Creating my website homepage logo

When researching popular film website homepages, I found common convention was a logo. I believe logos are used as they are memorable for the viewer. I found that the logo of the films incorporated the title of the film, and that within the homepage, it was usually placed at the top left. As I found a logo for the film within it's homepage to be a convention, I realised I needed to include it into my own.

 

 

 

Above is a compilation of the most popular horror film logos I've found. All of them have intricate typography which makes them look their genre but also makes them memorable. I looked on DaFont.com to inspire me with my typography.

 

As I would be editing the font and wording, I though the best typography would be straight edged as this would make it able for me to make the background transparent without effecting the actual wording.

I looked in the Horror genre and the best font I found was 'Plane Crash', which is pictured below.

 

The font above inspired me to create a font with woodland branches as the lettering. By having the branches within the font, it will still be easy and clear to read, but still represent the themes within my film.

 

I didn't know how to create the effect of an image within text, examples shown below,

 and so I researched online. I found a tutorial online linked here, and also a tutorial, walkthrough on YouTube.

 

I began creating my font with an image from google of woodland branches and followed the tutorials above. Below are the steps

Above is the font finished from using the tutorials to guide me

Here I added a red glow/outline to my lettering so the font fitted my colour scheme perfectly

I wanted to add a blood splatter, shown above, but decided against it as it would make it hard to create the transparency in the background. I may decide to add blood splatters to my website to create a horrific look to represent death & danger.

Teaser Trailer Editing Log #4 - Sin City Effects Annotations Screenshots

Teaser Trailer Log #3

For my editing today I added the sounds and background music. All these sounds were from uncopyrighted music sites, which are included in more detail in this post, so please click this for more information.

 

Above is a screenshot showing the sounds 

I downloaded which I moved into my files.

Above is a screenshot representing me adding the music into my teaser trailer using Final Cut Pro X. The second picture shows I adjusted the volume of the clip, making the music fade in, at the beginning of the video. The sounds are of an alarm and an eerie background music, by making these both fade in, I believe it will sound more professional and seamless.

Teaser Trailer Log #2

I added in text, which is influenced by the beginning of Pulp Fiction. I though this definition, of "epidemic" would represent the threat of a Zombie epidemic in the film, giving the audience a sense of fear, but wanting to watch on, as they are ''thrill seekers''. Stylistically, I wanted this title screen to look very similar to the one used at the beginning of Pulp Fiction, shown below, which looks just like a dictionary extract.

Teaser Trailer Editing Log #1

To present my editing process on Final Cut Pro for my Teaser Trailer I have decided to post alongside it a "Teaser Trailer Editing Log" to log all my editing progress onto my blog to show as evidence. All my Log posts will be tagged with "#Log" so my progress can be easily located and seen. 

What I did today...

First I imported my clips to Final Cut Pro, then moved the clips in the bottom bar to put them into the order they'll be shown in for the video.

Editing of my final model photos

My previous post included the final photos I took of my model Cal for my magazine front cover. Conventionally, photographs that are used in magazines are highly edited, especially those of models used on the front cover. I wanted my gossip magazine to be conventional looking, and so planned to edit the photos of Cal. I found 3 editors I could use, Photoshop, the most popular of the 3, PicMonkey.com  being the editor I am most familiar with and Pixlr Editor on my Google drive which is a new find.
PicMonkey is the editor I'm most comfortable with, I find Photoshop hard to use and as it's costly to download I can only access it from home, meaning I'll have less time practicing on the application. Not only this but PicMonkey is very similar to Photoshop, if not better as it has so many more filters. However, there is one minor problem with PicMonkey, which is that it's only accessibly within school on Mac computers. This is only a minor problem as I can use PicMonkey at home and I'm not pushed for time, so this is what I'll do.
However, Photoshop is the conventional application to edit photos on, and I believe gossip magazine companies use Photoshop rather than PicMonkey.com, and so, I tried to edit a picture on Photoshop to practice. The main things I need to do to the image to make it more conventional for a magazine front cover is to:

• Blur or change the background colour
• Crop the image so the aspect ratio is that of an A4 sheet of paper, which is width 210 cm and height 297 on Photoshop
• Enhance Cal's eyes, making them brighter, as it makes his eye contact the vocal point, This eye contact is good as it makes the consumer feel more connected to the celebrity or model, and so would rather buy it.
• Airbrush Cal's skin. This is a conventional editing technique of any image within the media, this won't change my image too much as Cal's skin is clear and looks fine, however I want my image to look conventional.
• Enhance the contrast of the image, making it brighter.

I edited one of the photos of Cal on Photoshop and did as many steps, as listed above, as I could within the application. The final edited image is below:

On this image I was able to:

• Change the background colour, so it looks more professional and so Cal is the main focus.
• Crop the image to the right aspect, of an A4 magazine sheet of paper.
• And adjust the contrast making the image overall, look better.
• Blur Cal's face, as if it were airbrushed.

On Photoshop I couldn't enhance Cal's eyes, however when looking on my Google Drive, at the Pixlr Editor, I found a method of doing so. Below is the image, the left eye has been edited, and looks brighter and stands out,

After editing the image, I still believe PicMonkey is a better editor, and so I will be using it to edit the image, and create the magazine front cover. As I have to do this step at home, I will upload the picture later. 

