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

Planning:

To begin my research for this year’s project, I had to choose a suitable song to which my video would complement. My song choice inspired the direction to what type of music video I would create. The choice of song was not simply based on choosing a song I enjoyed, but on several other factors such as genre, beat/flow, lyrics and the length of song. To pick the perfect choice, I used a range of websites:

My frequently listened to playlist on YouTube was significant in providing some ideas for which song I could use. Furthermore, I chose to examine songs which I heard/liked a lot, this was because I was familiar with them. With this knowledge, it would have been easier to create appropriate ideas for a music video. During these early stages, a personal favourite of mine was “Radiohead - Creep”, however there were many issues with this choice (it would have required a male actor who we have had to rely on frequently), so after dismissing that idea we constantly researched for the perfect song.

Another website which helped to decide which song to settle on was iTunes. Its homepage includes a list of the top 20 official hits of that week, broadening genres and looking at popular songs was useful as I thought using a pop song

with a dominating beat and catchy lyrics could also be a good direction for music video.

After much debate, our decision of choosing MIA’s “Paper Planes” was influenced by researching female rap/urban songs of the 21st

Century into Google search. Once we had decided on the chosen song, we began to generate ideas as to what themes we wished to present in our music video. To do this, I used a website called Pinterest where you can create a board about a topic of your choice and pin your favourite pictures to it. I decided to create a board because it would help to gather all of my visual ideas, it helped me and my partner to plan the direction we were thinking of going with our music video. During our research and planning stages, this website was significant in constantly adding ideas as to what would look aesthetically pleasing the music video. It enabled me and my partner to gain a true understanding on how our music video would turn out.

Construction:

During the construction period, I believe that I excelled in using a variety of new technologies to advance my media product. I found that my project in AS was especially beneficial for this process as my prior experience with softwares allowed me to only endeavour even further for my music video.

I started by using video streaming service YouTube to get access to my chosen song in a high quality format. Once I had bookmarked this link, we and my partner decided on type of camera to use for filming. We used a Lumix GF1 which has an interchangeable lense. Its high quality led our decision as we were also thoroughly impressed with its 12.1 megapixel live MOS sensor. This quality contributed to our media footage having a richer picture and an overall clearer appearance. This was particularly beneficial as the majority of our music video was filmed outside. Furthermore, it offered a HD movie setting which was beneficial for us for filming our varied lengthened shots, it also had a range of other settings which included a range of artistic colours and filters. To explain, we found that if we had filmed on a day where there was little natural lighting, these options allowed us to experiment and enhance the lighting quality. We had no experience with this camera prior to this project, this was because we were only exposed to the Canon XA25 during our AS studies. To assist my camera filming, I also used other camera equipment such as tripods to achieve stable shots most noticeably for the narrative of the music video. Importantly, for our time-lapse scene, we used a gorilla grip to attach our camera onto the bus rail so that we were capture our footage from the upstairs of the bus. This effectively helped us gather footage from a large amount of area, it was also sturdy which ultimately helped our footage to look more professional. Furthermore, although we used natural lighting throughout the majority of our filming process, we also used a flashbox to create high key lighting when filming shots for our chorus. This piece of equipment was important as when we filmed in a studio, its limited lighting required a lot of high key lighting for our footage to be of a high standard.

Furthermore, during our construction period, we also created an Instagram page which contained images and videos of footage from behind the scenes of our filming project. Using this platform of social media was beneficial in allowing mass audiences to view our progress and learn more about our project. Also, as it is a modern and popular app in today’s society (especially amongst

adolescents and young people), it was an easy way to promote and advertise our music video.

The creation of my blog on Blogger helped to organise any progress making notes I made during our creating process. I had also used this last year for our Thriller Opening, therefore me and my partner wasted no time setting a blog up once again. Creating this online type journal was effective in incorporating modern day technology into our project as having our notes online once again allowed anyone to view our project at the touch of a click, thus popularising it. It

successfully allowed us to document our whole process from research to production and offered us ways to upload not just photos, but mindmaps and videos. Ultimately, it provided us with a variety of ways to creatively display our notes.

Once we had recorded all of our footage, we uploaded our content onto Apple Macs in order to use the software Final Cut Pro X. After having used it for our Thriller opening for our AS studies, we were at great advantage and were able to quickly begin editing. With Final Cut Pro X, we were able to increase the speed to create our time-lapse seen at the beginning of the video, as well as decrease the speed. We constantly used tools such as the blade tool and trim to accurately get smooth cuts between shots. With some practise, we were able to produce some brilliant on-beat-

editing skills which successfully lined up our actor’s lip-synching to the lyrics of the song effectively. Furthermore, we also edited the footage backwards as depicted in the very last scene of our piece. Symbolically, this edit contrasted against the beginning of our music video (the time lapse within our first 10 seconds) but this was overall included to represent that the character was going home and that her journey had come to an end. Fundamentally, our use of these tools helped to effectively create an interesting and original music video. If there were ever any issues, for example having footage that was too dark, Final Cut Pro X allowed us to change the aesthetics of our media product by adjusting the colour scheme of shots. We would look through filters but then individually manipulate the contrast and saturation of certain shots which could have been improved to get a close match in colour grade.

Magazine advert and Digipack:

The picture used on my ancillary text was taken on a Canon EOS 1200d where we conducted a whole photoshoot dedicated to collecting promotional images of our actor, this equipment allowed us to get a good quality image in low light situations. To create the magazine and Digipack, my partner and I used photo editing software Adobe Photoshop CS6. Me and my partner were completely new to this software, as we only had little practise with it beforehand. To produce our record label, we used the logo from the Camden Tube sign which features in our music video, thus reinforcing one of our major themes in our product. We constructed this by putting layers of colour over the tube sign to conceal the letters and then used the brush tool which painted a graffiti like pattern. With this, we covered the edges of the sign to make it look like a record label. I believe that using photoshop for this process helped our magazine advert to appear more efficient because it allowed us to manipulate our photo with a variety of tools designed for this purpose.

Evaluation:

The internet was used to my full advantage as I aimed to use all types of social networking to exploit our media project. Me and my partner first uploaded our final piece to Youtube where anyone was

able to view and comment on our content, we furthered the views on our video by sharing it on social networking sites such as Facebook and via our Whatsapp group chats. The people we converse with the most on these platforms, represent and fit the criteria of our target audience. Therefore these methods were effective in exploiting our product to who we wished to attract. Doing this allowed me to receive feedback on my media product.

I then wanted to reach an even wider audience and receive some criticism from strangers, therefore I created a Survey. The survey consisted of a series of questions and was made through SurveyMonkey. I aimed to gain an understanding on what viewers thought about mine and my partner's final product. I particularly chose to use this website to create my survey as it had a results tracking feature that automatically poured all of my data into presentable bar charts so I could easily see a breakdown of all of the data that I had collected.