Question 4

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and

evaluation stages

Research Stage

I found that the main bulk of my research was based from using the internet, either Internet Explorer if I was working on a Windows computer, or Safari if I was working on an Apple Mac computer.

Using the internet I researched existing music videos, digipaks and websites all with the same music genre as our song choice for our music video. This is so I could gain knowledge of what is already currently available and so I could gain ideas for our own media products. To search for music videos I found YouTube to be a great help.

Planning StageFor the planning stage of my project I also used the internet. This was to

search on a website called DaFont to find appropriate fonts for our media products. Another program that I used for my planning was Final Cut to create the animatics (animated storyboard) for my music video. For the animatics, we had to take a photo of each picture drawn on our story board and import them into the program 'Final Cut' with our song choice for our music video. We then had to put each image in order in time with the song as if they were real clips that we wanted to edit for our music video and add transitions where need.

Construction stageWe used so many media technologies for the

construction part of the project. These include• Photo Shop• InDesign• Dreamweaver• Final Cut• Digital Camera• Video Camera• Tripod

PhotoShopWe used PhotoShop to edit a photo of Dan for the front cover of our digipak whish is one of our ancillary tasks

We used the clone stamp tool to cover up the pattern in the middle of the shirt. This tool simply uses the grey that is already on the t-shirt to cover up the other colours on the t-shirt

We also changed the brightness and contrast of the image to draw it out more. We did this by clicking on the ‘Image’ option at the top of the page and scroll down to the brightness and contrast options

PhotoShop

To cut out the background out for both pictures to be used for the website, we used the magic tool which selects certain parts of the background to be deleted so it is just the image of the girls. The top picture is the process of it whereas the bottom picture is one of the finished pictures

PhotoShop

After we had inserted the three cut out girls on the front cover of the digipak, we clicked on ‘Layer’ on the main tool bar across the top of the page and scrolled down the Layer Style options. W then used the blending options to bring down the opacity of the images of the three girls to give out the dream affect

InDesign

We used the program InDesign when we wanted to put our entire digipak together so we could see clearly each panel of the digipak

We used InDesign for a part of the digipack making

DreamweaverWe used Dreamweaver to create the website for one of our ancillary task to promote the music artist

On this program you can create a table so you are able to insert thins on to the page with ease. We did this by clicking on the ‘Inset’ option on the tool bar across the top of the page and down to the table options

We also inserted images such as the navigational links, photos and other images of headings onto the page. We did this by clicking on the ‘Inset’ option on the tool bar across the top of the page and down to the image options

DreamweaverSimilar to existing websites, we wanted to create a user login. We also wanted to create a form for competition where the user has to fill in their personal details and answer the competition question. We done this by clicking on the ‘Inset’ option on the tool bar across the top of the page and down to the form options

We wanted to insert our music video on a different page on our website. We done this by clicking on the ‘Inset’ option on the tool bar across the top of the page and down to the ‘Media’ options and down to ‘Plugin’.

Final CutWe used Final Cut to edit all of our footage to make a music video

You can do all sorts of thins with this program, it allows you to cut clips, cut the song and add effects. We wanted to make the video seem dream-like so we used quite a few crossdisolves so make everything flow together. To add to this dream-like and to make it seem more dramatic, we also slowed down the speed of some clips

Final Cut

We also wanted to change the colour of a clip of the main fantasy girl to black and white for when the main male character starts thinking about her. We done this by fiddling around with the colours and saturation options.

Digital Camera

We used this Cannon camera to take pictures of our storyboard for our annimatics, take pictures of the actors dressed up in their outfits and to take pictures of the different locations used in out music video

Video Camera

This Sony Camera was very important to our project as we needed this every time we needed to film for our music video. We had to buy two tapes off our media teacher so our footage could be recorded on the tapes. The video camera allowed us to record footage and play it back If we wanted to see what it looked like

Tripod

This was also an important part to our filming as we always used this tripod to put our camera on instead of hand held filming. This is so the camera movement was smooth to go with the feel of the music and the storyline. If it were hand held then everything would be moving quickly, creating shots that would not go with the song choice of our music video

EvaluationFor the evaluation stage of the project, I used Powerpoint

to present question 4 of the evaluation. To upload this I had to get myself a slide share account off the website to uploading it onto my blog. I have also used Microsoft Word to show feedback comments of my teacher and my class mates. To get our final video onto my blog I had to get a Vimeo account and then upload it onto my blog, so without the Vimeo account I wouldn’t have been able to put the video onto my blog, therefore, having no video to evaluate.