How did you use digital technology in your production work?

PHOTOSHOP

I mainly used photoshop for the creation of my poster, which I found was easier than using any other software as I was familiar as used it last year, so I knew where the tools were, what I could do etc. Although, I created a music magazine last year, so this was a lot different to creating a horror film poster in terms of imagery etc. On photoshop I mainly used it for editing images, such as my main image of the hall way, but further to this it allowed me to quickly cut out the red, bloody hand much easier than expected, which was good because then I could just create a new layer and smack in on the top. Furthermore, from my research I really like the blurry writing on 'The Return' and with a lot of patience I was able to smudge my writing, giving it a ghostly feel that I wanted to achieve. Again with the font/text, I was able to easily overlay the text onto the image, then move it around as much as I wanted..

Another thing I really liked when using photoshop, was you were able to change the opacity of the layer, for example I used this on the hand image and the 'based on true events' as I felt they were too bright and by changing the opacity it gave it a ghostly, horror feel which I liked, then you were able to put a stroke around the edge of the word to emboss it more, as the grey background didn't go well with the writing of 'based on true events so I was able to make it stand out, but still keep the opacity down maintaining the ghosty feel.

GARAGEBAND

Garage band helped with a lot of the production of my work, such as creating my radio trailer and for sound effects for the film. The software has a large database with sounds such as screams, thuds, musical instruments such as pianos etc. When using this software, it often got a bit tedious, because although there was a lot of sounds to chose, sometimes there was too much to chose from and it was hard to find the exact sound. Although, it was an easy software to use once you got used to it, such as being able to go to the search menu and specifying the sound you wanted such as typing in 'screams' or 'piano'. When creating my radio trailer, I found that it was quick and easy to use after getting to grips with it. Although some of the sounds were unrealistic, such as the speech/screams I decided to record it on my phone, the to transfer the clip on to it-which again was easy and quick to do.

I think my favourite thing about Garage Band, was that for every sound, you had almost a different layer, in which you could e.g. turn the sound up/down. For example the scream was very loud and was too loud, so I could put this on to another layer to make it quieter. Again I did this with the piano and baby cries, because they make it more eerie and created much more of an atmosphere being quieter, rather than overtaking the main dialogue. I also liked that you could very easily just 'cut' the sound where you wanted to, very much like editing clips on final cut pro.

FINAL CUT PRO

For my main production of the film I used Final Cut Pro for the editing of it. I had only vaguely used it last year as part of showing my progression on my blog, so I was still a little new to the software. However once I got started, adding and rendering the first film clips I got used to it and quickly got editing. What I liked most about final cut pro, was that I was able to cut the film clip easily, then being able to put the different shots together making them flow in time with each other. Although the software was easy to use, it took a lot of time making it perfect, going back and moving different scenes seeing which worked the best in which order etc. Another thing I really liked about final cut, was that we were able to render the shots with a old, antique look to them, which really enhanced the shadows and gave it a much creepier look as it made the daylight look darker-giving it a better, more spooky atmosphere.

Again, this helped with the flashbacks, because obviously we wanted to make it look even older, so we were able to make the saturation of the clips very low, giving it a black and white feel, but still adding a little colour which gave it an edge, contrasting with the rest of the film, making it obvious that it was a flashback happening. The main thing that really added the final bits to our horror film, was the sound effects, which I found really easily to add into it, which really did make the film come alive and much more professional-as we didn't use that much dialogue, which is conventional of a short horror film. I found overall that the software was easy to use, especially with the overall filming, such as adding the effects like the smoke/fire-which although it took a long time, in the end I was happy with the overall production