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

EVALUATION FOUR

I used a variety of technologies in the research, planning, production and post- production stages in my main task and the ancillary tasks. At the beginning stages of my work, I got started with researching artists on YouTube, a video sharing website, to help me get inspiration and ideas when looking at their music videos.

This enabled me to research into how acoustic music videos are shot and what the general characteristics are, and whether as a director and creator, I wanted to conform to these characteristics or challenge them.

After looking at infl uences such as Ben Howard and Xavier Rudd, I print screened stills from their music videos and pasted them into Microsoft Word and then saved the images as a jpeg fi le onto my desktop.

This allowed me to then post them on my portfolio on Blogger, an internet site where all my planning production and evaluation stages are posted and ordered. Using this method allowed me to evaluate music videos and the shots they used, evaluating whether I liked them or not, and sometimes sparking off an idea for my own ideas for my video. Blogging all of my thoughts and research, allowed me to look back at what I had done in the planning stages, making sure no ideas were lost in the process.

When a general idea for my music video was written and story boarded, I then turned to Google, the most commonly used search engine, to research lighting ideas for my video, and also delving into the type of location I wanted for my video. From this research I found that using a sepia tone created the look I had imagined when writing my story board. The sepia tone connotes a more authentic image, and also one of warmth and happiness. I think this relates well back to the Acoustic/Pop genre as a whole, as it connotes easy listening, and therefore easy viewing (not too much going on, or in your face styles). Using Google images helped me then to portray to readers what I wanted to create when blogging about my ideas on Blogger.

I also used Bubble.us as a way to present my research onto my blogger profi le. Although this proved quite confusing to use, and when loaded onto blogger, the layout moved around, the Thought bubble was still intact and off ered a diff erent way of viewing my thoughts and ideas. Showing the variety of ways I am able to present information and making my blog more aesthetically pleasing and interesting.

I then turned to Wikipedia and begun my research into Music Labels for my artist. Wikipedia enabled me to gather information about labels, what kinds of artist they signed and their typical chosen genre. I began by typing in an acoustic artist and then clicking on the links to their record label. The best thing about using Wikipedia was the fact that when you were on one page, there was always links to similar record label, enabling me to extend my research and view a variety of records labels, evaluating them and deciding if they fi tted with my artist. This helped me to choose an appropriate record label.

After choosing my record label, I moved onto researching designs for my digipak. Here I used Google again for possible templates. I used Google images to research into artist’s digipak and create inspiration for my own. From this research I was able to view a variety of styles creating inspiration and ideas for my own work. I particularly like the digipaks that had one image stretched across the inside panels, however I decided against this in my production stage.

I then used a Canon 1100D to take pictures at my location for my video and also to experiment with lighting. I played with the settings trying to capture streams of light from the sun and experiment with how the camera worked with or against the sun.

I then used these images for my digipak and edited them in Adobe Photoshop to change the lighting and crop some images to fi t with on my template. I also used Picnik, a site that is easy to use when editing images and adding text on top. This helped me greatly as I am not very good at working Photoshop and this easy use website enabled me to do this.

On the other hand, I had problems with the website as when you saved a fi nished product I couldn’t go back to it and edit it should I need to, meaning I had to recreate panels a few times when feedback showed me that I had made some mistakes. This ate up a lot of my time; however, the easy use of picnic enabled me to create the eff ects I wanted. When I was fi nally happy with my images, I saved these images as Jpegs, and transferred them into Photoshop on top of my template, creating my digipak.

I then began my production stages of my music video. I used a Panasonic Digital Video camera to shoot. This camera proved easy to use, but didn’t create as good a quality crisp image as the Canon 600D, which other students used. Also when capturing the footage back at the computer, it proved quite diffi cult using an older camera with a tape as the connection kept being lost, not downloading all the footage I had. This also used a lot of time, but eventually it was done and I was able to begin my editing. During the shoot, I also used an I-pod which has my track downloaded on to it via I-tunes to help my actor get in time with the lip-syncing. This saved time when fi lming as we were able to get everything crisp and done quickly as we knew the lip syncing fi tted well.

After shooting my footage I used Adobe Premier Pro to edit my footage together. At fi rst I found this diffi cult to use, there were a lot of buttons and shortcuts all of which I didn’t know what they did. However throughout the production stages I learnt more about what I can do on the programme, and how I can use these shortcuts to save time and get my work done quickly and effi ciently but still maintaining skill in doing so.