How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
RESEARCH AND PLANNING
When researching the specified genre i was going to be working in i made use of several programmes and websites including the video hosting website YouTube and the music streaming service Spotify. I used YouTube in a number of ways, firstly i used it to watch other music videos made by artists in the same genre as my chosen artist. It allowed me to find the videos with ease by using the 'similar videos' feature and helped me gain new ideas and inspiration for my own music video. Secondly i used YouTube as a social network to find official band profiles and also to upload my own videos to share with my target audience and peers to get opinions on my animatic and rough video ideas. The evolution of Media 2.0 allowed me to find more personal material like fan-made videos and other A2 media students' videos which also proved to be a good source of inspiration and ideas and allowed me to look further into genre conventions.
Without the use of my iPhone 4S the pace in which we planned and eventually filmed our music video would have been a lot slower.
I was able to phone people to arrange casting meetings and audience focus groups as well as researching my genre of 'dance' music on the go without the need of being sat at a desktop computer.
The evolution of communication technologies became hugely evident when i was able to organise a 'group chat' in which i was able to arrange a chat with several people at once to arrange filming times.
Perhaps the most important website of the whole media studies course is blogger.com. It enabled me to compile all of my research and planning in one singular place in an easy and understandable way. The fact that we could access blogger from home was a huge help, it meant we could do media work at home very easily. Without the use of blogger to electronically store my work online i think I definitely would have misplaced work as the mass of the workload is too big to keep on paper. It also allowed me to display my work in an interesting way by embedding pictures and YouTube clips into my blog posts.
I only used Adobe Premiere twice in my research and planning. Firstly i used it to edit our Busted music video reproduction and secondly i used it to compile our animatic storyboard. I did this by firstly drawing pictures of what i wanted specific scenes to look like and then using a scanner to transfer them on to the computer and finally compiling the images in the correct order and in sync with the music.
It was difficult to use at first but i quickly became familiar with the software. Using the software in the research and planning stages made it easier to edit our own music video as i had already had some practice.
PRODUCTION
A piece of software that was very useful in the production of my digipak and my advertisement was the Adobe Photoshop graphics editing program. It allowed me to digitally manipulate my images in a professional way, similar to what would be seen in real media products.
I made particular use of the brightness/contrast tools to make my photographs seem more vivid. I also made use of the opacity and layering tools so i could layer my images on top of each other allowing them to blend together, this effect was key to my digipak design. The software also enabled me to cut sections from one photo and paste them on to another photo, i used this to take the eyes from one photo and merge them with another photo to create the focal picture of my advertisement. The tools featured in the program shaped my design slightly because my knowledge was limited although the presence of those tools sometimes enhanced my creativity.
Photoshop allowed me to create professional products which could easily be used in the real media industry. Without the use of this program my designs would have suffered and i would not have been able to digitally design my ideas. The software was a little difficult to use at first as some of the functions are complicated to understand e.g. the organisation of visible layers.
To take the photos for my print production pieces, i used my Nikon D3100 DSLR. It enabled me to take high quality photographs in which the quality would not be lessened when digitally transfered to the computer via SD card. When shooting the photographs i made use of the Macro setting to take crisp extreme close ups. I used an 18-55mm Nikkor lens which allowed me to experiment with different shots and the auto focus feature came in handy when i needed to take a picture quickly. Using my DSLR was of a huge help and really made my product look professional. When comparing the photo quality to other cameras, the DSLR stood apart from the rest.
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To film our entire music video we used a Panasonic Full HD video camera. It was very easy and simple to use and it had a rotatable screen making it easy for over the head shots and shots that were lower than chest height. The widescreen lens allowed us to capture more action and the 1080p film quality really added to the professional feel.
Without the use of a digital video camera uploading the images to the computer would have been tedious, the SD card made it so much easier.
We didnt use a tri-pod when filming our video because we wanted a more handheld feel but we experimented with the tri-pod and it worked very well with the camera.
After filming our music video we uploaded all of our shots to a piece of software called Adobe Premiere. After we imported all of our clips we imported an MP3 of our chosen song. After had the song on the timeline we could then start importing our clips in order, Premiere made this really easy because the timeline showed us the timings and we could zoom in to see more finer details. Once we had established a followable narrative we could start playing around with the in-programme effects such as 'colour replace' and 'multiply'. Some of the effects worked well but others seemed to have little to no effect. We also used the programme to visually manipulate the green screen and superimpose images on to it. This was quite tricky to master and some times the chosen background would blend into our cast member infront of the green screen, which gave us an undesirable effect. We originally had some ideas that we had intended to use that the programme would not allow us to do which overall may have impacted on the effectiveness of the visual effects in our music video.
EVALUATION
The use of Facebook focus groups as an evaluation tool was very useful, it allowed me to share my product with people from my target audience and to get constructive feedback and feedback in general. It was very quick and easy to set up a Facebook group and i had a really good response from everyone. Facebook also allowed me to see other peoples A2 media products and help them out by giving feedback.
Without Facebook it would have been a lot harder to gather opinions and to spread my message to a mass audience.
Overall i think the technology I have used have both helped and hindered me, in some cases such as the use of the DSLR and the HD video camera it most certainly aided me in my production and the use of an iPhone was hugely helpful with organisation and planning. On the other hand some of the software we used e.g. Photoshop and Premiere hindered my creativity by limiting some of the effects i could use. Media 2.0 was a huge help in both the research and planning stage and the evaluation stage, it is a way to contact a mass group of people and upload your own products for everybody to see which otherwise would be impossible.
Without the use of my iPhone 4S the pace in which we planned and eventually filmed our music video would have been a lot slower.
I was able to phone people to arrange casting meetings and audience focus groups as well as researching my genre of 'dance' music on the go without the need of being sat at a desktop computer.
The evolution of communication technologies became hugely evident when i was able to organise a 'group chat' in which i was able to arrange a chat with several people at once to arrange filming times.
It was difficult to use at first but i quickly became familiar with the software. Using the software in the research and planning stages made it easier to edit our own music video as i had already had some practice.
PRODUCTION
I made particular use of the brightness/contrast tools to make my photographs seem more vivid. I also made use of the opacity and layering tools so i could layer my images on top of each other allowing them to blend together, this effect was key to my digipak design. The software also enabled me to cut sections from one photo and paste them on to another photo, i used this to take the eyes from one photo and merge them with another photo to create the focal picture of my advertisement. The tools featured in the program shaped my design slightly because my knowledge was limited although the presence of those tools sometimes enhanced my creativity.
Photoshop allowed me to create professional products which could easily be used in the real media industry. Without the use of this program my designs would have suffered and i would not have been able to digitally design my ideas. The software was a little difficult to use at first as some of the functions are complicated to understand e.g. the organisation of visible layers.
Without the use of a digital video camera uploading the images to the computer would have been tedious, the SD card made it so much easier.
We didnt use a tri-pod when filming our video because we wanted a more handheld feel but we experimented with the tri-pod and it worked very well with the camera.
EVALUATION
Without Facebook it would have been a lot harder to gather opinions and to spread my message to a mass audience.
Overall i think the technology I have used have both helped and hindered me, in some cases such as the use of the DSLR and the HD video camera it most certainly aided me in my production and the use of an iPhone was hugely helpful with organisation and planning. On the other hand some of the software we used e.g. Photoshop and Premiere hindered my creativity by limiting some of the effects i could use. Media 2.0 was a huge help in both the research and planning stage and the evaluation stage, it is a way to contact a mass group of people and upload your own products for everybody to see which otherwise would be impossible.
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