Post Production

My AS brief involved the production of the opening for a thriller film involving a psychological battle between two competing gymnasts and their coach. 

As part of this I had to develop considerable post production skills.  I learnt how to use a variety of tools including digital cameras and movie cameras.  In particular I used I movie to edit my footage and to add sound.

I also edited still images taken from the digital camera of a newspaper article that I created in Iphoto showing the two gymnasts receiving medals at the World Championships.  The image of the newspaper was then inserted into imovie and provided a creative way of providing historically context to my opening by showing the audience that the gymnasts had achieved success in the past.

While I was generally satisfied with my initial production, I had to retake some footage to make it aesthetically pleasing to my audience and to communicate the desired meaning more effectively.
The camera shots were not still enough reflecting my inexperience, at that time, with the use of the equipment.

Overall, the post production produced a reasonable outcome but on reflection I could have thought more about how the editing, sound and special effects could have been used more effectively to communicate meaning to my audience.  This is something that I tried to focus on in my A2 post production work.

As part of the advanced portfolio I produced a trailer for a film “On the baseline” which was a hybrid genre combining key conventions of chick flicks and sports films (sports flick!).  The film followed a tennis theme and revolved around the development of a relationship of a new women’s doubles partnership comprising of a champion and an “underdog”.  The main target audience for the film was teenage girls with a secondary niche audience of tennis fans.  A magazine cover and movie poster were produced as ancillary products.  The trailer, film magazine cover and poster were all produced under the brand of the production company “Sports Flick Films.”

In My A2 year, I was able to make considerable progress and build on some of my own perceived post production weaknesses.  I demonstrated new skills in my ability to use new features of imovie, Photoshop and music software such as Garage band. The exposition of the trailer was significantly improved through post production in a variety of ways:

In A2 sound was used to create meaning and often to generate a specific response from the audience eg humour.  Embedding meaning in my short trailer gave the audience a greater insight into my characters and plot in a short space of time.  For example:

- To add humour to my trailer I used some of the sound effects from the Imovie inventory, for example when the underdog collapsed in a press up during training I inserted the ‘cartoon boiiing’ option to create the conventional comedy effect typical in chick flicks by portraying the incompetence of the character and also removing the time demands that would be needed to portray this using through dialogue.

- A sound motif consisting of motivational music was inserted to denote the presence and role assumed by the coach in the trailer. 

-  A loud ticking noise was also add to a zoom in shot of the coaches stopwatch the use of diegetic sound in this way has the connotation that time was running out for the underdog to improve and the two players to form a positive relationship. This was also designed to create a feeling of anxiousness amongst the audience - will the outcome be a triumph or a disaster?

- In order to retain the audiences interest throughout the trailer I also created an upbeat ‘Rocky’ style inspirational music sequence using Garage Band software.  This aspect of post production was in response to my target audiences feedback to a questionnaire that I posted on Facebook which demonstrated their dislike of the original non copyright music used to accompany this sequence.  This also creatively added humour and intensity to the key scene where the 2 players are in training and relationships are developing.

In A2 I also used Imovie’s voice over tool to produce a conventional feature of the chick flick and create a mode of address that allowed me to set the scene from the point of view of the main character for the audience.  This added to the realism of the production for my target audience by incorporating a familiar feature that is stereotypical of the chick flick genre.  Initially, however, I had used a male voice to deliver the voice over but this was edited and rerecorded following target audience feedback.  The overall quality of the work was improved using the audio adjustment tools “slider” function which allowed me to alter the volume of the voice over (and speech in the footage), sound effects and the music soundtrack in relation to one another. This allowed me to be more creative in the use of sound and the audience to clearly hear the combination of sounds without one overpowering the other.

On reflection, although I used the same movie making equipment I used it much more creatively than in my A2 work to allow the audience to read connotations into the camera shots and action sequences.  For example, the use of the fast motion special effect whilst the players training together again indicates their race against time.  The scene culminates in them performing synchronised star jumps with perfect timing symbolises to the audience the coming together of the partnership and the forging of a positive relationship between the antagonist and protagonist.

