HOW DID YOU USE NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGY IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

EVALUATION 4

CAMERA

Marshmallow colour effect: The effects already on the camera allowed us to experiment with colours during the filming process. Some colours enhanced and emphasised the fire, whilst overs dulled down the flame and made it look more sinister and monotone.

Manual focus: Due to dark lighting Manual focus came in extremely handy. Sometimes the shot would wonder out of focus due to the lack of lighting, but manual focus meant that we could manually adjust the focus until it was clear and captured what we were filing.

PHOTOSHOPMAGAZINE

ADDING A SHADOW TO THE TEXT

In order to make the text stand out against the busy background, I played around with the distance, spread, opacity and size of the drop shadow. The text is a clear link between all the ancillary tasks and the music video, therefore we felt it necessary to place as much emphasis on the text as possible by making it stand out from the image. I repeated the process using the inner shadow bar to add the extra emphasis to the text.

MAKING THE TEXT BOLD

Similarly to the emphasis on the shadow, I used bold text in order to draw in the audience. The bold text was used on the AH YEAH and Will Sparks as they tell the audience the most important information. I did this by highlighting the text that I wanted and then clicked on the bold symbol on the top toolbar.

LIGHTENING THE TEXT

The photo above demonstrates the effect that I used on the text in order to get the illuminated yellow. The hard light brightened the yellow and created a nice contrast to the background. I selected the layer I wanted then clicked on the drop bar and on hard light.

DUPLICATING THE STAR RATINGS

In order to create the consistency of the star size, I duplicated each layer. I did this by right clicking on the layer I wanted to copy and clicking on the duplicate button. Therefore each star was the same colour and size keeping the professional feel to the advert.

DIGI-PACK

SCALING/ROTATING

To add to the party theme of the digi-pack I decided to insert party hats for the stick figures. In order to do this I had to transform the image and scale it to the size I wanted whilst clicking shift, as to make sure that it kept its shape. Once I had scaled the image I rotated it into position in order to look like it was perched on the stickman's head. I did this several times with the other coloured hats.

INSERTING TEXT

In order to insert text onto the back cover of the digi-pack I had to create multiple text boxes. This allowed me to play around with the positioning, size and order of the text. To create the text box I clicked on the T button on the left side panel, then on the back cover I drew the text box to the size I wanted. I then adjusted the size of the text and colour.

CROPPING/CUT

As we made a logo for our song to create audience recognition, we inserted it into the ancillary texts and the music video. To incorporate it onto the Digi-pack I selected the circle outline tool, followed by the crop button on the toolbar. This cropped the image to the shape I wanted. I then copy and pasted the transformed image onto the back cover and scaled it down to size. The inclusion of the logo linked all three of our texts together and stands as our brand image.

CD

The most abstract part of our digi-pack is the CD. We thought we would play around with the images used on the other digi-pack covers and incorporate them together to make a new image. I started by rotating a couple of the covers and duplicating them. Once I had dissolved and rotated a number of the cover together, I placed each section in such a way that it created a kaleidoscope effect and a abstract image. In order to be able to transfer this new image onto the template I merged the image together by using the merge visible tab, once I had done that I then copied this new layer onto the template for the CD. As the image was square I had to use the same method of cropping as I used for the logo, by selecting a circle and dragging it to the size of the CD template. Once I had done this, I copied the final cropped version of the CD artwork and pasted it into the final grid that made up the complete digi-pack. The CD added a new dimension to our digi-pack it was different, busy and interesting. Unlike the other covers the abstractness did not detract from any information or text.

VEGASMUSIC VIDEO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpJhFFohqY0

PASTING TOGETHER MULTIPLE SHOTS

In order to create interesting visuals through editing we decided to include some shots that had multiple shots within them. For instance when presenting the artist, we wanted to keep an air of mystery therefore we showed four individual close up shots of the artist in different scenarios. In order to do this we had to create three more layers plus the existing one in order to paste the shot into the same screen. After dragging each clip we wanted into the separate bars/layers, we had to cut each video in order for it to finish and start at the same time. We used the cutting tool to do this and selected the same duration time for each clip. Finally for each clip to take up an equal portion of the screen, in order to make our video professional, we had to drag each still of the clip to the same point in the middle of the screen, thus making four tiles.

