Evaluation 4

Our intended outcome of our production was to create a vampire spoof comedy that did what every comedy is meant to do; make people laugh to entertain and to leave consumers wanting more.

We found that by making a vampire spoof we already had an audience the fan base generated around the likes of the Twilight phenomenon around the time when vampire films were at their peak we knew that this was going to be a hit. Last year we saw many twilight fans flock to see ‘Vampire’s suck’ a spoof comedy based around the Twilight saga.

Our audience demographic we discovered was generally mixed gender young adults aged around 17-25 and were fans of the twilight series and many other spoof comedies. The fact we weren’t just making a vampire film but a spoof gave us the advantage of a larger fan base, of course we know not everyone is a fan of twilight but the fact we are a spoof comedy means anyone who enjoys comedy can enjoy our film without ever watching twilight simply because of the comedic references made in the film.  Being a fan of the sequel myself and at a time when ‘Breaking dawn’ was just out in the cinema it appealed to me that making our vampire spoof at this point in time would be an ideal selling point. We did plenty of research into other spoof comedy’s like ‘vampire sucks’ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1666186/and ‘Scary Movie’ as well as research into many ‘Twilight’ films in order to gain ideas and to see audience reviews that told us exactly what kind of things their audiences enjoyed and what gave them that ‘Hilarious, Hit comedy’ name.

        When gaining feedback for our film trailer we used numerous social networking sites to post our trailer on and to gain feedback and guidance on what we could do to improve our productions. Due to  our school's filtering system we were unable to have access to sites such as ‘YouTube’ and ‘Facebook’ in college hours so whilst in college we made use of ‘Vimeo’ a site that allowed us to post videos online and to gain feedback. We found that as our target audience for our vampire spoof was late teens we decided to post our production on Facebook as with us ourselves being around that age we were able to reach out to our target audience easily in order to gain constructive criticism. We have learnt from this feedback what has worked within our production and what needed to be changed. We learnt that our audience liked the references to twilight as they saw it was something they could relate to and in turn was a way of getting the audience more involved because they will understand the jokes when referring to these films. This research also informed us of what kind of comedic terms worked and what we needed to do more of they particularly liked ‘Steve’s’ unlucky in love story his quest for love became an on-going theme in the trailer showing that our vampire ‘Steve’ is ironically very much the opposite of ‘Hunk’ Robert Patterson.

      I believe that my media skills and ability have changed dramatically in the space of two years I have gone from not even being able to set up a tripod to editing and producing my own film trailer! At first my skills were amateur but as time went on I became more comfortable when using the camera my filming became smoother and less ‘home video like’. When editing our footage we used the video editing software ‘Pinnacle’ at first I felt kind of intimidated by the thought of using the software as I hadn’t used anything like it prior to my AS coursework, but with plenty of guidance and experience I became more confident and was able to edit my footage to a higher standard, making my productions look more professional and stand out as being unique and interesting.

Evaluation Activity 4

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Evaluation 3

Evaluation Activity 4

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Evaluation 2

When performing research into various conventions and themes which we wanted to use in our A2 media trailer production, we made particularly strong use of various internet sites such as YouTube and the Internet Movie Database. We watched a variety of film trailers on both sites, particularly YouTube (www.youtube.com), due its easy accessibility and use, as well as it being used by major film companies, such as Miramax to advertise their upcoming films and generate hype for them. We found good use of Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) as well, due to the amount of institutional information available on the site, and links to related works, such as to trailers and pages featuring similar actors or directors.

When planning our production, we primarily used software such as Microsoft Word to write up our planning documents and files such as our scripts, shot lists etc. as well as using the photo editing software Adobe Photoshop to design our production company logo, as well as our ancillary tasks of a magazine cover and a film poster.

 

When filming our production, we used a variety of equipment to achieve our visions of what our trailer was going to be like. We used a Sony handheld camera for filming our footage on, due to its easy availability as well as being portable and very easy to carry around due to its small size. The camera also provides clear images and videos to use in our production. As well as our camera, we used a tripod to steady our shots, which we found was of very important use when filming the bedroom scenes at Antonia’s house, due to the odd angle of the floor, which meant that without the tripod, the footage we had would have been unusable. However, with the use of the tripod, we ensured that all of our shots were at the correct angle and could be used.

