the same colours as what our production consists of; red, black and white, this also let's the veiwer have an insight of what type of genred film it is, being a thriller/mystery. We thought as group, our posters should all consist of the same font being 'Courier new' on PC or 'American Typewriter' on the Mac. We decided to use these fonts since it links to liason officers because within films any investigators are stereotypically known to have a 'typewriter' or write in this text therefore we thought this would effective throughout our production. After adding the signifying text of the poem 'Monday's Child' linking to our film name 'Wednesday's Child', I used one the 'Artistic Brushes' to add smudges and dirtmarks around and on the text to make it look old and mysterious since it adds a bit of eeriness to the poster also linking back to the main charcter running away from the villin in the park, with her shoes getting muddy and dirty.

Paintshop includes various amounts of effects, such as 'skin smoothering' I used this to make Chloes skin glow and seem more pale than what it originally was, I also used this on the hair to blend into the black backing so the edges didn't look harsh.

iDVD

Whilst finishing our teaser trailer, to give it some authenticity, we decided to include a DVD menu with some special features. We found numerous software to create an opening to our DVD such as Microsoft Movie Maker which had some great features and ideas but we then resulted to using iDVD on Apple Mac.

iDVD, helped us customize our DVD. There were various amounts of themes to choose from to fit our genre of teaser trailer, from colours to fonts etc. We could add our own still photos and teaser trailer movie to the background, so our audience can view a snippet of the film making the viewer wanting to watch more.

We therefore chose to add to our DVD menu a close up image of our main character 'Chloe' in her symbolic red scarf, red shoes, pale skin and bright blonde hair. By adding a couple links also to our front page our viewers are able to look at different photos that were taken throughout the film and the main important link of teaser trailer. Also when entering our DVD menu the title of our trailer 'Wednesday's Child' scrolls across the bottom of the page in white lettering consisting of the same font throughout our media product 'American Typewriter'.

Posters & Magazine Cover Planning

In preparation for making our posters and magazine covers, we came together as a group and decided on the type of shots that we wanted for each ancillary task, and the colour schemes and layouts that we wanted.

We then realised that we would be needing various other shots of our characters for the backgrounds and smaller images, and so we arranged another photoshoot with Chloe as she was our main character. We brought in all of the props that we would be needing, as well as her costume, and Emily photographed her on the location of our shoot.

We could then sort through these collected images as a group, and decide on the best shots for the different products. We found that we could also use these images on the DVD cover, and on our website to create a strong cohesion between all of our products.

Completed Teaser Trailer

We have now finished the filming and editing of our teaser trailer and it is ready to be burned to disc and uploaded to our blog. After we have created our ancillary products, we will then upload them and our teaser trailer so that they can be easily viewed.

Editing Log

Throughout the process of editing our footage into our teaser trailer I have kept track of the hours spent editing by each individual in the group. The log below shows each date, the number of hours, and the group members present at the time. This system will help us divide the work more fairly and total the amount of time spent editing.

iMovie

After the results from our audience feedback, we imported our footage onto the Mac's to use the iMovie programme. This would help us with our titles and transitions, as well as offering a wider range of fonts and better graphics as we finished editing the teaser trailer as a group.

After uploading our footage and naming our production, we could begin to split the clips in certain places to add in title screens where appropriate using the 'T' button on the right hand side of the panel. For the majority of our titles, we chose to use the same title style, and the same font - American Typewriter - to create cohesions. This particular font helped create the image of a traditional typed police report.

We could also strectch out our audio and change the fade duration in/out to control the rising tempo of our soundtrack during the institutional shots, as well as how quickly the music fades out at the end of our teaser trailer. Similarly, we could lengthen and shorten the black titled shots appropriately so that audiences would have enough time to read what was presented.

iMovie helped us to finish our production to a much higher standard, creating a cohesive and professional-looking teaser trailer. As well as being simple to use, it offered us a wide range of tools that we could experiment with to make the most of our final product.

Audience Feedback Changes

After looking at the main issues highlighted in our audience feedback, we began editing our production further to help it reach its potential as a teaser trailer.


The first issue that we dealt with was one of continuity. We made sure that the clip of Chloe on the swing did not appear after the one of the empty swing as it had before. This was fairly easy to change.


Next we had to deal with the issue of a rough outline being visible on a black screen. When we transported our trailer to the Mac, we did actually remove all of the black screens and replace them with title screens that we could adapt. This then solved the issue of the persons outline and made it look much more professional.

After we had added in the titles at the length that we wanted, we could then add in the text and graphics/animation that we wanted on them. This solved the problem of having little information in our teaser trailer. This also extended the length of our trailer, and we also added in some extra footage that we had not used to meet the conventions of a trailer (length-wise).

Once we had the full lenght of our trailer in place, we could then sort out any pacing and audio problems that we had found. We made the trailers pace gradually increase to create more enigma, and matched the audio more precisely to the action.

Lastly, we considered that our institutions may be too bright. We managed to put an effect over them to 'Cartoonise' them further. This actually blurred them slightly and made them seem less bright and happy than previously, which was much more effective.

We feel that we have considered all of our audience feedback and made the appropriate changes, along with several others, to make our teaser trailer meet the necessary conventions and be as effective as possible.

Audience Feedback Results

Before we transported our production onto the Mac for further editing, we presented our First Cut to many of our peers (media students and also those whose media knowledge is not as advanced as our own), as well as many staff from our sixth form, and family members. This meant that we were covering a wide range of audiences.

We told them to analyse our production closely and tell us what was effective and what was not so effective about it. We could them take these suggestions and improve our teaser trailer, based on what our audience wanted.