DISTORTING THE LIGHTING

Adding to unconventional aspects of our music video we decided to play around with the lighting in order to slightly distort the image. In this instance we made the two spotlights in the background brighter, bigger and blurry. In order to do this we clicked on the ray button under settings and with the curser dragged the selected ray of light out more, so it was merging with the edge of the boy featured. We then clicked on quick blur to add to the haziness of the scene and dull down the brightness of the background. Lighting is also a key feature in our music videos as we have played around with lasers, shadows and fire, therefore we wanted to keep to the consistency of bright lighting throughout our music video.

CREATING A FLASHING EFFECT

As the version of Vegas that we were using did not have a flashing effect, we had to create it ourselves. To do this we copy and pasted a white screen off google into the main layer. We then made the white background about … seconds long. After doing this we copy and pasted the white background clip before and after the series of shots we wanted to create the flashing effect on. The result of this was a quick flash of white between each shot. The shots portrayed the before and after scene of the party. We wanted to include these series of shots in our video as it added a sense of alertness and added to the fast paced upbeat vibe of the music.

MARKING THE BEAT

Our music video relied hugely on editing to the beat, as our filming process was multiple fast short clips which we wanted to make into a montage. To make sure we were precise in the changing of the shot with the changing beat of the song we used markers to notify us to the change in sound. Therefore we listened to the song and when the beat dropped, changed or rose, we clicked M on keyboard to create a marker. This was extremely helpful when it came to creating the montage and made sure that we were in time with the beat.

Again adding to the unconventional imagery in our music video, we used multiple shots using mirror imagery. We did this by clicking on settings, mirror and then selecting mirror left. To apply this we dragged the effect down onto the image. This meant that you see two of the same image but flipped, directly opposite each other.

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1. Facebook: We used Facebook in order to find out contact information about Will Sparks in order to get permission to use the song. It was also a useful to contact other group members and share ideas, photos and inspirations.

2. Pinterest and Tumblr: Was a good application for inspiration through photos and videos. Inspired ideas, colours and lighting used in our video, magazine and digi-pack.

3. Prezi: Is a great way to demonstrate your research/ work, through visual and interaction. It allows you to insert photos and videos in a unique, creative way.

4. Scribd: Was extremely helpful in uploading word documents holding lots of photos or videos.

5. Slidehare: Is an interactive way of uploading/ directing a slideshow at an audience. It is easy to operate and can be viewed by a large audience.

6. PowerPoint/word: Allowed me to type up my initial ideas onto a presentation or a word document. In order to make my work more accessible, I then uploaded these word documents to application such as Scribd and Slideshare.

7. GoAnimate: Allowed me to play around with the incorporation of cartoon. As we were trying to include the idea of stick figures within our music video, it was a great visual in order to see how it would work and look. It is fun, straight forward and easy to use.

8. Survey monkey: Was great for collecting data from your target audience. It relates your feedback efficiently, using multiple statistics in a number of formats, allowing you to explore your surveys as much as you want. It directly targets your audience and is a more modern and fun way of creating a survey.

9. Gmail: Has allowed me to stay in contact with my other group members. It is great for sharing ideas, photos or word documents and can easily be accessed by all group members, due to the Gmail app we all had on our smartphones.

10. Blogger: I have used blogger to log and register all my research, planning and production throughout my whole course.

11. Youtube: Was extremely helpful in the planning stages of our media products. I used it to look at videos of a similar genre to ours as well as current, popular and trending videos in order to see how and why they were drawing in a large audience. As a group we also used Youtube to upload our videos and research throughout the course.

12. Google: Has been my main reference for information and research. It has helped me massively throughout my course in finding the most relevant information quickly and efficiently.

To conclude without the ability's of new media technology the creation of our ancillary task, music video and audience research would have been close to impossible. As shown it has both hugely influenced my work and allowed me to create what I set out to do. New media technologies has allowed me to be more experimental when working on my coursework, holding multiple possibilities and increasing my creativeness using multiple application and technologies.