The Trailer
The main bulk of the trailer was done in Sony Vegas where it was all put together, cut, trimmed, and much more all to get the final look as it is now. The special effects and text tiles were done in Adobe After Effects to get the professional look as this couldn’t be done in Sony Vegas.
First was to start a new project and to enter all the clips needed, I went on File > import > Media, allocated the area where all my files were saved, selected them all and inserted them. This puts them into the Library in which I can easily access them and put them in the timeline.
What I done first was make a draft timeline and sort out all the relevant clips from the days filming, import them in the timeline (at any order originally) and trim them down to the relevant bits. To trim them I would split off ends that I didn’t need by highlighting the section and pressing ‘S’ to split it off and then delete it, if it was at the end and not in the middle I would simple drag the clip inwards. I would then put them in some chronological order, leaving areas for the text tiles to go in and highlighting the clips that needed special effects added to them in adobe after effects.
I then started to colour correct various shots to ensure there was consistent colour throughout the trailer as some shots were filmed at different times or I wanted to make it look darker as if night was passing. This was quite a long process as it had to be replicated a few times. To start it off though I would right click on the clip go onto MediaFx and select various effects that needed to be applied such as Brightness and Contrast, Colour Balance, Colour Curves and Colour Corrector.
I would click OK and the separate tabs would come up for editing. In the colour corrector on the ‘low’ colour tones I would bring it down to the lower bottom right to add a slight tint of blue which is seen in most night time scenes just to get that slight vibe.
On the colour curves in the RGB channel I lowered down the top right point so that it made a gradual curve between the two causing a gradual brightness and contrast of darker colours in the clip.
In the colour balance tab I reduced the Red channel slightly to get an even sharper yet still slight blue tint on the clips making it look even more like night time, or even approaching night time.
Finally was the brightness and contrast, I lowered both the brightness and contrast to make it slightly darker, hence I was trying to get the dark night time feel but enhanced the contrast centre to establish the difference.
Next was to add any stills into the trailer such as any pictures. The same process occurred where I would import > media > then select the images that I needed to import into the library then from the library to the timeline. I could alter how long they stayed on screen by dragging either edge, dragging it away increased the duration, squishing it made it last for a shorter period of time.
We then needed to do the special effects which was the blood splatters and the demon face which involved after effects which Carl had more knowledge on so he took more control in the production of the final look. The blood splatters was in the same section as when three versions of me shoot themselves which I had to edit in itself. I got the three individual clips in order and trimmed them down to the appropriate lengths so that the shooting was simultaneous and in time and then mask and crop the actual clips individually to their sections so that all three was showing at once on one still.
We would import the correct and adequate clip that needed editing into After Effects by importing them and then making a new composition on the timeline. For the blood splatter I would have to track the shot so that the camera/software had something to fix onto whilst the three versions of me were acting and shooting themselves. To do this we would click on the tracker tab and set up a new tracker point by finding a nice high contrasting point which was not interfered by any movement. We didn’t tick the rotation or scale boxes as this didn’t occur in our clip as it was on a tripod and remained still meaning the positioning was just needed. We would then play the keep and it would mask out where that specific point has moved throughout the clip.
Above the composition I would then right click > Null Object > Insert Null Object and then go back to the clip with the track and click on Edit Target > apply to layer > Null object which would apply the layer to the track and keep it there. Now anything we applied to that Null object or grouped to it, would follow the track to it as well meaning the blood would go where we want it.
We then browsed through the Adobe Action Essential packs and found some blood splatters and settled on some that we thought were suiting and inserted them into after effects and applied them to the instance of the null object we created. we would alter them and transform them, adjust the colour according to the lighting in the room and add a drop shadow and position them in ways relative to where the bullet is being shot until we got the final look.
The demon face was created in the same way and the same principle applied, I had to choose something which was easily identifying able such as both eyes and track them how I did before. I would also add a null object and the null object would have all the properties on it which create the demon look. To get our distorted look I used the liquefy tool (Distort > Liquefy) and drew out certain features such as my eyes and mouth and made them droop and applied it to the track so it followed me as I jumped out at the camera.
Next was to import them all in and finalise all the shot timings so that it was timed nicely with audio and sounds that I included such as the bass melodies, music etc. I then had to use some transitions, this was fairly simple to do as in horror trailers a lot of fade to blacks are used which an easy access default option in Vegas when two clips are next to each other you can click and drag on a top right or top left corner (where the clips meet) and pull back the time that It will take the clip to fade in or fade out. This was easy to customise when it came to faster or slower shots that still needed the black outs.
Finally was to check through before the render to see if anything was out of place or sync, adjust volume levels so everything could be heard or wasn’t too loud and ensure the render options were right before doing so and uploading it
By Archie McCarthy
