For this unit, I worked with Joshua Gray, Frazer Mclean and Matt Frost. After being given the choice of creating a music video for a local band or a trailer for the film we were creating for Unit 5, we initially opted for the former. We started with a band called "Evening Coffee"; Josh went to school with the drummer so we thought this might be the easiest option as contacting them would be relatively easy. However, they did not have a completed song for us to use so we had to find another band. We found another band called "Brooklin" after searching for local bands on SoundCloud. This band were a lot more professional than "Evening Coffee" however the song that we wanted to make a video for was not going to be completed until after Christmas which did not give us enough time to edit or make the video before our deadline. After these setbacks, we decided it would be best to make a trailer for the short film we were producing as we felt we would be able to produce this quicker due to not needing to rely on as many people.
In terms of planning the trailer, Josh made a script featuring the shots from the film that we want in the trailer. All members of the team were involved in creating a storyboard for the film as we each completed 10 seconds each. The purpose of a trailer is to make the audience want to pay to watch the full film and as our film is a thriller, we wanted the trailer to offer suspense which is why we decided to add a backing sound of a clock ticking with all the transitions syncronised to it. Personally, I think the trailer achieved its purpose of creating suspense and making the audience want to go and watch it. However, the inclusion of some dialogue could have given a better insight into what the film was actually about as our feedback survey shows that the storyline of the film was not made obvious in the trailer for a small percentage of people surveyed. Arguably, having no dialogue could work as a positive at making the audience wonder what the short film is about. The genre of a thriller is made obvious by the ticking noise and a lot of other things in the trailer e.g. pacing, appearance. This means that although the genre is clear, the storyline or contents is not so it may make the audience curious and want to watch more.
In the trailer, we created a brand for our film by making up the name and the logo of a production company (Wylde-Gray Production)
In hindsight, we should've spent more time searching for actors as the majority of the ones we hired turned out to be unreliable or underskilled. Two members of our group (Josh and Matt) had to cover for two of the actors that cancelled for our filming as we did not have time to find anybody to cover them due to our tight deadline. Better acting would have improved our trailer, however, there isn't much we could have done about this due to late cancellations.
We adhered to the legal and ethical rules well as there was no breach in copyright (we used a copyright free clock ticking noise), we received permission from the actors to use their images in our trailer (including Josh and Matt) and we also made sure that there wasn't any slanderous material in our trailer.
Making sure that the product matched our plans proved more difficult than we first thought. However, the changes that we made were for the best. The trailer uses a lot of quick cuts, which added to the suspense. Our storyboard used more long clips that would have made the trailer drag and have not as much suspense.
The audio of the project could definitely have been improved. The audio being record separately would have made it a lot clearer and would have helped remove the static noise. We used on-camera audio which picked up a lot of unwanted background noise. Using Adobe Premier, we managed to remove a lot of the unwanted noise, however, it is still there and it could have been completely prevented if we had recorded the audio separately.
Overall, our trailer project was successful according to the feedback that we received from the focus group. The improvements that the focus group suggested were implemented into the trailer and I believe this greatly improved the finished product. The main improvements that we could have made would be making the flow towards the end of the trailer better. The audio could have also been improved if we recorded the audio separately instead of using on-camera audio and the story of the film could have been made more clear, although again this could also have been a positive as the lack of dialogue creates more suspense.
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