As conventionally, the model for the front cover of a magazine, especially a Gossip magazine, must be highly "Photoshopped", I'll be editing the picture of Cal highly. The first change will be brightening his eyes on My Google Drive, Pixlr Editor

Above is the evidence for this edit. I used the Dodge tool on "Highlights", which exaggerated the highlighted tones, making Cal's eyes look brighter and stand out. This emphasizes the fact he has eye contact with the reader/audience/consumer, and so they are more likely to choose this magazine as they feel connected to the magazine.

The next step has been screenshot and is shown above. I darkened Cal's eyes using the Burn tool on "Shadows", which increased the intensity of the shadows around Cal's eyes. Again, this makes Cal's eyes stand out, but it also looks as though Cal may have mascara on, which would be conventional for a model.

The next step, shown above, was to remove any moles on Cal's face and arms using the Spot Heal tool. This is another conventional step the editor of a magazine would do to a picture of the model. Moles are perfectly natural, however they are never seen on magazine covers as they are seen as being "imperfections". 

My final step, shown above, was to increase the size of Cal's arms muscles. I used the Bloat tool on his upper arms. I chose to do this as conventionally male models will have a high amount of muscle, and by increasing the look of the size of his arms, Cal looks more muscly and therefore will be more appealing to the magazines target market, which are women.

Final Model Pictures - Magazine Front Cover

Today I retook the pictures of my model Cal for my magazine front cover. The reason behind recapturing them was because I felt the quality of the first pictures weren't of the best quality, but I had a camera that would take better photos, and so brought it in to take photos in the school's photography studio. Also, the white background blended in with Cal's clothing when editing so we changed the background to black. As you can see, I tried with the white background, however the black sheet does look better. Below are the images, unedited. As I had taken shots of several different poses previously, I decided on a pose which I thought was best fitted, which is the reason for all photos taken below being of the same pose.

I used the browser editor, PicMonkey.com to make a slight edit to the picture. I cropped the image, used auto enhance, increased the contrast, blurred the background, and boosted the eyes, to make his face and eyes clear.

Final photo edit. To make this edit better, I want to make the black background darker and blur it out more, so the creases aren't visible.

Steps of editing, on PicMonkey.com

Here I am "boosting" the eyes to make them look brighter, and bolder, so they stand out on the front cover. This will emphasise the eye contact from the model, which conventionally is used on magazine front covers as the eye contact makes the model look more welcoming for the audience.

In this screenshot you can see I have "softened" the whole image but am in the process of removing this blur on Cal. By having a blurred background, the main focus is Cal. This blur will also make the background look less like a sheet.

Final Cut - first test

Today the Mac technician had downloaded Final Cut onto a number of the computers in our Media room, as there are a number of students , including me, that need to use Final Cut to edit their work. Along with this, we were given a Guide book for Final Cut. In my teaser trailer, I need to use Final Cut to create a coloursplash effect, similar to the effect used in the film Sin City, which just shows one colour while the rest of the shot is in black and white. Of course I had to test out Final Cut to see if it worked, I searched online a guide to create this effect as it wasn't mentioned in the handbook, I found an informative Youtube video which I can't link or embed into my post yet as Youtube is restricted within school.

Green and blue screen fail

After researching online techniques to create a colour splash of red in a clip with black and white, like in Sin City, I found I could do it using iMovie and Final Cut. In school, we have iMovie downloaded on all computers within the class but Final Cut is only on one at the minute. Although it should be installed on more computers soon, I know I shouldn't rely on someone else (like the technician) because it may end up that there is a problem. 

So, after researching online, I found I can create the effect on iMovie, but difficultly. The parts I want to be shown red, I must have as actually green or blue, so I can use the green/blue screen tool to change it's colour. For me, this is hard because I don't know where to get green or blue lipstick or something that will look like blood. I can improvise, with food colouring in some way, I'm unsure how I'll do this yet but if I need to use iMovie then I will find a way. For me, it's easier to film the parts I want in red, in red, using the red lipstick and fake blood props I already have, to create the clip. On Final Cut I can use the red lipstick and fake blood, and just use editing software to change the rest black and white, without going to the trouble of finding different props.

While in a lesson, I recorded a clip of blue and green pens, so I could edit the clip using both blue and green screen to see which one was better. Below is a screen shot and video of me using blue screen, as you can see, the blue pen looks red due to the red over or under lay. So it does work, but the green screen didn't. This causes problems as I'm unsure which colour will work for my clip, so I may need to buy/create both blue and green lipstick and "blood".

The video seems like it won't load, but it says it's loading, so you may have to wait a while.

Another problem, as you can see in the video, is the red colour is messy due to the quality of the camera and the other blue tones in the video. I did end up adjusting the saturation, contrast and red green and blue tones to make it look better, but for me it still looks unprofessional. 

After trying this editing technique, I really feel against it. I think if I try and use the blue or green screen, it will either not work for my final clip or look like an amateur scene, which of course I don't want. 

Hopefully I'll be able to use Final Cut by the time I need to film/edit my footage.