Evaluation
For our A2 Media Coursework, we were assigned to create a teaser trailer of any genre according to our preference; the teaser trailer was intended to last from 30 seconds up to 60 seconds, as our guidelines were the usual and professional teaser trailers. We chose to create clips to explain our evaluation because this is a more informative, creative and interesting way to produce our evaluation. I have also produced a commentary, to make sure that every subject of the evaluation is made clear. Additional information was added in writing instead of in the clips because these are the small details that didn't need to necessarily be spoken about in big detail for example in the voice over clips.
Written Commentary of Evaluation:
Key:
White - Information in evaluation clips
Grey- Additional information
Green - Titles and key words
The Ident:
The Ident of our production company is a gun and a rose. We created the logo as it represents the genre of our teaser trailer. The gun is used to portray the violence and corruption from the 1920's to the 1940's, and the black rose is to represent how the femininity and innocence of the character Frank is corrupted. We have chosen our company's name to be LKNV Productions because these are the initials of the members in our production, and we decided to keep it short as the main focus should be on the logo. We chose to use the font Ranana which is quite a simple font as we did not want to overpower our ident. we used the colour white so it would stand out against the black, yet once again not overpowering our ident. We used the desaturation tool on Final cut Pro to make the gun black and white to fit in with our theme of a classic black and white gangster movie.
Media Technologies:
For our teaser trailer and the construction of it, we had to use various media technologies in order to create a trailer which would prove successful and relevant to our genre. The media technologies we used were Photoshop, Final Cut Pro and Motion; our first software was Motion. Motion is a software where you can add special effects to specific video clips. Motion has many tools available which lets you choose a specific effect that you believe is relevant to what you are looking. The print screen that is visible at the moment is all the different functions that Motion has. As it was our first time using Motion within our media productions, we had to ensure that we used it correctly to avoid any problems which may appear on our final trailer. Using the software we created a smoky background, which we would input for our tilting shots during the trailer. We needed this to be perfect as it would be one of the main focuses throughout the trailer.
Final Cut Pro is a software that allows you to edit all video clips using specific functions which the software offers. Linking our technologies together, we imported the smoky background from Motion to Final Cut Pro so we could use that for the background of our tilt. Once we had imported the background, we needed to insert our tilt shots and then edit the motion background to see if it looked appropriate, which we thought it was. The image you can see is the timeline of our clips on Final Cut Pro, which we had to synchronise and edit using tools such as razor blade tool and toggle clip overlays. The razor blade tool is used to cut clips apart and edit them according to what you need; toggle clip overlays edits any sound clips which have been imported to blend in with our clips. We used these tools within our trailer as we needed music to create a digetic sound to relate to our genre. This our final clip when linking Motion and Final Cut Pro for our tilt scene. As you can see using careful editing we believe we have created a suitable background for our tilt shots which is beneficial to the rest of the trailer.
Photoshop is similar to Final Cut Pro, however instead of editing video clips it is used to develop images with effects and much more. The image displayed is the final production of our poster, which we would use to promote our movie to our specified target market. For our poster and magazine, we used a number of specific tools so we could gain the correct effects and visuals to create an appealing portfolio. The tools we used were clone tool to copy a certain part of the image to another area so it matches. The lasso tool was used to manually cut around certain items to blend in with other visuals. The magic wand tool was used to delete additional parts of the image which was not required. The eraser tool was used to edit around the image we imported so we could have the perfect angles for visuals on the poster and magazine and the text tool is to input text on our ancillaries. Within our poster, we gained an image of the US dollar, however to relate it to our production, we used the lasso tool to delete the original image of the US President and replace it with our actress Larhysa, (our main character Frank). The clone tool was used to copy the background of the dollar on top of writing we did not want to include. The magic wand was used to delete areas of the main image which was the US President as we needed the right amount of space to include Frank.
The Tilt:
At first when deciding a location for the tilting section, which was to be the main part of our teaser trailer, we chose to find a wooden background as we use thought it would add to the classic genre. Also, initially we used a hand held camera to record this scene, however after looking back on it we decided that overall it looked amateur and the background did not match our genre. Therefore, after some consideration we believed that we could test the lighting aswell as practice for the tilting section in a green room. It clearly shows that the camera work and camera quality is not up to a high standard; this is due to the act that this shot was still not taken on a tri-pod. After realising that we needed to improve the camera work, a tripod was used. This is the shot used in the actual teaser trailer Frank. The quality is clearer because of the use of 3 point lighting and the tilt was much smoother because of the use of a tripod and we avoid stopping suddenly unlike the tester shots. Also we decided to modify the speed to a slower pace to create a more dramatic effect and suspense.
