Hazel Potter Media Blog : March 2021

Final TV Trailer

Visual Planning Documents

Filming

After I had finished my script and storyboard, I went outside to an alleyway in Ilkley to get the rest of my footage. I organised the recording order of the clips so we did not have to go from one location to the next only to realise we needed to film more in the previous location. In total, I visited 3 locations and collected all of my footage within the time allocated on my call sheet.

I gave the voice actors for my narration a script to read from. To record this audio, I recorded everything in a quiet room so there would be little to no background noise. I asked for my voice actor to be expressive with the dialogue and gave him verbal feedback throughout the process.

The direction for filming my main actor were simple actions that did not require much expression, so directing was relatively easy to give. I recorded larger sections of raw footage so I would have large amounts to work with when I edited the final thing as well as taking a variety of shot types to give myself contingency shots in the case I ran out as I wouldn't be able to go back and re-record any of the shots due to clashing schedules .

In my script and storyboard, I wrote that I needed specific props and items for my scenes including a gun, and an alarm clock, neither of which I had so I had to get royalty free stock footage from pexels and pixabay of these items instead. These are copyright free websites that allow their assets to be used and modified in other products so I was also to use them within my trailer with no legal implications. During this time, I also organised an empty classroom where I was able to record all of my needed character, narration and voice lines that needed to be in my TV trailer to adhere to all conventions of TV adverts.

Technical setup:

We used a Nikon D3400 DSLR Camera to shoot the footage to make it the highest possible resolution.

I used automatic ISO to adjust appropriately to lighting changes most of the time as some areas such as the open field was brighter than the alleyway. Most of the film the footage was shot in a medium aperture of around 11 but this was reduced for some of the close up shots. I chose to use a try-pod to create steady footage to minimise the amount of editing during he post production stage.

For recording the audio, I used the standard Tascam DR-05. This records high quality audio in the form of a a wav file. This allows to keep quality that is up to industry standard for my TV trailer and Radio trailer. To record this audio, I recorded everything in a quiet room so there would be little to no background noise.

Legal and Ethical issues:

Copyright: I made an asset table to show where I sourced my assets from to avoid any copyright issues.

Consent forms: All of the people starring in my final project have signed consent forms as you can see below so I had permission to film them or have their voice within my projects.

Risk assessment:

I completed a risk assessment to minimise risks from the location to the actors during the filming of my TV trailer. If anything went wrong during my filming (which it thankfully didn't) then I would have referred to this risk assessment to know what to do.

Under the different circumstances that CoronaVirus has brought, I used actors for both the acting roles and speaking roles who were in my family bubble to adhere to the government restrictions as of the time of filming. Any equipment I used was sanitised after filming to further minimise any possible risks. Before filming, everyone involved reported a negative Covid-19 test result.

There should not be any copyright issues as I created most of my own footage, or sourced video from copyright free sites such as Pixabay and Pexels and therefore would be licensed through either a Pixels or a Pixabay license. I own all intellectual property rights as the original idea was mine and I have documented the generation of ideas on my blog.

As there were no other brands in my shots, I have not infringed on any company trademarks so there shouldn't be any legal issues.

As for permission to film, all my locations were on public land (fields, alleyways) so there was no need to ask anyone for permission.

Representation within my TV trailer was purposefully vague to not exclude any target demographics or to inaccurately represent any communities. Due to this, I filmed the back of my main actor's head and their face was not shown. The rest of my shots were either copyright footage from the internet of nondescript gloved individuals and environments or were of vague countryside scenery.

Editing:

I opened up Final Cut Pro and created a new project called 'Face The Past TV Trailer'. I set the video to be a 1080p HD format with a resolution of 1920x1080 and a frame rate of 30p to conform to the demands of the brief. After this, I imported my footage through Image Capture to maintain the image resolution. I then started to assemble my clips in order onto my timeline. I started by inputting my own shots to see what I had available then went onto pexels and pixabay to secure the missing video clips. I sourced my background music from freesound.org and sourced my sound effects from the BBC Sound Effects library which is a copyright free site so there are no legal implications either.

I had my Tv trailer script on hand at all times when ordering my clips in the timeline to make sure they both lined up. I then imported my other clips that were sourced online and began to use the trim tool to cut my clips down to size (as the whole teaser trailer aimed to be shorter than a standard trailer). After trimming them down appropriately, I added in my background music to see if the footage worked along with my music. As it did, I started to use the 'cross dissolve' transitions on my music so the music volume could smoothly go up and down where speech would be so it could be heard clearly over it. To conform to the conventions of Tv adverts and trailers, I imported and placed my ident at the end of my trailer along with the BBC Logo. I placed a text box with the release date of the TV trailer to make sure people know where to find it and where they will be able to watch it when it's out.

Next I worked on creating an ending sequence by using a background transition of a white paint splatter off of pixabay and used keyframes to change the opacity to create a fading in effect which I replicated with my ident (a png) to adhere to my target style and to make sure they know the name of my TV show after watching it. I then put in my audio voice lines and narration and trimmed them down to size using the blade tool so I could carefully select which takes of my lines sounded the best. I then, using my script, put them in the correct placement and adjusted the volume of these speaking lines, keeping them below -6 so it does not sound too pitchy in comparison to the rest of the clips and to keep with the industry conventions so it could be shown on TV.

I recorded all of the narration and voice lines using a Blue Snowball microphone onto the voice recorder app on my computer so they were easy to implement into my Final Cut Pro timeline. I used the blade and trim tools to crop out any unnecessary silences in the audio.

The final stage was to put everything together, match all the audio so it was consistent throughout the entire video and added some voice effects from the voice panels over my narration so it was audible. I adjusted the background music with keyframes so that the volume decreased during the speaking parts then, I increased when there was just video on the screen.

After this, I exported the video as a master file with the video and audio format using the video codec of H.264 and within the resolution of 1920x1080 so the quality would not be reduced when uploading to YouTube.