Making the links for the webpage

Here are a couple of photographs of me cutting out the letters to make the words as links for our webpage. Each word was placed on its own piece of paper ready to be scanned onto the computer. We then turned the single images (the words) into links, enabling us to click on each one, leading us to that specific page on the website.

Why we chose to oppose to a suggestion

we were advised by one individual to film another scene that would show the potential stalker with Isabelle, and the actual stalker’s gaze via a film shot. However our group disagreed with this suggestion as we felt that the enigma would be revealed. It would however possibly make the ending that much more dramatic and tense, but we believe it would destroy the enigma, which would then result in our audience not paying to watch it as the film would be predictable.

FEEDBACK!

On friday, we presented our 'portfolio' to the class, that is our website, poster and trailer itself. This went very well, and having shown our trailer to the teacher before showing the class, we gathered feedback early. For our trailer, it was advised that we should shoot another scene for the end to make the ending more dramatic and tense, and therefore more fitting for a conventional thriller. Although we we wanted to keep a real sense of enigma in the trailer and not show who the true stalker was (as we were aiming to keep this minimal and keep the audiences suspicions on the ex-boyfriend, evidenced through the dvds organised just like the ex.) We thought of having the couple talking in a public location, such as starbucks or something, and then have an over the shoulder shot of a mysterious figure watching them before ending the trailer. She also said that we needed to make the shots more snappier and faster to create a more fast-paced trailer and thus making even more conventional. We watched the trailer of 'Primer' in which this is put into effect. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CC60HJvZRE, this is shown around 1:00)

When we shown our portfolio to the class, we discussed our process from a rom-com to the thriller, and briefly talked about the more important posts on the blog. Our feedback for the blog itself was very positive, with comments about how in depth our work was, and how much thought we'd put into our posts. The only critiscism was that the blog was somewhat disorganised because I (Sam) had not updated our links bar in a very long time!

For the website, our class were very positive about our page, liking our continuity of the cut out lettering for our logo (a reoccuring motif in all three texts), and the links page. They also liked how conventional it was, being a black page with some images (some from filming and others off facebook displaying the boyfriend and girlfriend to emphaise their relationship). We shown them our blooper wheel too which was a nice little laugh for us and the class. The only point of criticism was that it needed a few small tweaks such as items needing to be moved and some unfinished pages which needed a bit more being done to them.

The poster was the most negative aspect; we discovered that the 'empire' rating was generally included on posters advertising the dvd release of that film, and so ours obviously didn't fit. Also, we were in the process of editing it before showing, so we were showing an old copy in which the names of the producers etc. left an empty white space but apart from that, that was our only feedback for the poster.

The trailer itself too was very positive. Having already gathered feedback from the teacher, we had some points of re-emphasis which she had already told us, such as our cliffhanger ending and that the pace needed to be faster. They also thought that some of the shots could be a bit brighter. They liked the use of greyscale for our flashback and thought it fitting. We were exceptionally pleased that the audience fell for the stalker to be for the boyfriend, which is what we wanted, and also understood the narrative, something which had been troubling us for quite a while. We also discovered that it was 'Blooper Reel' not 'Blooper Wheel', and so we will need to recreate that link image and edit the blog too so it says the correct word!

From here, we are going to put all the changes into effect, and once the trailer is re-edited, shall post onto facebook and get our friends to critique the trailer, and these comments will all be posted onto the blog.

Our Videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN_C-L3MXa4
These are our out-takes from our footage. We decided to include these partially for comedy value, but also to add to our website to make it seem more realistic as a film website. Although blooper wheels are more commonly found on the dvd itself, we felt that it made create a more realistic sense to the website. We also did not want to waste any footage!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELphfpEmDqA
This is our actual teaser trailer for our thriller 'Desire'. At present, there is some tweaking to do towards the end of the footage, but we feel that we ought to get feedback from the class and teacher at its current state.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAnz-91VhrY
This is our footage which we edited before making our trailer to understand the story, for example to create a clear linear narrative. There is little difference between this and our trailer, although clips were shortened and moved in the trailer to make it flashier. In many ways this was our first draft of creating a trailer.

Editing and constructing into a 'Teaser Trailer'

We have had to cut down so much footage during editing to narrow it down into a teaser trailer. It's been quite difficult to select, and scrap different shots when they took time and effort to set up and film. We've had to select random shots to form into a structure base to reveal the storyline. We began selecting different shots and scenes to have a basic order of events. This lead us to having a 'Trailer', that was roughly 1 minute 57 seconds, which was too long to be a 'Teaser Trailer'. We saved our 'Trailer', and then began cutting down, constructing the 'Teaser'. We now have a time length of 1 minute 16 seconds; so we have cut alot. Some of the dialogue was slowing the 'Teaser' down, so we managed to cut some of the dialogue, still making sense of the storyline that flows nicely. Adding music to the footage put the 'icing on top of the cake', it made it look dramatically more professional, and we found ourselves getting really excited the first time we tried the music over the top of the film. The beat of the song fitted well with certain shots and scene changes, it also added to the pace of the 'Teaser' making it faster and snappier. We found the song on the 'Audio production network', where we selected the genre and theme (under eerie/dark/atmosphere) and listened to various 'thriller' type music. We saved three appropriate songs onto my memory stick (lucy), so that we could see which one fitted the best with our footage. We may of liked the sound of some of the soundtracks, but it had to fit and flow nicely with our footage to make it work well. So far we are all really pleased with our teaser trailer, we're just waiting for our class assessment lesson to hear comments and advice on our progress so far.

Website Evaluation 2!

After a lot of consideration, time and effort on the website, we have finally started our final piece! YAY! Our transition stage for the website and our thoughts will all be described with the ongoing process.

01. Originally, we started off with a website that I (Sam) found called Wix and originally I was rather unimpressed by its simplicity (as I have had experience with making websites for about six years now), but realising that the rest of my group had had little experience and were rather alienated with the process, decided that its 'drag and drop' and then edit based style may work as we managed to collate their resources and our own to create a page which as described earlier, as looking like some sort of photo board, which emphasised our story as being one based around being stalked, so with newspaper -clipped fonts and images heightened this atmosphere. With feedback from the class, we realised that it did not explicitly match with a conventional thriller of a black colour scheme, simplicity and some action on page. So with this, it was our duty to try and alter the page. Giving up, we decided to try another site.

02. On suggestion by some of our classmates, we tried another webpage called Jimdo, which left me rather impressed by how professional it looked; although it soon became very clear that it did not contain everything we needed. Lacking the ease of access which Wix had, along with many of the basic tools such as inserting an image or editing the navigation panel in the way we wanted to, we realised that the page really wasn't working for us.

03. Then we moved onto Webs. This was one of the very first pages I used when I started making a website, and was rather astounded by how much it had changed. But upon manipulating the site to suit our needs, realised it was too template based, and that it would look to 'ready made' and lacked any sense of originality. With that, we quickly gave up with Webs, and after a long debate decided we'd revert back to 'Wix' yet again/

04. Finally, we realised the true potential of Wix. With a LOT of hard work, we managed to create a conventional page which still contains our own flare of originality, with adding scans of text and our own images to literally make the page our own. Although the page is still under construction as we try to put the last pieces of our projects together, but by the time we finish, we will have seen how much we have developed in terms of the website, and how far our ideas have come. For your benefit, we have listed our two wix pages so you can see this difference for yourselves! (Please note that the first page is unfinished as we scraped it ! )

First Page | Second Page

Film Title

This is our film title, which again we cut out different letters from a magazine to construct the word.