White - Information in evaluation clips
Grey- Additional information
Green - Titles and key words
The Ident:
The Ident of our production company is a gun and a rose. We created the logo as it represents the genre of our teaser trailer. The gun is used to portray the violence and corruption from the 1920's to the 1940's, and the black rose is to represent how the femininity and innocence of the character Frank is corrupted. We have chosen our company's name to be LKNV Productions because these are the initials of the members in our production, and we decided to keep it short as the main focus should be on the logo. We chose to use the font Ranana which is quite a simple font as we did not want to overpower our ident. we used the colour white so it would stand out against the black, yet once again not overpowering our ident. We used the desaturation tool on Final cut Pro to make the gun black and white to fit in with our theme of a classic black and white gangster movie.
Media Technologies:
For our teaser trailer and the construction of it, we had to use various media technologies in order to create a trailer which would prove successful and relevant to our genre. The media technologies we used were Photoshop, Final Cut Pro and Motion; our first software was Motion. Motion is a software where you can add special effects to specific video clips. Motion has many tools available which lets you choose a specific effect that you believe is relevant to what you are looking. The print screen that is visible at the moment is all the different functions that Motion has. As it was our first time using Motion within our media productions, we had to ensure that we used it correctly to avoid any problems which may appear on our final trailer. Using the software we created a smoky background, which we would input for our tilting shots during the trailer. We needed this to be perfect as it would be one of the main focuses throughout the trailer.
Final Cut Pro is a software that allows you to edit all video clips using specific functions which the software offers. Linking our technologies together, we imported the smoky background from Motion to Final Cut Pro so we could use that for the background of our tilt. Once we had imported the background, we needed to insert our tilt shots and then edit the motion background to see if it looked appropriate, which we thought it was. The image you can see is the timeline of our clips on Final Cut Pro, which we had to synchronise and edit using tools such as razor blade tool and toggle clip overlays. The razor blade tool is used to cut clips apart and edit them according to what you need; toggle clip overlays edits any sound clips which have been imported to blend in with our clips. We used these tools within our trailer as we needed music to create a digetic sound to relate to our genre. This our final clip when linking Motion and Final Cut Pro for our tilt scene. As you can see using careful editing we believe we have created a suitable background for our tilt shots which is beneficial to the rest of the trailer.
Photoshop is similar to Final Cut Pro, however instead of editing video clips it is used to develop images with effects and much more. The image displayed is the final production of our poster, which we would use to promote our movie to our specified target market. For our poster and magazine, we used a number of specific tools so we could gain the correct effects and visuals to create an appealing portfolio. The tools we used were clone tool to copy a certain part of the image to another area so it matches. The lasso tool was used to manually cut around certain items to blend in with other visuals. The magic wand tool was used to delete additional parts of the image which was not required. The eraser tool was used to edit around the image we imported so we could have the perfect angles for visuals on the poster and magazine and the text tool is to input text on our ancillaries. Within our poster, we gained an image of the US dollar, however to relate it to our production, we used the lasso tool to delete the original image of the US President and replace it with our actress Larhysa, (our main character Frank). The clone tool was used to copy the background of the dollar on top of writing we did not want to include. The magic wand was used to delete areas of the main image which was the US President as we needed the right amount of space to include Frank.
The Tilt:
At first when deciding a location for the tilting section, which was to be the main part of our teaser trailer, we chose to find a wooden background as we use thought it would add to the classic genre. Also, initially we used a hand held camera to record this scene, however after looking back on it we decided that overall it looked amateur and the background did not match our genre. Therefore, after some consideration we believed that we could test the lighting aswell as practice for the tilting section in a green room. It clearly shows that the camera work and camera quality is not up to a high standard; this is due to the act that this shot was still not taken on a tri-pod. After realising that we needed to improve the camera work, a tripod was used. This is the shot used in the actual teaser trailer Frank. The quality is clearer because of the use of 3 point lighting and the tilt was much smoother because of the use of a tripod and we avoid stopping suddenly unlike the tester shots. Also we decided to modify the speed to a slower pace to create a more dramatic effect and suspense.
Feedback From Facebook, Youtube & an Interview:
Interview Questions:
- What would you rate the teaser trailer on a scale from 1-10? (10 being highest, 1 being lowest)
- What era, based on the teaser trailer alone, would you believe FRANK. is based?
- What was your favourite part of the trailer and why?
- What do you think could have been improved about the teaser trailer?
- If this were a professional teaser trailer would you consider watching the film when it comes out, why?
