Evaluation Task 4: Post-production

How have you used media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Below is a comparison table I made in order to show my progress in post-production since G321. I have included the choices and outcomes that I made this year as well as in G321 in order to see what I have done better and what I could still improve on. This was helpful in showing me how my skills have progressed and what aspects of my G324 production were effective in comparison to my earlier G321 work.

One of the things that a confident horror trailer aims to establish is a sense of impending danger and a level of threat that engages the audiences - in many ways today, with the global use of social media enabling audiences to communicate, if a trailer for a horror does not communicate the genre effectively the likelihood is the production will not be profitable.  One of the things I really enjoyed about G324 over G321 was the way in which post-production allowed me to carefully craft the meaning for the audience. My use of things like jump-cuts and the application of sound editing allowed me to emphasise the sense of danger and highlight key codes to the audience. 

In particular, my introduction of the antagonist is an example of how I was able to carefully consider the effect of my trailer in post-production. By using fast paced jump-cuts to zoom into the antagonist, I was able to increase suspense and allude to the danger associated with his character. In post-production, I was able to match-cut these shots together to make the jump-cuts look seamless yet still suspenseful. By using boom sound effects at each jump-cut I was able to increase tension effectively and conform to the horror genre. Later in the trailer, I used cross-cutting from shots of the victim to shots of the antagonist, in order to represent the juxtaposition between the characters and increase the tension. By layering sound over this scene, I was able to add motifs that would create a sense of danger and conform further to the horror genre. For example, over the top of the soundtrack, I added boom sound effects as well as a motif of a phone ringing. This type of sound editing is conventional of the horror genre and helps to allude to the danger that the victim faces within the trailer, further enticing the audience to see what happens in the rest of the film.