Post Production - Editing

School Magazine

Added writing
Added a strip at the bottom
Added smaller images

Music Magazine

Removed the background
Added a music-motif background
Created a new font for my title 'brassed off'
Added all the relevant writing

Short Film

Black and White
Colour Correction
Cutting footage together
Adding music
Adding text over the top
Editing the silhouette over the top
Adding title screens that looked like inter-titles
Adding credits

Poster

Put a light flare onto the image
Made the smaller image black and white
Added the black and white image over the top of main image
Made the smaller image slightly opaque
Gave a faded boarder to the image to make it seem like it was disappearing
Adding text
Added a credit block

Review Page

Made on of the images black and white
Added a boarder to the images
Added text
Added an 'Our Verdict' box that looked like the boarders on the photos
Experimented with colours
Added page numbers

The FOUR most important to me

Music Mag

Created a new font for my title 'brassed off' 

At AS I was producing a brass band magazine and so from early on I decided that I wanted to use a gold metallic looking font for my main title. I looked around for ages on sites such as 'dafont.com' but couldn't find one I liked so in the end I decided to make my own. I did this using Powerpoint because, despite its relatively unsophisticated programming, I knew I could add a metallic effect to text using it. I was pleased with the way the final font looked on the cover and am happy I decided to make it my own way because this meant I was able to tailor it to the image I had in my head.

How is this done?

Creating a metallic effect using Powerpoint is easy if you know where to look. You first of all type the text you want to change onto the slide, like you would normally. You then highlight the writing and click on the 'drawing format' tool bar that appears at the top of the screen. You can then change the text to the colour that you want, in my case gold, and then add a gradient effect which is in the end what creates the metallic look. You can then add a bevel to make it look 3-D which adds a finishing touch to the now metallic looking font you have created. I then had to make the title a Jpeg image so that I could add it to my pages document as they were different formats. This is done by 'right-clicking' on the text box and selecting 'save as picture.'

Short film

Colour correction and the use of black and white

Over the process of creating my short film it went from being a short film to a short silent film. Because of this I looked at the conventions of silent films. From these conventions, and the conventions I had already found for short films, I found that the colours of your footage play a big part in conveying a specific mood. For most of my film the mood was quite sad and so I used colour correction, on Final Cut Pro, to alter the saturation of my footage and dull the colours to help convey this mood. However, as my film had become silent I knew I also wanted to use black and white at some point as silent films were nearly always black and white. I chose to use the black and white filter at the climax of my film which also happens, in some ways, to be the saddest scene, as I felt this truly highlighted this mood. It also adds a more poignant contrast to the full colours I used on the next scene where my characters are much happier.

How is this done?

Altering the colour of a piece of footage is relatively simple. When you select a frame in your timeline an alteration box comes up beside the thumbnail by default and this gives you a 'colour' option. Clicking on this gives you a range of 'sliders' that that you can move about accordingly to create the right 'hue' etc.

Making footage black and white is slightly easier than this in that there is constantly a tool-bar in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen that enables you to add a range of thing including transitions and filters. If you click on filters a range of effects come up including black and white. You then drag the thumbnail over the footage, turning it black and white.

Silhouette

My film is about a girl who gets bullied at school but who has a best friend in the form of an 'on-line pen-pal.' I introduce this idea by my main character going and sitting on a bench outside her school and texting her pen-friend. This is illustrated through on-screen sub-titles that appear as though an actual text would. As far as I was concerned this was all I needed to illustrate at this point but my audience feedback showed me that this preferred reading wasn't always the impression given. I got comments from several people asking me if her 'friend' was actually going to be a paedophile. To avoid this confusion I decided to add a silhouetted image of the friend over the scene. I chose to use a silhouette because I wanted the true identity of the friend to be revealed to the audience at the same time as she is to the character. (She sits with the bullies from the first scene) This silhouette proved effective in this way and all confusion was thankfully avoided in my final film.

How is this done?