- Looking at our poster for FRANK., if you had never seen the teaser trailer before or even heard of the film, what about the poster, if anything, would intrigue you to watch it and why?
- Now looking at our magasine cover, out of 1-10 (10 being highest and 1 being lowest) how high would you rate the magasine based on realism in comparison to professional magasine covers?
- Why do you think we have used this picture as the front cover?
- Also what stands out to you on the magasine and would you buy it?
- Finally, how far do you believe that the ancillary texts relate to the teaser trailer? Please answer specifically.
The Ancillaries:
Our ancillary texts consisted of a magazine front cover and a poster to promote our teaser to our target market. Our magazine front cover was inspired by leading magazines such as Empire, Total Film and Premiere Magazines, however our main inspiration came from Empire Magazine as we preferred the layout of it; the simplicity of the magazine caught our attention the most so we decided to base our magazine around that inspiration. Our magazine had to be relevant to our teaser trailer which is why we put our main character Larhysa on the front cover. We have used her to show a contrast between the female character within the classic gangster movie and the female actress within the modern day society as we wanted to emphasise the use of subverting conventions. The gun is a symbol from our teaser trailer as we used it towards the ident of our product. The font used around the front cover and poster were fonts from Photoshop as we wanted to make the magazine as realistic as possible. The background of our poster was the venetian blinds which we used within our green screen to provide the background for the scenes in our teaser trailer. To relate our magazine to our genre, we included previous classic gangsters as we wanted to gain a theme which would attract our target market and a wider audience.
Our poster was an inspiration from the currency used within the era of the 1940's, the US dollar. The US dollar became relevant to our teaser trailer due to the fact that we wanted it to reflect the era in which gangsters were most popular. We had renovated the one dollar bill, with the main focus of the dollar being once again our main character Larhysa. Using the technology Photoshop, we edited the dollar to make it appropriate and in accordance to our trailer. We gained the font from a copyright free website called http://www.101freefonts.com/ which enabled us to search through all the fonts available in order to match the font to the original us dollar. Once we had done that, the green colour on the bill had to be identified using Photoshop as we needed to find a similar green in order to blend in with the original colour schemes as we wanted to make it as realistic as we possibly could. The black and white effect on the character of Larhysa was done to create a similarity of the era which we planned to base our teaser trailer around. We removed the original image of the president because we wanted to show the corruption within the era of the 1940's, which is why we had Frank as the main focus to show a Frank orientated state. Our slogan for the trailer was, "Is it a man's world?" we felt this would be effective under the title as we used a similar colour scheme for both fonts to avoid any particular flaws for our poster which may stand out against what we wanted. The ident of our teaser trailer was included on the poster as it was the representation of our group. We felt the ident was necessary to be included because it was a symbol of our teaser trailer and relevant to what we wanted to portray.
We started our teaser with our production company name and our logo, so the audience could identify who created the production. We felt this was vital to the trailer as we needed to gain awareness for our trailer to promote to audiences specified within our target market. We then move on to the first tilt of the trailer, where we used the background created from Motion and input that onto our product to create a tense and eerie atmosphere. Continuing on, we come to the most crucial scene in our trailer, as it depicts the era which we wanted to represent through mise en scene. Firstly, the background was filmed within the green room. The green room was used because the colour was easy to eliminate, and as we had set our scene to be filmed in New York, we had to come up with appropriate alternatives using the resources we had. By using the chromakey tool to remove the green, we also used the desaturation tool on Final Cut Pro to create the black and white effect of the office scene. After we had seen that the black and white was in accordance to our trailer, we then inserted the New York office background to display a typical 1940's New York office.
Moving on, we included a second tilt shot of the body of Frank which gradually becomes higher up the body. We have added tilt shots to create suspense about the mystery of the character as we have not yet revealed who our main character is and want to keep the audience intrigued. We cut the tilt shots and add scenes in between as we want to revert to flashbacks to include the audience in Frank's past and the lead up to her reign of the mob.
The props that we included within our scenes were vital to the progression of the trailer because we had to match the props to the 1940's and by using inspiration from previous classic gangster movies, we researched what props to use and how they can affect the scenes. In this office scene, we have a close up shot of Frank who has take over the office. The cigar in her hand and the whisky glass on the table were traditional aspects of a gangster as they were involved in corruption, and this is also backed up with the use of the gun within the scene. Using our research and planning, we looked up what would be typical within a New York office, which is where we found the 1940's style telephone. Costume was crucial to our scenes as there needed to be a similarity to the costumes worn within that era, which is why we were all dressed with black suits, however, to identify our main character Frank wore a pin stripe suit, emphasising her role within the mob.
