Friday 15 March 2013

Software used

Adobe After Effects: I used After Effects in order to make the title cards for my trailer as this is a more complex editing package which  allowed me to animate the text in turn making the overall trailer look more professional. To do this I first drafted out what I wanted to have on each title card. I then came up with having "2 cities" "2 teams " "2 rivers" which is the title of my film and the last shot in the trailer. After that I watched a tutorial video on YouTube showing how to animate text using the keyframe tool which paths the movement of the text. I then downloaded a lens flare update for After Effects which is a light effect which brings the text in with a flash. I used the lens flare to wipe in with the letters which is a convention used in trailers, this again makes my trailer look more professional and makes it more visually appealing to audiences.

I also used After Effects to create my institution logos as I looked at several trailers and most institution logos in trailers tend to be animated, so in order to make my trailer look more professional I felt I should also use an animated institution logo. I did this first by mind mapping several ideas for institution names. I then came up with "force one media" which I decided to animate having it come in from behind and large to then shrink to the centre of the page. I then copied this layer several times in order to give the logo more of an action feel which suited my style of film.



Adobe Premiere pro : I used Premiere Pro to both edit and generally put together my trailer as it is relatively easy to use and has all the tools and effects I need in order to create a successful trailer. I used the cropping tool in order to edit the various video clips I had filmed, I then put the clips together in the timeline along with the title cards I had made in After Effects and the two songs I had chosen for the trailer. I used various effects in Premiere Pro such as the fade effect at the end of my trailer which helped further convey a sense of enigma to the audience which would also encourage them to watch the film. I used also the rubber and sound tool which allowed me to drop the music volume which allowed the dialogue in my trailer to be heard more clearly. I also experimented with the cropping tool trying to have two videos together side by side, I tried this with the part of my trailer where the teams come together before the fight scene in the trailer. However I felt that this didn't look very good and decided that using straight cuts between the two sets of fans walking in looked better. I also used the snapshot tool on Premiere Pro which allowed me to take stills for the credit of my film so I could have a short movement then a still which is characteristic of film trailers similar to mine. It is done for all main characters and I only put the character's real names as this was a convention of films  similar to mine.


Adobe Photoshop: I used Photoshop to create both my film poster and my magazine front cover as it allowed me to make both texts look professional and allowed me to use several effects and fonts which I downloaded from Dafont.com which is a free font website.This enables you to type in the words you want in that particular font in order to test it, the font can then be downloaded to Adobe products. The fonts I used were called ABite and Abingdon both of which were relatively urban bold fonts which fitted in with the genre of my film. Photoshop also allowed me to use the layers to position the photo of the main character in my trailer over the magazine title which is characteristic of major magazines such as "Empire" the  style of which I am trying to emulate in my magazine front cover. I used the magnetic lasso tool to cut out the picture of the main character of my trailer out from the background. I also used the sharpen, brightness and contrast tools to enhance the image quality on both the pictures on my  front cover and my poster. I experimented with the levels tool on the pictures on my poster, making the Sunderland fans red and white and the Newcastle fans black and white which would allow audiences to instantly decipher which set of fans belonged to which team. However I felt this looked slightly un-professional so I removed the effect and just sharpened the images and placed the Sunderland characters (good) at the top of the page and the Newcastle supporters (bad) at the bottom of the page, I did this as it shows the roles the supporters have within the narrative and would allow the audience to accept the preferred reading of the poster as I had encoded it.. I also chose to put my main character in the middle as the eyes of the audience would be drawn to him first. With the two "sidekick characters" either side of him. However in the bottom picture both characters are central in the image which suggests that they are of equal importance.

Slideshare: I used slide share in order to put the PowerPoint I had created in Microsoft's PowerPoint on to my blog and this software allowed me to do so.

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