Evaluation Q4

How did you use media technologies in the construction, and research, planning, and evaluation stage?

Sony Vegas

During this A2 project, I used many different types of media technology. One piece of software I used to construct my short film was Sony Vegas, which is a video editing software by Sony.

This is a professional editing software and is easy to use. It also has a wide range of different editing features to use, such as being able to edit and animate visual FX, such as muzzle flashes. 

One of the main things I had to learn when editing my film was how to mix sound tracks to make the sound transitions smooth and unnoticeable, and also to cut them to my video tracks so they were in time. The music is a vital part of manipulating the audience so it was crucial that I got this right.

Photoshop

Photoshop is another major software that I used, but to create my ancillary texts. I learnt to do many things such as create vignettes, adjust the brightness, contrast, colour balance etc of images to make them look more appealing. 

Here is how I created my film poster:

 I began my poster my creating a new file, with the canvas size as an A4 sheet. I then used the rectangle tool to create the black background.

 I then imported a screenshot from my film to use for the main image. I chose this image specifically because I really like the high key lighting and silhouette effect this creates. This kind of image is common within the thriller genre as it gives it a sense of mystery and the audience perhaps may find it hard to tell exactly what it is - unanswered questions, which is a convention of thrillers. To get the audience to focus just on the outline of the face, I had to get rid of the light from the rest of the image, so to do that I used the polygonal lasso tool to select the parts I didn't want, and then I filled it in so it is all black around the outline. Then to soften this part I created a vignette by using the elliptical marquee tool and then selecting the inside area of the vignette, then using the gradient tool to create the actual vignette. Although it is not clearly visible where the vignette actually is, it blocks out some other parts of the original image so the audience's attention is solely on the outline of the face and it enhances the silhouette effect further.

 The credits are very important for creating a professional looking poster so I had to use the correct looking font. I searched google for the correct font and it is called SteelTongs. To create the credits I simply used text boxes and placed them in a conventional way. I used a variety of job titles for it from the obvious 'Written and Directed by' to 'Weapons Consultant'.

 The title, tagline, and release date were all created by text boxes too, however I have obviously used different sizes, colours, and fonts. For the title I have used the font Myriad Pro in white and spaced out the lettering as this is often done in thriller movie titles. For the tagline and date, I have used the font Couture Bold in red. I have used red because it is commonly associated with danger and is often used in thriller movies. 

I imported these logos from google images and they all had white backgrounds on. To remove the backgrounds, I used the magic wand tool to select the white, then pressed delete. This removed it leaving just the logo. I then resized the images to fit at the bottom, as is conventional.

Here is how I created my film magazine:

 The first thing I did when creating my magazine cover was create a black background using the rectangle tool. I then labelled that layer 'background' and locked it. I imported the same picture from my poster into here and scaled it to the size and position I wanted it.

 I used two text boxes to create my masthead. I rasterised the text box layers so it was easier to scale and position the masthead. Also by doing this, I could merge the two layers together to move them both around easier. 

 One convention of magazine covers are barcodes, as they are very important to keep track of various things such as how many issues are sold etc. I copied and pasted this barcode from google images and then scaled it to this size using the free transform tool. I then used the rectangle tool to create a white box behind the barcode so the date and price are visible. This makes it look more professional and like a real cover.

Plugs are conventions of film magazines, and so I made one by using the ellipse tool and text boxes. To make the red outline circle, I used the ellipse tool to make a solid circle, as labelled 'Ellipse 1' on the layers tab. To give the illusion of it being just a ring, I created another solid circle, however it is black and slightly smaller. I then used text boxes and different sized fonts to write the text out. Finally, I selected all 5 layers, rasterised them, then merged them together so I can move them around easier.

Canon EOS 600D

I decided to use my own DSLR camera for this project because it is a very good camera that is capable of achieving a professional, cinematic look due to the wide range of settings and lenses available. I used an 18-55mm lense because all of the action is at close quarters so a bigger lense would be too close - the smaller lense was the only option. With this lense I am able to achieve a shallow depth of field and incorporate pull focus into my cinematography for various semantic reasons.

I have used this camera for my A2 Film Studies short film so I knew what this camera was capable of doing:

Settings that I had to change to achieve the looks in both of these films were the ISO (changes how much light is let in), shutter speed, aperture (this is for depth of field), and a neutral colour balance. I used a 180 degree shutter because this is known to achieve the cinematic look, which is what I wanted. 

Blogger

Throughout AS and A2 media, I used blogger to store and present all of my work. This has been extremely useful because all of my work is in one place and I can work on it anytime, anywhere, via the iPhone app:

iPhone 5

I have used my iPhone throughout the production of my film. An example of this is writing my screenplay. I used the pre-production software Celtx to write my screenplay and they have a feature which allows you to, for example, write your screenplay on a computer, then upload it to the cloud, and then download it to the iPhone app to continue your work: