Evaluation 3How did you use media technologies with the

construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Joseph Donaldson

For research and planning, I used 3 different types of media; IMDB, YouTube, and Flickr. IMDB was really useful in getting inspiration from other horror films as it gives you a detailed list of the best psychological horror films with an in depth plot and reviews. I was able to quickly find out information on horrors such as ‘Hide and Seek’ (2005) and ‘Silent Hill’ (2006). YouTube was very helpful as I was able to watch loads of horror trailers with a touch of a button. This enabled me to compare trailers such as ‘Carrie’ (2013) and ‘Mama’ (2013) to see what type of trailer I wanted to create and watch horror features I wanted to use to comply to Thomas Schatz’s Genre Theory. Flickr was very useful when I had to look at and compare magazine covers and horror posters. This useful website let me annotate popular posters to see what type of information I should include in my own poster and it let me look at other students work so I could compare their work to mine and make improvements if needed.

The trailers that most influenced my work were probably; ‘Paranormal Activity’ (2007), ‘Cloverfield’ (2008) and ‘The Woman in Black’ (2012). Paranormal Activity was a highlights trailer that showed quick-paced shots that builds tension and interests the audience. Cloverfield is more of a scenic trailer that sets the scene of the film and then the action starts, a little bit like our trailer and The Woman in Black is completely made up of highlights with a quick montage that builds tension throughout.

With my ancillary products, I mainly used Photoshop as I found this was the easiest way to create a poster and magazine. With my poster, I wanted to create something like the ‘Mirrors’ (2008) poster as I thought this poster was very cleverly created as it is quite vague and invites a lot of questions. It draws the audience in with a subtle but scary way. I took photos of Caitie whilst she was wearing her ghost make up and wig and used that as the main image for the poster. I built on top of this by using the spot healing tool to blur out her nose ring and the hair on her face. I then added a new layer and coloured in her lips with a dark red and used the blending options to combine the dark red with her already pink lips. After this I layered the text on top to buildup the poster. One thing I particularly liked about my poster

is how I got the stars name to look very blurry and paranormal like. I done this by creating two layers of the names and I added a motion blur to the bottom layer so it looks like it is moving, but I kept the top layer still so it was easier to read and therefore creating a spooky font.

For my magazine photo, I dressed myself up in smart clothes and got one of the other members of the group to take photos of me in various positions. I tried to make myself look like a director as my magazine was for the higher class audience and I felt like this would appeal more than a typical villain photo that you see on most film magazines. On the main photo, I used a certain filter over my face to try and make myself look a little older and more sophisticated. I also cut around my head and added this to a new layer above the name of the magazine so my head was covering part of the name, to give the illusion that magazine readers feel exclusive and more important than people who don’t read my magazine, like Total Film does.

For my horror trailer, I used two main programmes; Premier Pro and After Effects. Premier Pro was used to cut all of my trailer together and general editing purposes and After Effects was used for the intertitles in my trailer. Once we had put all of the trailer in the correct order, we then had to change some of the different things on the shots like the speed and colour. One thing we did a few times was reversing the shots, which give a really cool and spooky effect. We highlighted the shot and right clicked and went down to the speed/duration. From then you can click to reverse the speed and speed it up or slow it down. When you see Joe being dragged up the stairs, we reversed the shot and sped it up to 180% to make the shot short and more realistic. Another thing we had to do quite regularly was changing the brightness/contrast and colours of different shots as we filmed on different days so the lighting wasn't always correct and the continuity didn't flow very well. As certain shots would be light and then it would go dark in the next shot.

This shot follows the scene where Caitie hangs herself, and we filmed all of that at night time to get some really cool low key lighting, but this next shot we filmed in the daylight so we had to change the brightness when editing it. We done this by going onto the effects menu on the left hand side and selecting the brightness/contrast button and by using sliders we were able to gain the right balance. When Joe finds Caitie hanging, it is meant to be the next day so it wasn’t that the day time was a problem, it was that we wanted to continue the low key lighting but couldn't in the day time, which is why we edited on Premier Pro afterwards.

When evaluating my work, I used a number of different media technologies ranging from social networking sites to slideshare and issuu. My blog was definitely the most important thing as I was able to upload all of my work and keep it in one place. This helped me a lot as I was able to see what work hadn’t been completed and I could easily improve work if I needed to. One way in which I shared my horror trailer to a wide audience so I could gain feedback was through social networking sites. My teacher uploaded the trailer to his YouTube account and from there I was able to post the link onto my Facebook and twitter accounts for all of my friends to watch so they could give me feedback. I also set up a survey on my blog where people could give me feedback on my trailer from scoring it from 1-10 and I think this really helped as I was able to get a general view from a wider audience, not just media students who look past the trailer at all the technical details.

Because I done all of my evaluation on PowerPoint, I had to use a clever website called slideshare where I can upload a PowerPoint presentation straight onto the internet. This helped a lot because not only did it show I can experiment with a wide range of media technologies, but I was able to break my blog up a bit so it isn’t just post after post after post, it makes it my blog look more interesting.The last media technology I used which is probably one of my favourite ones, is Flickr. This is a great way of sharing loads of different images/posters/magazine covers. Through Flickr I was able to compare and write about my own work that I have completed and other people’s work as well, which really helped me in understanding the perfect ingredients into things such as a magazine cover and horror poster.