I also made creative use of new functions in imovie such as the ‘crop’ option to draw the audience’s attention to key moments in the action. For example when the “underdog” was holding the medicine ball above her head, I used the ‘crop’ option to zoom into her face to show the strain and her dogged determination up close for the audience. 

The basic familiarity I with imovie that I gained through my AS work gave me the confidence in my  A2 year to experiment further and discover how to format the title text in advance then fade it onto the screen positioning it around the trailer footage using new features of the software.  This allowed the audience to simultaneously view a clear image of the footage whilst being able to read the title text (On the Baseline) and listen to the opening soundtrack which consisted of imported copyright free music directly from iTunes straight into Imovie using the music button option.  This combination provided a professional multi media look to the opening title sequence of my trailer.

Some scenes in the trailer were edited out as they served no function in either moving the narrative forward or providing an insight into the characters.  They were literally wasting time!

In terms of my ancillary tasks I had to undertake a lot of post production work and develop new skills to improve the overall quality of my film magazine cover and film poster.  On reflection, I think that I could have saved myself a lot of work by having a clearer specific target audience in mind (ie main audience teenage girls and secondary niche audience tennis fans) as trying to appeal to a wider market resulted in the creation of initial products that didn’t have a consistent “house style” or brand identity across the 3 platforms. Through a continuous cycle of drafting, designing, editing, consulting and redrafting in the post production phase I eventually produced a range of products that appeal to my target audience and have intertextuality.

-          Through the use of Photoshop software and the magic wand tool I erased the dark background of my main photograph which was then of sufficient quality to use on both the film poster and the film magazine.  It also allowed me to adhere to the conventional presentation techniques used on the front cover whereby a single image is used and overlaid with text.

-          Through revisiting the research undertaken into media texts with a clear target audience in mind I used colour symbolism more effectively.  The conventional pink became more evident across the range of products.  The background of the tennis court on the poster was filled with pink and all text relating to the film on the magazine cover was pink.  The colour scheme on the magazine was edited to create a summery feel reflecting the seasonality of the edition which is a conventional feature of magazines targeting women as it denotes the contemporary nature of the publication.

-          From target audience feedback and revisiting the real media texts I also changed the title of my film magazine from Focus on Film to a conventional single word title “Flicks.”  This was more appealing to my target audience, has connotations with “chick flicks” and a nostalgic relevance as flicks is an old world for cinema.  It directly associated the magazine brand of my production company “Sports Flick Films” which also produce the magazine.  The choice of font used for the title / masthead “flicks” was consistent across all products encouraging image association.

-          Conventional features of both magazines and posters were added during post production to add to the overall realism of the products.  A facebook link, age certificate symbol and company credits were added to the film poster whilst barcodes, issue number, dates, competitions and free offers were added to the magazine cover.

-          I also used Photoshop to create a simple company logo that could brand the media product across all 3 platforms.  My initial logo was a combination of clipart pictures of sports equipment which was not easily reproducible in the small space of poster / magazine covers. 
I looked at sports firms logos eg adidas and produced a sharper, abstract image and retained the pink colour symbolism and same font on the “flick” to provide intertextuality and visual association across all 3 products.

Overall, my post production skills have improved immensely from AS to A2 and in many respects followed the Kolbs Cycle of experiential learning.  In AS I felt that I gained some concrete experience and began to undertake reflective observation.  However, it wasn’t until my A2 year that I entered what Kolbs describes as the abstract conceptualisation stage which allowed me to learn more from the practical experience by understanding related theoretical concepts and applying them to my AS work.  In my final A2 piece I entered to the Active Experimentation stage by putting both my technical ability to use a range of software together with my improved understanding of institutional practices and theoretical concepts. Even so, the post production undertaken in A2 was a real challenge particularly in terms of trying to maintain a consistent house style across the range of products ie the same colour schemes, fonts, etc At the end of what has been a massive learning curve I think I have produced media products that are both aesthetically pleasing to my audience and to communicate the desired meaning effectively.