Although the equipment we used was helpful in a variety of uses, we also had some problems using them. For instance, although the tripod was useful in correcting the angles of our shots, we found it to be hard to set up the tripod up to precisely counter the floor angle, and were a very long and arduous task. Likewise, when using the handheld camera, we found that the built-in microphone of the camera did not pick up the sound and voice of our scenes, meaning that often in times of editing we found that the music often was louder than the dialogue and drowned it out.  We also used a microphone in our production, for recording the voice over for our trailer. When using the microphone, we at first had trouble getting a clear and useable piece of sound from the microphone, due to the microphone muffling the dialogue from the voiceover, as well as picking various pieces of background noise. If we were to re-record the voice over, then I would use a different microphone, due to the difficulties we faced when recording for this trailer production.

When editing our film trailer, we used the video editing software Pinnacle Studio Pro HD V.15.

 

 

We had experience with the previous version of Pinnacle Studio prior to using it to edit, as well as first using the current version it to edit our AS production, meaning that we felt comfortable with editing and capturing our footage into a trailer format. When using Pinnacle, we found that the new version captured all of our footage and separated the different takes and shots we had taken in one action, resulting in a much easier process of transferring our footage onto the computer to edit, instead of capturing individual shots and scenes ourselves over a prolonged period of time, a problem we faced with the previous version of Pinnacle. Pinnacle also allowed us to easily transfer our created images such as our production company straight in to use in our production. When using Pinnacle, we cut specific shots from our footage down to smaller sections, fitting them together with other pieces of footage in an almost montage style, allowing us to connote across certain ideas and themes, bringing out the comedy of our piece by connecting a variety of our footage with comedy elements in. 
Pinnacle was also used in making our animatic, where we scanned the images of our storyboards onto the computer, before transferring them into Pinnacle and placing alongside each other.

Overall, we found Pinnacle a very useful piece of software when creating our production, due to its easy to use interface, and our previous experience with the software meant that we felt more at ease going into the editing process than we would have with prior experience using the Pinnacle Studio software.

When adding the finishing touches to our production, we used the websites http://www.freesound.org/ and http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ to get copyright-free music to use in our production. We found these sites were very helpful and easy to use, and had a vast amount of sounds to be used, meaning that we could become more specific with the sounds and music we wanted, narrowing down the genre of music we wished to use.

After finishing our piece, we decuded upon placing our finished productions upon both our own Facebook accounts as well as on video sharing sites such as Vimeo, to share with our friends and others, asking for Feedback.

These sites proved particulary useful for us when sharing our video, due to Facebook being instantly linked to our friends so that they could instantly view our video, as well as Vimeo having the ability to share and embed our video upon our blogs and other sites, as well as being viewed driectly from Vimeo. We also posted our animatic onto our Vimeo sites, to embed onto our blog afterwards as evidence of producing storyboards and an animatic.

To post our research, planning and evaluations online, we made use of the website Blogger. Blogger was of great help in easily posting our information online in a structured manner, and we could easily send each other information posted upon our blogs to other group members. Blogger was also good for keeping to schedules for filming etc, and meant that we could work both in school and at home to share our information to be viewed by group members, allowing us to post freely and quickly. The website allowed the ability to easily transfer and embed images and videos to use in correlation with our work and as evidence, and to use to show our characters used in our production and the costumes we had used for the characters.

Evaluation 1

Ancillary Task- Poster

Ancillary Task- Magazine Cover

Finished Production

Animatic

Untitled from Gabrielle Tomlinson on Vimeo.

Music Used

For our production, we decided to use copyright free music in our piece, with the idea for the music to give the film the comedy edge and match the parody theme of our trailer.
For the opening section of our trailer, we used an orchestral piece we found on the website http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ called "Intrepid Traveler". Featuring a building string section, we felt that the piece would work well with the opening of our trailer, lulling the audience into a false sense of security and playing up to the parody side of our film, presenting it as an almost Epic movie. http://www.freeplaymusic.com/search/preview_file.php?id=92&dur=0&type=mp3 - Shortcut  to "Intrepid Traveler".


We immediately used a sound effect of a record player's needle being pulled off of a record quickly, to give the impression of the track being stopped short of it's climax. This effect is used in various pieces of media, like in a variety of songs, films and television shows, often to switch from one idea of connoting to the audience a switch from a serious situation to a more comedic one. We took the sound effect from the website http://www.freesound.org/.http://www.freesound.org/people/Halleck/sounds/29938/ - Link to Record Scratch sound effect.


For our final piece of music in our trailer, we used a short piece of hip hop music entitled "Beat 1", also taken from http://www.freesound.org/. We chose this piece of music due to Hip-hop's worldwide appeal, as well as due to the fact that the music contrasts with the "camp" character of Steve the vampire, hip-hop music associated with  "urban" themes and rap music. http://www.freesound.org/people/zyberbird/sounds/15495/ - link to "Beat 1"