Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? By Katie Hepton

Research and Planning Internet websites such as IMDB were very useful in my research process where I gained information about other dystopian films such as The Matrix and Equilibrium. I got information like box office figures, release dates, the actors starring in the films and any awards the films were nominated for and one. This was useful in my construction and working out when would be the best time to release our film for the best success. The website onpostmodernism helped me get a clear understanding on what postmodernism is and the different techniques directors used in their films to make their film post modern. This helped in the filming process as we wanted to use postmodern techniques in our trailer.onpostmodernism

Research and Planning  As part of our research we had to research the genres British Crime and Dystopia. In doing this I found websites which had a timelines of each film released under that genre. It helped me understand how each genre has developed over the years. I then created my own timeline using specific films to highlight significant changes in the genre. This research also helped me decided that I wanted to continue on researching the dystopian genre and that was the genre I wanted to use to film my trailer.  When I did my trailer analysis I used the website YouTube as it has all the trailers I wanted to research on there. It was useful with getting all the screen shots I needed to talk about a specific shot or Mise en scene. As YouTube is part of web 2.0 and almost every film uses YouTube as a promotional platform whether they use it by uploading their film trailer or using advertising banners as the background on certain videos people click on. Because of this we used YouTube to upload our own trailer as it is the best way to promote our trailer. In my analysis I used presentation websites and software such as Prezi and Microsoft PowerPoint. This was useful as these helped me present my work in an interesting and attractive way.

Research and Planning  When researching magazines to use to promote our film I found the websites official websites were the best way to know which ones were the best for our film. I looked at the magazines Empire, Total Film and Sight and sound. What helped a lot is on each websites I saw a lot of the content which was used for each magazine. This helped with our group in deciding which magazine we wanted to use to promote our trailer. I then took three front covers from each magazine, surrounding the same genre I am studying, and analysed them. I looked out what type of pictures they use, colours, titles etc. We found for us Empire was possibly too mainstream and that Sight and Sound was too independent so we settled to Total Film magazine. Although it is a well known film magazine it is not as mainstream as Empire and we thought this was the perfect magazine to help promote our film.  I also looked at the website MediaUK which had the readership statistics for each magazine. This also really helped in deciding which magazine to choose. It was useful as it had statistics such as the ratio of men and women who read each magazine.MediaUK

Production  To film our trailer we used a Canon EoS 600D/550D which created professional looking footage. We then added a lens baby to create a tilt shift effect which is shown at the start of our trailer and are views of Brighton. We also had a tripod which we used for certain shots so the camera was steady. We uploaded our footage on to Adobe Premiere Pro where we then logged and edited our footage. On adobe premiere pro we were able to produce post modern editing techniques such as time re mapping when our character walks through a puddle. We got inspiration for this when we had to research other dystopian films and saw films such as The matrix and Equilibrium also used time re mapping. To make our trailer have a more dystopian feel we de-saturated the colour of our footage to give it a more blue look.

Production  We found our soundtrack for our trailer on incomptech which has royalty free music. We decided on the piece zombie hoodoo as it has an eerie, sombre feel to it which is what we were trying to put across in our trailer. We then added a more fast pace beat towards the end of trailer to make it more dramatic. As well as that we found different sound effects on our college’s computer such as dogs barking, helicopters and others to add to the suspense. We could also use adobe premiere pro to create our title cards. We went on DaFont on found the font Alien League. It is a pretty simple font and had a Sci-fi feel to it which was perfect for our trailer. incomptechzombie hoodoo DaFont Alien League

production  Adobe Photoshop was used to create both our ancillary products which were a film poster and a magazine cover. One member of our group created the magazine cover using a template of total magazine while the other member of our group and myself made the film poster. The other member in our group was the most confident out of us on Photoshop so she took charge of physically doing it while I sat and pointed out things we could add and what improvements could be made. We separated the pictures of both the characters and then cut out the background which we decided we did not want. We then found an image of steam which links in with our trailer and our storyline. After that we changed the lighting making it slightly darker and added different tones to give it a more dystopian feel. We then added the title, tag line and the credit block.

Evaluation  My evaluation questions have been answered using my blog, Microsoft PowerPoint and a directors commentary. Microsoft PowerPoint is good way to present my work as it is interactive and much more interesting than just a word document, I can also present my work using different formats and styles. The directors commentary is my group and myself talking over our trailer and why we used specific things that link in with our genre. It’s a good way of getting the point across and can go into more detail. We used and Facebook to communicate with different members of the group which proved useful to send images and other files so we were all up to date.