Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 4

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

Research and Planning

Alongside all the group meetings and discussions we had in and out of school, we also used various types of media technology to organise any filming we were going to do, where would meet to film or just to send each other ideas of different locations we could film in.

We used our smartphones often to communicate with one another if we were to see anything or think of anything that we feel may have been an advantage to our music video, we also texted each other to confirm the costume and where we will be meeting to film.

During our project of making a music video I also browsed on websites such as google and tumblr to gather ideas for our costume of a 'hippy girl'. The main website I visited was youtube, this was to find all my ideas on which song we would use, whilst looking at other artists music videos to research and plan further ideas and examples.



Once we had chosen the song we were going to use for our music video we decided we would e-mail the record label (RCA Records) of the song we had chosen "Sandi Thom - I wish I was a punk rocker" through their own website, where we could leave comments or to contact them, with hope that they would maybe get back in touch with us, which unfortunately they didn't, but we mostly sent this e-mail in politeness to solely say that we will not sell the video and not copyright issues will be intended, it is strictly for educational purposes only as A-level Media students.

This is my mood board I created to gather a few ideas on the costumes, props and locations I had thought of for my music video. I used photoshop to put all these pictures together and they were all ideas which I ended up using in my finalised music video.

Prelim

At the beginning of A2 we experimented with filming our music videos and created a prelim. This was a fun task which allowed us to try out new things and experiment mainly with the lip syncing and how to ensure this was precise. We filmed the prelim on a HD panasonic camera which allowed us to capture clear, crisp footage and have clear sound also.

Construction

Music Video

When making our music video I feel I learnt and excelled in my skills with new technology particularly here. I was able to use the Panasonic HD camera to film all of my footage aswell as using the Flip Camera to film behind the scene shots or to create vlogs on what we were doing/filming. From AS I already had a clear understanding of how to use iMovie however this year I used Final Cut Express which allowed us to layer different shots, change the saturation and lengths of shots and also change the colours. Alongside Final Cut Express I also used photoshop to change the colours of my music video when putting the business side in black and white.
Furthermore I also enhanced my skills when using the green screen effect to put the artist onto a specific background of our choice, I felt this was going to be very tricky to do, but once I had filmed what i needed and uploaded it onto the macs, i felt fairly confident with how to layer the shot onto a new background which i did so and succeeded.
My smartphone also came in handy if I was out and saw a good shot I could use for a cutaway shot I would use my iPhone, upload it straight onto my blog through my 'Blogger' app and would write about why I thought this was a good idea for our music video.


Twitter

We created an account for our artist on a social networking site called Twitter. We followed other artists similar to our own such as Kate Nash and Florence and The Machine. Twitter allowed our audience to contact us by just using our account name "@Daisy_TheChains" and then leaving a comment and also to hear/see any information on our artists work such as album release dates or any new forthcoming singles.

Digipak

When making my album cover/digipak I used Photoshop on the front cover to keep the phone box in red and the rest of the image in black and white. The basic editing on photoshop is something me along with others feel fairly confident with, however I feel I enhanced my creative skills here by using a tool called 'magic wand' which I used to highlight the phonebox.

Evaluation

When creating my evaluation I used my scmartphone, iPhone, to film some of my questions whilst also using Prezi, the online website to present work, to post one of my questions. This allowed me to also use 'Scribd' to upload word documents and also use Youtube to upload videos.