Adding the silhouette to my film was easier than I expected once I had got the hang of what I had to do. I first of all filmed my talent standing side-on in front of the green screen. I then uploaded my footage and layered it over the top of the footage that made up that scene. Having filmed my talent in front of the green screen, I could then easily remove the background using the keying tool on the programme. All that then remained was to play around with the shadow ratios and saturation, to darken the image, and increase the opacity so that the base image came through a little, making the silhouette less oppressive.

Poster

Adding a light flare

For my subsidiary tasks at A2 I chose to create a poster and a review page. I chose these two tasks partially because it would be hard to make a radio advert for a silent film, but also because I had previous experience working in print from my AS coursework. One of the first things that I did after gathering the raw images for my poster was choose my favourites and begin playing around with ways I could edit them. I had looked back at my AS coursework prior to this and realised that I barely edited the photos for my magazine so had made up my mind to be more adventurous with these tasks. For this reason I went onto pixlr.com and tried out the different light-flares they had on offer. I settled for one that gave a greenish tinge to the top right hand corner of the image because I felt this added a happier tone to the poster. I chose to use one of the happier images on my poster as it was likely to be more appealing to my target audience and I think the overall tone, added to by the green light-flare, was a lot more effective than if I had used one of the sadder images because it meant I could use more 'sophisticated' colours for my house colours which helped my poster appeal to a wider audience.

How is this done?

I added a light-flare to my photo using the on-line program 'pixlr.com.' This program enables you to edit photos in a range of ways one of which is by adding light-flares. There are a whole range to choose from and I went through each one several times over before settling for the one which gave a greenish tinge to the top right-hand corner of my image.

Digital Technologies I Used Throughout my AS and A2 Coursework

Hardware

AS
Panasonic Photographic Camera
Samsung Photographic Camera
iMac
Dell Laptop
Memory Stick

A2
Panasonic Video camera
iMac
Dell Laptop
Memory Stick
Panasonic Photographic camera

Software

AS
Blogger
Pages
Pixlr
Google
Microsoft Word

A2
Blogger
Youtube
Youtube Downloader
Google
Final Cut Pro
Pixlr
Pages
Facebook
Paint
Prezi

How Has my use of Digital Technology Progressed?

From the two lists of hardware and software I used at AS and A2 it is clear to see that my use of digital technology has progressed over the A level course. Here is how my use of certain digital technologies have developed specifically.

iMac

The iMac is a piece of hardware that I relied heavily on at both AS and A2 as it was the main 'computer' device that I used. Before AS I had some limited experience with iMacs but was more used to working with PCs. This limited what I was able to do because it meant I was still getting to grips with the technology which in some ways is drastically different from that of a PC. At A2 I didn't have this problem because my experiences at AS meant I already knew how to navigate an iMac and so was able to execute tasks more easily.

Blogger

In a similar way, Blogger has been my main way of recording the decisions I've been making at AS and A2. Before AS I had never come into contact with the software so to begin with I had to learn how to navigate around the site and learn from my mistakes as I went along. As with my experiences with the iMac, this hindered my progress as it meant I was slower. However, by the time I got to A2 I was again more familiar with the technology and so was able to navigate my way around more easily. Because of this I feel that I have made far more effective use of Blogger at A2, blogging every little change and idea I have had so that I could easily access any previous ideas.

Pages and Final Cut Pro

Although these two pieces of software are very different the amount of time it took for me to learn to use them was helped by other programs I had used before. I used Pages at AS and A2 as it was a good program to create print pieces on. In many ways it is similar to Microsoft Word or Publisher so, although there are some features that are different, the skill basis I already had from using these programs regularly for years, meant I found it easier to learn how to use Pages. It still took some time to get to grips with the software which hindered my progress slightly nbut overall I foudnit easier. Also, having already learnt these skills meant that at A2 I could easily access them to create better print pieces at A2 than at AS.

With Final Cut Pro, I had never used the program before A2 but I'd used iMovie in my BTEC media coursework at GCSE. Both pieces of software are video editing programs so many of the things you can do on them are the same. However, the way you navigate around the two programs is very different and so I still had to get to grips with Final Cut Pro but my iMovie experience meant I had skills to build on which made the learning process quicker. This helped my overall short film at A2 because it meant I spent less time learning about the program and more time creating my coursework piece.