Development diary trailer
- 1. In order for me to create the trailer, I had to import the video clips and the sound files. As I wanted the trailer to be heavily focused around the soundtrack, I imported that first. Once I had done so, I locked the layer so that I didn’t accidentally alter or move it out of time. Next I added the first video clip, and unchained the sound from the video so that I could cut the sound up, without the video also doing so. I then used a tool that allowed me to alter the opacity of a clip. This allowed me to fade out of the video clip into the next one. I wanted to edit the sound as the dialogue wasn’t always going to be over the original clip. This technique follows some film trailer conventions and makes it look more professional. After adding a lot of video clips, I realised that the build-‐up of the music was too fast, so I had to cut it up and make a certain area of the song repeat itself, to allow me more time to build tensions. This was difficult to do as I didn’t use any professional sound editing software, and to make the sound transition a lot smoother, I added a slight fade between each sound clip. This made it extremely difficult to distinguish that the sound had been cut up. Whilst doing this, I had to make sure that the sound levels didn’t go into the red area of the indicator, or else there will be some distorted sound when the video is later rendered. One of the clips I then added was of the main character getting dressed in a mirror. I wanted to show the full sequence, but it would have taken up too much of the trailer, so I added some jump cuts to speed this up, and by doing this it will not confuse the audience but let then still understand the whole scene. To keep the viewers interested in the scene, I chose to flip ever other clip horizontally to keep up the fast pace. The individual soundtrack alone didn’t build enough tension, so I added an extra sound that built
- 2. up as the trailer progressed. This sound got louder and louder towards the climax, but I also had to lower the levels or else the original music couldn’t be heard. I filmed three separate clips, of a single person walking towards the camera. When I did this, I made sure that the camera didn’t move. I had to cut out certain areas of each clip so they didn’t overlay. I chose to incrementally include each person one by one, so that each time the viewer felt more and more intimidated. After adding some effects I needed to render them so that they properly displayed. Next I chose to add the onscreen text. I have seen in other trailers that they don’t simply show black and white text, but usually have an image or some sort of animation. I wanted my text to seem distorted as this then fits in with the storyline of the character, unsure and confused. I did this by creating multiple layer with the same text, whereby one of the layers has 100% opacity, and the others differ. Each individual layer would constantly fade in and out over a few seconds, and would also tilt side to side. This still allows the text to be readable, but also noticeable that the scenes are not settled or clam in nature.