Wednesday, 14 December 2011

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages? (question 4)

We started off using Media technologies when we were doing a range of research into music videos and genre before the whole production of our video from using the internet and different web pages. Websites like YouTube came in very useful during our planning and research as it allowed us to search different music videos, and help us plan how to create ours. We used the internet a lot during our research and planning stage as it was very useful for us to gather information. We did a lot of research and planning, from which we uploaded and posted all our ideas onto our blog. For a lot of our research/ planning, we used Google images mainly when looking for images of the bands, different costumes/props, different locations, and especially during our planning for our CD cover and Magazine design.

During the construction stage of our music video, we used a digital camera along with the tripod for shooting our video. We used many different techniques with the camera including ‘Handheld’ for a more shaky and original effect, as well as using zooms, pans and tracking shots. The tripod came in very useful when we wanted to keep the camera steady to do a perfect straight shot, however we sometimes struggled with this as it was a windy day and kept blowing the tripod.
For some areas of our filming, we used the green screen sweet. We didn’t use the actual green screen; we only used the area and the lighting. We used the spot lights to shine on Doug during the filming process to create a more ‘studio effect’ to our music video, which overall worked nicely.

For the editing process of our music video, we used editing software called ‘Final cut pro’ which is an excellent programme for editing all kinds of videos and filming. We used this on the Apple Mac computers. After uploading all our different film clips to the computer hard drove, we had multiple hours of clips to watch through, and decided which ones to use and what not to. We added the Song that we are doing to the timeline on Final cut pro, along the background. After that we re-watched the clips we had chosen to use, and decided what order and how to place them into the timeline so that the lip syncing matched and the whole video made sense. We had to use a cut tool to ‘mark in and mark out’ on the video clips to select the section of the clip we wanted, then had to drag it onto the time line into the place we wanted it. We didn’t use a whole range of effects, only ones like ‘fades, filters. Fast motion, blur and different styles.

After we had finished our blog we had to design and do research into the making of the CD cover & Advert. We did a lot of our research using ‘Google Images’ to look at other CD covers and adverts, especially ones in the same music genre that we were doing, to gain more ideas. For the construction of the Digipak, we used ‘Photoshop’ particularly on the Apple Macs as it works better on these. Photoshop was an excellent Editing Programme to use to create the CD and advert as it allows you to do almost anything editing wise to help with effects and the look of them. We had to open new pages on Photoshop, then crop the size down for the CD cover as it had to be 12’ by 12’, and had to have 4 sides, for the back, front & then two for the inside. The magazine advert just had to be A4 size and look realistic. On the advert I didn’t use a lot of effects apart from ‘Black and white’ as it looks better then it being in colour. We had to copy images from the ‘Google images’ such as the logos for HMV and PLAY.COM, and create them onto our advert in different ways. We changed the Brightness and contrast over some of the images to make them look better and eye catching. The CD case has been designed and styled to match real CD cases. It includes 4 panels, the front, back and two inside panels, along with the song list on the back, a barcode, and the ‘special thanks to’ and all other items which are included on CD covers.

Throughout the whole process of research, planning, constructing and evaluating our music video and Digipak, we used one particular useful media technology, which was the ‘Blog’. We updated all our ideas and findings to the blog along with daily entries of the editing process and any changes we had to make with filming or editing. We uploaded pictures of the computers to show what final cut pro, and the editing pictures along with images from our planning into the CD cover and magazine advert. The blog has all our ideas and different details which act as evidence and proof to show that we have done plenty of research into our music video project.

If we hadn’t of had all this different Media technologies we wouldn’t have been able to complete the music video project, or it would have been extremely difficult to do. Along with the research and creation of our Digipak. Without the use of computers and internet we wouldn’t have got all this research done, or anything done with and on the blog. Without the use of the cameras we wouldn’t of been able to film our music video which is the main task. If we didn’t had the availability to use Final cut pro we wouldn’t have been able to edit and create our music video to an excellent standard, or make or the little changes we needed. Without Photoshop we wouldn’t of been able to create and design our CD cover or Magazine advert to a high standard and with all the different tools and sections that Photoshop provides.

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