WELCOME MODERATOR

Welcome Moderator, this is my A2 blog. I am Oliver Macnaughton and my candidate number is 1243. I worked with Frederick Howe 1230, Harvey Gillett 1225 and Tamara Rudd 1258.
I hope you enjoy my blog which contains my work on the G324 Advanced Portfolio.

I chose Brief 2: construction of a film trailer for "Welcome To Eden" with the inclusion of two ancillary products: a magazine cover and a poster.

My evaluation questions are above.

My research, planning and construction process for my film trailer is below, and my research, planning and construction process for my film poster and magazine cover are in the pages above. 

FILM TRAILER

FILM POSTER

MAGAZINE COVER

CONSTRUCTION:IDENT

 As seen in most trailers, we decided to create a production ident for the start of the trailer. This is because all trailers will tend to start with a production logo in order to show off the company that is making the movie. I decided to print off a template snakes and ladders board that I found on the internet. Originally, our idea was to have a toy snake cross across the board with the name "snakes and ladders productions" following behind. However, it was ultimately too difficult to do this due to the limitations of movement from the toy snake as well as the fact that we had to do it in IstopMotion which would've been extremely time consuming. As a result, we decided to have the idea of  throwing some dice across a snakes and ladders board . Then a hand would come and take away the dice revealing the main title. The dice is also a reference to the "snake eyes" heard in gambling, showing relation to the main title. Ultimately, this proved successful as we felt it was an extremely effective ident that would be able to grab the viewer's attention, 

 

CONSTRUCTION: EDITING

After we finished filming and recorded the narration, it was now time for the editing process. This was perhaps the most challenging part of the experience as it required a lot of effort, partially due to the enormous amount of footage that we had to get through. Some footage that didn't even make it into the final product included the scene in which Ular comes into the house with lots of shopping and exclaims "hello my darlings".  However, we cut this all out due to this footage seeming like unnecessary "padding" and would've added nothing to the film.

We also had to inset intertitles for dramatic effect. For these, most of the titles would feature religious connections. These included some of the ten commandments such as "thou shalt not steal". This is so that we could emphasize the religious connotations that were seen throughout the trailer.
The main editing software that we used was Final Cut Pro. We found it as an extremely effective as we were able to add many different effects that would help improve our trailer. For instance, some scenes such as the moving in scene, there was some shakey cam. Luckily, with Final Cut Pro we were able to sort this out as there was a setting which would decrease any shakiness to the footage.

CONSTRUCTION: NARRATION

After wrapping filming, we decided to record some narration for . As we didn't want to use too much dialogue as we would've had to record. I provided the voiceover for the narration as I played the character of Ular.  I thought of the poem, the Sick Rose by William Blake as something that I could possibly read out whilst in character as Ular. Blake's poem very much features the themes of love and death, both themes play a big part in our trailer. There is also connected symbolism as there is a scene in the trailer where there is a closeup on Ular's hand slowing picking away at the petals of the rose, representing dying love. Ultimately, we recorded me narrating the poem in about five takes, thinking that it was successful enough to be used in the final product.