Evulation

I have finished the trailer, to conclude it I am very happy with the final piece. After applying the changes I got from feedback It has made a nice and improved difference to the trailer. Overall when comparing this to my proposal and answering the brief I think personally I have done a really good job and response.

Answering the brief; the brief specifically stated 'neither are you trying to film literal interpretations of what is being said' I think my trailer portrays this strongly, I avoided any kind of literal interpretations but instead related to what is being said to what was going on in the times of Kennedy's era in america whilst it is making sense to the speech. For example at the start of the speech he talks about generation so I relate the quote to americas generation which was a young generation. So having the opening scene of a baby being kissed by a mum shows that theme it also shows the theme of emotion which I wanted to propose in my video. Another example of how I didn't literal interpretations but related the speech to times in american was when Kennedy talks about trading places with people of other generations, I used scenes from to kill a mocking bird which at the times was the top selling book in america. I used the court scene where a black person is convicted of rape, the victim who is white is pretty much proven by a white lawyer who supports the civil rights just like Kennedy that she is the guilty one but the black buy still loses the trial. Showing this scene symbolises the discrimination what was going on in those times and relates to the support Kennedy had of the civl rights movements. I think you could look at every clip I put in and it would have a message relating to the times in america but not in such a literal way.

The brief also stated 'give the viewer a flavour of the political/social circumstances' well as I said above every clip related to the times in Kennedy's era and portrayed the meaning of the speech. I broke the speech down into inspiration and processed this theme into symbolising it with emotional clips, using the Vietnam war which was a very long frustrated war for america which Kennedy wanted an end too I thought was a powerful way of exploiting my proposed themes. Fighting for your country supports the message of the speech, Kennedy wanted american to unite, work together to keep the country strong. Showing solders fighting for the country is deep and powerful to show this, it shows their risking their life's for the country which I feel is a strong way of portraying the theme of inspiration.

My editing in the trailer I am content with and I think is effective of conveying my theme as much as possible, I used a lot of fade effects, slowing down clips in final cut to make them look dramatic and epic to exploit emotion to the viewer. I also wanted to make the trailer build up momentum of emotion which I feel I have done. I ended the trailer on a much stronger ending to what it original was, the ending of the church with the cross grave stone silhouettes over laying a series of clips of fast pace soldiers shooting guns and going into battle is powerful for emotion. The gravestone crosses obviously symbolises death which relates to a potential outcome of the soldiers and symbolises their sacrifice for the country which links to the speech of 'ask not what your country can do for you' 'ask what you can do for your country' which for me is inspiring and I have portrayed the most important part of the speech with a very powerful inspirational clip with strong meanings.

Concluding the project as a whole I am happy with everything, my sketchbook idea generation, story board and the process of making the trailer was fun and I got into it strongly. I am very happy with what I produced.

Process if making my trailer - Motion

All my kinetic text was created in motion.

The first part of the trailer of the radio 4 part was simple motion work. I brought in the large image file and just applied fade effects to it.

The actually kinetic text parts such as this:

I used the 'crawl right', 'Fade in' and 'Fade out' effects on the text to add the emphasis to the inspirational/emotional theme, the slowly crawling to the right like gives that effect of carrying on the build up and journey of the video, the slowness symbolises the epic and emotion elements.

I used the same font, colours, and effect styles on every other kinetic text part. The only difference was some of the layouts and font sizes, there were some different kinetic styles on some clips though.

For example on the part where Kennedy says 'Energy, Faith and Devotion' I put kinetic text over the video with quick fade in fade out effects on them with a varied positions on each separate clip.

I found using motion was easy, didn't really encounter any massive problems, It took me a while to get all the text in sync though to the speech and editing all the effects to the end of the timeline... But it was easy to function and use,

Process of building my trailer - Final Cut

 This is what my final cut timeline looks like. Showing all my edits.

 

I used a lot of the pen tool technique to emphasise the fading edit to add a more epic and emotional feel to the trailer. Each clip had the desaturate effect applied to it to make it black and white.

Using the 'I' and 'O' technique to select certain parts of video and drag them in was a real high point in this development, I found it really easy to use, I really like final cut so using the programme in general was nice and easy for me and I am happy with everything, I didn't encounter any problems...well the only thing I had to research was how to drag clips in without brining the audio with it because it was frustrating removing the audio form the clip each time I dragged it in, I overcame this by locking the audio files of the speech and sound track which disables audio from coming in from inputted video.

Gathering clips

All the footage I wanted to use was all existing footage so I used www.youtube.co.uk and www.videvo.com to gather clips I wanted to use. I made sure each clip I downloaded was the highest quality it could be. The majority of my clips chosen are at least 720p but a couple are standard 480p which I had to enlarge the wireframe on them in final cut pro. Making them bigger which made the quality of them worse than the hd clips doesn't effect the video at all. Cause there old clips they get away with being a bit bad quality as it shows they are old. I saved every clip into a folder in the final cut folder and just imported them all into final cut.

Here are all the clips I used in my final submission trailer.

Crit

Monday morning I critiqued my trailer to the class. The feedback I received was mainly high positives but some elements what could do with improving were pointed out.

The feedback which was what could be improved were the following:

- Take the shine effect out from the kinetic text part in 'country'
- The mocking bird clip is too long, 2-3 cuts in this would be better
- Take out the really short clip of the war scene on a beach
- Change the ending scenes to a something more powerful, A slow dramatic scene of a cemetery was a brilliant idea
- Change the kinetic text of 'Ask what you can do for your country' to a more simple, plain and easier to read motion

Other from these there was a lot of positive comments and I am happy how crit went. I don't have to make any major changes and I think after these changes my trailer will be very powerful.

Pitch

I pitched my proposal to the class of what I want my video to look like. The feedback I received from the class and teacher was positive. I presented my pitch but creating like a step by step process of how I came to my conclusion of what I wanted. My presentation was about 12 slides long and I think I showed pretty clear what I want my video to look like and what I want it to portray. I produced a rough storyboard of some start off ideas which now I have generated further. I said what I want my themes to be and also produced a mood board to give an even more clear idea of what I want to portray.

The feedback from what I can remember was someone really liked my idea of the rolling date effect at the beginning. Someone pointed out they liked the idea that i'm creating an emotional build up in my trailer. Other than that I don't think there was any other specific feedback.

Overall Im happy how the pitch went and I am excited for gathering the clips and creating the montage together in final cut for monday's crit.

Chosen Font

The font I have chosen to use in my trailer is:

I chose this one because first of all its serif. But most of all I like it because it just reminds me of an old american style font, which I think will fit my trailer. Im just picturing it over my american flag cut scene. I have a good feel its gonna suit. I will have it in italic to emphasis the theme of inspiration which will be used with some pan effects and fade effects to emphasise even more.