Here are several of the issues found within our teaser trailers' First Cut by our Audience Feedback:

• Continuity issues - There is an image of the empty swing, then later we go back to the swing with the girl present.
• Black screen issues - At one point you can roughly see someones outline on a supposedly blank screen.
• Pacing issues - There are a few issues with the increasing pace of the trailer, and it could become slightly faster towards the end for added enigma.
• Titles & Text issues - Our First Cut currently has no titles or added text.
• Institution issues - The institutional logos appear brighter than may be suitable considering the genre and tone of our teaser trailer.
• Currently too short, even for a teaser trailer.

After considering all of these constructive criticisms we will begin work on our final production. We will then post updates of the changes that we have made due to this feedback from our audiences so that our progress can be seen clearly.

Audience Feedback

During the process of our editing we created a First Cut of our teaser trailer. This was the initial outline of our trailer to give an idea of what the final outcome would be. We presented this rough cut to our media class, members of staff, family members and our friends to get a real idea of peoples' responses to our work. This means that we would get feedback from a wide audience of different ages and both genders.

Results from our audience feedback process will be posted shortly.

Adobe Premier Pro.

The whole of our group was involved in the editing process, and therefore we have created an editing log showing this. For the main part of the editing process, we used the programme Adobe Premier Pro. before moving onto iMovie at a later stage.

After using Adobe in our AS year, we were all very familiar with the workings of the timeline and the different precision editing tools available, as well as the many audio and video effects and transitions. This helped us to work through the footage that we had collected - swiftly but thoroughly - to create a smaller amount of footage that we would later use for our teaser trailer.

Once this small amount of footage was in place, we could go about using the razor tool to slice it perfectly by zooming in on the timeline. We could then break down all of our footage and move it around the timeline with the cursor tool to change the ordering.

We could also unlink the original audio from the video and remove this, before adding our soundtrack to the trailer. This meant we could then focus on fitting the cuts and movement exactly to the tempo of the music. As well as this, we could add multiple effects to create different colouring in the shots, such as making the red particularly stand out against the wooded areas.

Once we had used all of the available tools to our advantage and created our First Cut, we could then, after audience feedback, transfer our production to the Mac's for iMovie to add titles and DVD menu's.

Soundtrack

In our foundation portfolio production we found it difficult to find uncopyrighted music to use as a soundtrack, and we also had no access to Apple Mac's at our sixth form. However, this year we have been much more fortunate with the Media department now having Mac's that we can use, and also a source for uncopyrighted music: Steven Scott (who will be credited).

After we had our main structure of footage, we played around with one of Steven Scott's tracks that we particularly liked, and cut it up into smaller sections of different tempos so that we could mix around the order and fade them together. We chose two main sections of the track: an upbeat section for the faster areas of the trailer, and a slower and much quieter section to help build tension. We then added this audio, as well as the pre-recorded audio of the newsreader to our rough structure so that we could edit the transitions to match up with the beat of the music.

We linked the faster paced sections of music to the shots in which we had altered the length and sped up the movements, and also to the sections in which our characters were running (disequilibrium). The slower sections we then added to the tension-building beginning of our trailer in the equilibrium stages, as well as at the end of the trailer as a fade out.

We could then finish editing our teaser trailer with more precision based on the soundtrack that we had altered from one of our uncopyrighted tracks.

DVD Cover

Having a DVD cover is an essential to any film since it advertises the product, therefore we thought it is a must. As you can see below is our finished DVD Cover



I created the DVD Cover by using Adobe Photoshop CS5 this abled me to edit and add effects to our DVD cover i included all our institutional information, certificate, title of film, quotes, DVD bonus feature, Specifications etc, all the forms and conventions of a real DVD Cover. I tried to make a authentic and genuine as possible trying to keep to the same colour scheme as all our ancillary products.

These are the variety of photos i used within our dvd cover to give it an authenticity of our film and of a genuine DVD cover.

CHLOE WITHIN FOREST


DISTORTED CHLOE RUNNING


ABANDONED SWINGS


I used different all the different images above since I thought they all showed loss and isolation, because of the location displaying lots of open scenery and also the vulnerability of our protagonist running away, looking back at the camera.

Completed Filming - Shooting Schedule

Below is a photo of our completed shooting script as we have now finished filming the necessary footage for our teaser trailer. This shows the dates we filmed each section; the locations; the cast and crew present and the costumes and props necessary.

Completed Filming

Now we have collected all of the necessary footage for our teaser trailer, it is time to move on to the editing stage of our production. For this, we will be using a combination of different programmes such as Adobe Premier Pro on Windows, and also Garageband and iMovie on Macs.

As we begin to use these programmes in our A2 year, we will update our progress in posts and also explain how we have explored different techniques and tools that we did not last year, or we did not have access to (having only gained access to Mac's in our A2 year).

Alongside our editing, we will now also begin work on our ancillary tasks.

Final Casting

As we came up to the final stages of our filming, we finalised our cast list which became as follows:

• Child - Chloe Hill
• Villain - Russell Denny
• Mother - Emily Wright
• Father - Sam Morris
• Female Police Officer - Elizabeth Boulamatsis
• Male Police Officer - Steven Bourner
• Newsreader - Alexandra Watt

Ancillary Products

When discussing how we would spread the work for our ancillary products, we decided that Amy would take on the majority of the work concerning our website, with input from the rest of the group. This then left us with posters and magazine covers. We decided that Emily, Elizabeth and I would then divide the workload of these remaining products between us with input on planning from Amy. We would all individually sketch designs for each, and then bring these together to create our final products.

We agreed that this would make an equal spread of workload as we would all be involved - whether in a small or large role - in all aspects of the ancillary tasks. We also decided that, as Amy was taking on a large task in our website, we would create a series of posters, and possibly several magazine covers so that we were having an equally sized role.