The third tilt shot was to increase the suspense once again as we led up to revealing who our main character was. To continue the flow of the trailer, we dedicated a scene to the gun, which was the prop that signified Frank's corrupted views and also the backlash of American gangsters within the country.
The final tilt was the climax to our trailer, where we continued the tilt shot until it gradually reached Frank's face. This was vital to our trailer as we subverted conventions within the trailer, as normally a classic gangster movie involves a male leader, however we created a twist to show a female aspect on gangsters and how they would react to a similar situation in which males are normally associated with. Costume and make-up contributed to the revealing of Frank. As she took the hat off, we brought out a feminine side to the character with make-up on her face and the whip of her long hair to surprise the audience that the character is a woman and is not their normal classic gangster.
Our ancillary texts consisted of a magazine front cover and a poster to promote our teaser to our target market. Our magazine front cover was inspired by leading magazines such as Empire, Total Film and Premiere Magazines, however our main inspiration came from Empire Magazine as we preferred the layout of it; the simplicity of the magazine caught our attention the most so we decided to base our magazine around that inspiration. Our magazine had to be relevant to our teaser trailer which is why we put our main character Larhysa on the front cover. We have used her to show a contrast between the female character within the classic gangster movie and the female actress within the modern day society as we wanted to emphasise the use of subverting conventions. The gun is a symbol from our teaser trailer as we used it towards the ident of our product. The font used around the front cover and poster were fonts from Photoshop as we wanted to make the magazine as realistic as possible. The background of our poster was the venetian blinds which we used within our green screen to provide the background for the scenes in our teaser trailer. To relate our magazine to our genre, we included previous classic gangsters as we wanted to gain a theme which would attract our target market and a wider audience.
Our poster was an inspiration from the currency used within the era of the 1940's, the US dollar. The US dollar became relevant to our teaser trailer due to the fact that we wanted it to reflect the era in which gangsters were most popular. We had renovated the one dollar bill, with the main focus of the dollar being once again our main character Larhysa. Using the technology Photoshop, we edited the dollar to make it appropriate and in accordance to our trailer. We gained the font from a copyright free website called http://www.101freefonts.com/ which enabled us to search through all the fonts available in order to match the font to the original us dollar. Once we had done that, the green colour on the bill had to be identified using Photoshop as we needed to find a similar green in order to blend in with the original colour schemes as we wanted to make it as realistic as we possibly could. The black and white effect on the character of Larhysa was done to create a similarity of the era which we planned to base our teaser trailer around. We removed the original image of the president because we wanted to show the corruption within the era of the 1940's, which is why we had Frank as the main focus to show a Frank orientated state. Our slogan for the trailer was, "Is it a man's world?" we felt this would be effective under the title as we used a similar colour scheme for both fonts to avoid any particular flaws for our poster which may stand out against what we wanted. The ident of our teaser trailer was included on the poster as it was the representation of our group. We felt the ident was necessary to be included because it was a symbol of our teaser trailer and relevant to what we wanted to portray.
We started our teaser with our production company name and our logo, so the audience could identify who created the production. We felt this was vital to the trailer as we needed to gain awareness for our trailer to promote to audiences specified within our target market. We then move on to the first tilt of the trailer, where we used the background created from Motion and input that onto our product to create a tense and eerie atmosphere. Continuing on, we come to the most crucial scene in our trailer, as it depicts the era which we wanted to represent through mise en scene. Firstly, the background was filmed within the green room. The green room was used because the colour was easy to eliminate, and as we had set our scene to be filmed in New York, we had to come up with appropriate alternatives using the resources we had. By using the chromakey tool to remove the green, we also used the desaturation tool on Final Cut Pro to create the black and white effect of the office scene. After we had seen that the black and white was in accordance to our trailer, we then inserted the New York office background to display a typical 1940's New York office.
Moving on, we included a second tilt shot of the body of Frank which gradually becomes higher up the body. We have added tilt shots to create suspense about the mystery of the character as we have not yet revealed who our main character is and want to keep the audience intrigued. We cut the tilt shots and add scenes in between as we want to revert to flashbacks to include the audience in Frank's past and the lead up to her reign of the mob.
The props that we included within our scenes were vital to the progression of the trailer because we had to match the props to the 1940's and by using inspiration from previous classic gangster movies, we researched what props to use and how they can affect the scenes. In this office scene, we have a close up shot of Frank who has take over the office. The cigar in her hand and the whisky glass on the table were traditional aspects of a gangster as they were involved in corruption, and this is also backed up with the use of the gun within the scene. Using our research and planning, we looked up what would be typical within a New York office, which is where we found the 1940's style telephone. Costume was crucial to our scenes as there needed to be a similarity to the costumes worn within that era, which is why we were all dressed with black suits, however, to identify our main character Frank wore a pin stripe suit, emphasising her role within the mob.
