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Trailer construction

Callum HennCandidate no: 7104

This is a brief overview of the construction of the trailer from the planning side of things all the way up to the final upload of the trailer.

One of the first things to do in the trailer was to create a brief story board and a script so that our actors new exactly what the story was about and what scenes are likely to occur in the trailer. We made a pledge to stick to the script as best we could because the script we developed was thought to be one the best ideas we had come up with. As for the story board we were sceptical of a few scenes that may be in the trailer so thought we would film them and see how they went.

Stage 1Obviously the first part of the construction process was to take the videos of the clips required. This was a very long process and I used my iPhone to take the majority of the clips in the various different locations listed in the research and planning page. I think that the clip quality was excellent however the transfer of these clips was a very long process because the file size was so big. The clips then had to be trimmed ready to be imported into iMovie.

Stage 2

Stage 2 was opening the Apple programme, ‘iMovie’ this is video editing software which allows you to add in clips, trim clips, add images, music, transitions and many other features such as slowing down the motion in clips and stabilizing the clip from clip shake and camera jerking.

Another program that I had to use was Adobe Photoshop, this was to edit the green screen that can be seen in the trailer right at the start. The reason why we used this program to edit the green screen was because my colleague and I wanted to make it more personal and show more creativity by adding ‘The Regis School’ rather than the ‘Motion Picture Association of America’ and also to add our names at the bottom of screen once again adding our own personal touch. This green screen was added right at the very start of the trailer editing process to start us off with task.

Stage 3

Next I added in the custom made film logo to make the product look more professional because this is a generic convention of a film trailer as I found out from my trailer analysis in my research and planning page. Once this was complete we added it in to iMovie just after the green screen appears.

I began making sure that the clips were put into the right order and that they had been trimmed to the right length. As you can see from the image below, these are all the clips in the file ready to be imported to the iMovie program.

Stage 4

The last thing to do to the clips visually was to make sure that I added in some transitions and some text blocks to the clips. The reason why I added in the transition was so that you could clearly differentiate each clip from when it would in a different scene in a movie, the other reason why I used the transitions I because it make the trailer more visually appealing as well making it more dramatic because I was able to change the pace of how quick the clip transitions took place.

As you can see from the images below these are the text boxes that I included in my trailer. The reason for adding in the textboxes in between clips is because it is a generic convention of trailers but more specifically horror trailers and it keeps the audience wondering what’s going to happen next.

Stage 5 A specific editing technique I used when editing my

trailer was to fade out to black when the character ‘Josh’ went to kick the gravestone. I added this technique in because I wanted not disrespect the dead in real-life therefore by making this transition it made the scene look realistic without having to kick the gravestone. You can see the point of transition in screenshot below.

One of the other things I had to do when constructing the trailer was add sound in. To do this I looked on the internet and found a website called ‘Freesound’ this is where I downloaded all of the sound FX and background music for the trailer. I applied all this into the trailer to make the trailer look more realistic and professional. As you can see from the screenshot on the left, these are all the sounds that I downloaded for the trailer. I also needed to make sure that I made the dialogue in the trailer louder than the background music so a lot of the time I had to play with audio options to ensure that I got the right balance.

Stage 6

The final thing I had to in the construction of my trailer was add in the final two text boxes. This was the movie name so that the audience would remember it by it name because of it was the last thing on the trailer that they will see other than the coming soon text, the reason why I added this in to the trailer was so that the audience understand that the film is in development and they can keep in touch with what is happening in the development of the film by using the link below ‘Coming Soon’;

At the bottom here is my un-published but finished trailer. As you can see, there is many different components to this which make it a professional-like trailer such as sound, music, stills and fast pace editing these are just some of the conventions I have used in my horror trailer.

Stage 7

Now that the construction of the trailer is compete. The final thing for me left to do is to export the trailer and upload it to YouTube. Here is where the examiner will be redirected to when they go to watch my trailer. The good thing about uploading it to this form o social media is that I can accumulate views and ‘likes’ which inform me on how popular my trailer is and the video can be viewed almost anywhere in the world on any device.