Throughout the research process of making a horror opening I've improved my use of technologies and certain software to make the opening to a horror film look a professional standard. The websites and software that I have learnt to use and gain more confidence with are Blogger, YouTube, Adobe Premier Pro, Garage Band, Movie Maker, iMovie and Scribd. All of these technical websites have helped me since the start of the project. Some of these websites I had a basic understand more than other, the other websites were completely new to me which means I had to learn how to use them however I became confident over the process of the research period and I became full aware on how I could use these sites.
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| Garage Band apple app. |
The technologies of the website have helped make our opening to a horror film become more realistic and look professional. One of the websites I focused on a lot due to having to make the soundtrack would be Garage Band. Garage Band is an app that I downloaded on my iPad for this project. It lets you create your own backing tracks and lets you record the way you would in a professional studio. Its limited compared to an actual studio however by using this app I have learnt and taught myself how to create the right soundtrack for the opening to a horror film. I have never used garage band until this project. What made me download this particular app software would be the reviews I've heard from it. I've heard it's a professional easy way to create backtracks and songs without paying a lot of money to go into a studio. Things I've learnt about this app would be how to navigate around the app, how to cut and loop songs. Change the pitch and tempo and how to make one instrument become louder than the others. I've decided that the best way to tell you my own personal experience would be to record what I think about the app and to film how I navigate around this app showing you the things I've learnt along the way: Because the reviews said that it's a professional way of creating these soundtracks and backing tracks I wanted to use it in our opening to a horror film to give it a little bit more of a professional feel.
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| iMovie apple app. |
YouTube & iMovie & Windows Live Movie Maker
Websites I have used and have also become a lot more confident with are websites such as YouTube. YouTube is an online site which allows you to upload short video footage. It's another form of blogging which I will compare with Blogger in some way. Blogger is more of the writing side of a blog whereas YouTube allows you to be creative by making videos and show the world. I've become more aware of how to use YouTube since I have uploaded my preliminary task to it and my actually horror opening. YouTube is easy to navigate and is quick and simple to use if you are wanting to upload videos to the internet quickly. Since participating in my media lessons i have been uploading videos to my own personal YouTube channel as well as my media YouTube Channel. I've grown confident in saying I understand fully how to use this site now knowing how to edit your own videos through YouTube and how to annotate them and link them from one video to another with hyperlinks which allows you to interact through the video. I've chosen again to show you how I navigate around YouTube by showing you a short video with a overlap of a voice over informing you what I have learnt and how this has helped me towards my project. Linking YouTube into editing and uploading another software I used was called iMovie. All of the video footage that I have imported to this evaluation has all been edited by myself using my iPad camera and an iPad app called iMovie. iMovie is a quick way that allows you to import video footage, backing music and photos to a video that you are creating. You can cut and edit the sound out of the footage and use voice overs Which is what I've done in all of the following videos above. Above is just a print screen showing how I use iMovie how I've become confident in using iMovie and have improved using it, I really like this app because its a professional quick easy way to edit and upload videos to YouTube. Ever since participating in media lessons I've recently been adding personal videos to YouTube as said above, and this is how I edit most of my videos. Popular You Tubers online such as "Shane Dawson, Smosh, PointlessBlogTv" use this editing software to also make their videos look professional online. Having saying that when these You Tubers make parody's spoofs of songs they also use Garage Band. I also used Windows Movie Maker which also helped me too; Its a lot like iMovie but just not as good it has less options to choose from.
How I use You Tube and how it has helped me.
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| Windows Live Movie Maker |
Again another website I am also confident in using now would be Blogger. I have been using Blogger to update my progress and research of the making to the horror opening. At first i found Blogger difficult to use but recently I've been using Blogger to update rather than Microsoft Word and using Scribd to upload it to my Blog. What I liked about this technology is that it's easy to navigate through your blogger by the hyperlinks on the sidebar. Its professional looking and quick and easy to navigate around. At first Blogger confused me but now I've understood how to use it. I can add pictures to my work and video clips through YouTube onto my work which has helped me. Blogger helped a lot through our research and planning process because it was easy to look and start at the beginning of what we have done and we could just upload to the Blog whenever we change our ideas or whenever we wanted to update on what had to be done next. It helped me through different stages of the research process.
How i used Blogger and how it helped me.
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| Blogger - Hyperlink Bar on my Blog |
Tripods Vs Handhelds
One thing that we did use was accessories that come with the video cameras such as tripods. Tripods Vs Handhelds. In our short opening to a horror film we have used Tripods and hand-helds. Both give a different outlook on the footage. Such as running scenes were done with hand helds and long shot angles/establishing were done with the tripods. In our opening we wanted to portray a certain character in each angle. Such as handhelds for when the stalker was walking towards the Jock, this gives a more realistic look to the opening. I liked the way we used tripods in our opening because it stayed in focus a lot more and it gives it more of a professional look because it's still and not moving or shaking. With hand held cameras i liked the fact that it shakes sometime because it can show the character emotions of the Jock being scared about something, also it adds dramatic impact too.
Adobe Premier Pro
Something that was a big impact towards our film would be the software Adobe Premier Pro. Adobe Premier Pro is an editing software allowing you to encode and input footage and soundtracks in the timeline task bar. Adobe Premier Pro allows you to combine your footage together to make short videos or short films. For our preliminary and final outcome to an opening to a teen horror movie in my group we all used Adobe Premier Pro to edit the footage. We learnt how to cut and add in effects to overlay the top of the video making the footage darker, I learnt how to input a soundtrack into the video and how to change the fade ins and outs to the soundtrack so it gradually builds up the tension throughout the opening scene. In a similar way I also figured out how to change the sound in the footage, Sometimes it needed to be louder than the other footage therefore i knew how to do that. Also in our horror opening we had titles. This is something we learnt from using Adobe Premier Pro. We got to change the transitions if we wanted them to fade in and out or scroll up and then go across and change the colour of these titles too. There were no difficult problems in the editing process in our opening to a horror film, it just took time to get used to and navigate around because it was all new to me however I feel a lot more confident in using Adobe Premier Pro now. Adobe Premier Pro gave myself and the group a better feeling of how to use a more professional editing software.
Overall I didn't have many problems using the technology that were given to us. The video cameras were easy to use, the tripods were easy to set up, The websites that helped towards the research and planning process were complicated at first however the more I went on them and tried to figure out how to use them it become a lot more easier. I think I'm confident with these certain websites now and I have improved alot since the start of the year with working on these sites too. What I've learnt about technologies is how they are used in the making of different films and how they are used in certain ways to create the right look for a horror films. I've learnt that without the software the movies that we see on cinema screens wouldn't be as professional or good in anyway. This suggests that technologies and software's play an important role towards the media industry in making a professional movie.
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