The third tilt shot was to increase the suspense once again as we led up to revealing who our main character was. To continue the flow of the trailer, we dedicated a scene to the gun, which was the prop that signified Frank's corrupted views and also the backlash of American gangsters within the country.
The final tilt was the climax to our trailer, where we continued the tilt shot until it gradually reached Frank's face. This was vital to our trailer as we subverted conventions within the trailer, as normally a classic gangster movie involves a male leader, however we created a twist to show a female aspect on gangsters and how they would react to a similar situation in which males are normally associated with. Costume and make-up contributed to the revealing of Frank. As she took the hat off, we brought out a feminine side to the character with make-up on her face and the whip of her long hair to surprise the audience that the character is a woman and is not their normal classic gangster.
Additional Information:
Break Down of FRANK.- Motion:
The first and main scene is the tilt up the body of the character Frank. The reason for the significance of this scene is because it is set in the "present" and is continuous throughout the teaser trailer. As the scene starts to tilt up from the feet, smoke is clearly beginning to arise along with the tilt. The smoke was to symbolise the smoke from the cigar being held, as the cigar could not actually be lit and smoked. The reason for this was to add to the classic and traditional view of gangster's being portrayed with cigars, alcohol and perhaps even drugs. We created this smoking effect using Motion. The reason we used Motion is because it is a software package to specifically work with special effects. We have used print screen here to illustrate how we uploaded our video clips on toMotion; this was necessary as we needed to edit these clips by adding the smoking effect. We believed that adding extra small details to our teaser trailer would help it look more professional. This toolbar shows exactly what clips were to be edited on the software and the close up of the toolbar helps to show the difficulty in using this software. This is because at the start of this project, we were all inexperienced in using Motion; as it was our first time using this software we had to play around on it and figure it out for ourselves, we wanted to practice using using it to ensure that the final product was well suited to the teaser trailer.
Sound:
As mentionned before, for our teaser trailer we used a soundtrack instead of any voice-over; we decided to not use any dialogue as opposed to our original ideas because we believed that this would give off an impact of extreme suspense, although we used the dialogue scenes that would have taken place in the actual movie for example the first office scene. We chose mournful sounding music in a minor key because we thoroughly enjoyed the soundtrack to The Godfather and was greatly influenced by it. In addition we specifically used music that included instruments such as the violin and strings becuase they seem to be traditional conventions of classic gangster movies. Finally, we found and chose this soundtrack out of many on a website called http://www.auido.lgfl.org.uk/ , this website is made for school's and the students only. Therefore, we were permitted to use this music as it was provided for us.
The first and main scene is the tilt up the body of the character Frank. The reason for the significance of this scene is because it is set in the "present" and is continuous throughout the teaser trailer. As the scene starts to tilt up from the feet, smoke is clearly beginning to arise along with the tilt. The smoke was to symbolise the smoke from the cigar being held, as the cigar could not actually be lit and smoked. The reason for this was to add to the classic and traditional view of gangster's being portrayed with cigars, alcohol and perhaps even drugs. We created this smoking effect using Motion. The reason we used Motion is because it is a software package to specifically work with special effects. We have used print screen here to illustrate how we uploaded our video clips on toMotion; this was necessary as we needed to edit these clips by adding the smoking effect. We believed that adding extra small details to our teaser trailer would help it look more professional. This toolbar shows exactly what clips were to be edited on the software and the close up of the toolbar helps to show the difficulty in using this software. This is because at the start of this project, we were all inexperienced in using Motion; as it was our first time using this software we had to play around on it and figure it out for ourselves, we wanted to practice using using it to ensure that the final product was well suited to the teaser trailer.
Sound:
As mentionned before, for our teaser trailer we used a soundtrack instead of any voice-over; we decided to not use any dialogue as opposed to our original ideas because we believed that this would give off an impact of extreme suspense, although we used the dialogue scenes that would have taken place in the actual movie for example the first office scene. We chose mournful sounding music in a minor key because we thoroughly enjoyed the soundtrack to The Godfather and was greatly influenced by it. In addition we specifically used music that included instruments such as the violin and strings becuase they seem to be traditional conventions of classic gangster movies. Finally, we found and chose this soundtrack out of many on a website called http://www.auido.lgfl.org.uk/ , this website is made for school's and the students only. Therefore, we were permitted to use this music as it was provided for us.