DRAFT Evaluation Question Four

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

The use of technology within this project was crucial in all stages of development. Without the use of internet, software and modern day technology, not only would filming a music video be impossible, but the vast level of research and planning attained would be difficult to acquire. 

When researching the conventions of music videos the use of internet and television was necessary, to find and watch existing examples. YouTube was the main source of video inspiration, as it contains a vast amount of videos that you could not find anywhere else. I also made us of the music channels found on Sky and Freeview, as they play videos that are in the charts and enjoyed by people in our target market group. Once these videos had been found I would then copy an embed code and display them on my solo, or joint blog, to demonstrate the elements I liked and wished to remember. Blogger allows a journal or sketchbook style of work to be produced as you can upload anything from videos, text, images and ideas for the music video, keeping them in one place that can be accessed everywhere. Without blogger, it would have been hard to collaborate with George on our project, as using a more complicated form of record, or using paper, wouldn’t have been as efficient, or making the most of the technology available. When looking at existing digipak and adverts, the Google image tool really helped, as a large amount of designs could be found in one place. I also found digipaks that could be accessed in real life, and took photos of these on my iPod to demonstrate various conventions that weren’t shown online. To put these on blogger I simply emailed them to my school account, and added them to a post. Once I had found a large variety of digipaks and magazine adverts, I evaluated their strengths and weaknesses using Prezi, as I find it easy to use and a great way to display large amounts of text, without making it boring or uninteresting to read. I made a Prezi for three evaluations (Album covers, Digipak’s and magazine adverts) as it separated them nicely so I knew where to find certain pieces of information. As part of the theory behind music video, it was useful to gain knowledge on existing theorists and conventions within music videos, and for that we looked at Andrew Goodwin. Information about Goodwin could be found on Slideshare; of which the most helpful PowerPoint was uploaded to our blog. Slideshare made it easy to find a variety of sources and allow us to choose the most suitable and informative, instead of reading a block of text on a different website. 

After gaining knowledge of all three products using a variety of technologies, we created a survey using an online survey tool called Survey monkey. This allowed us to create a questionnaire specifically to obtain the relevant information needed, for us to create a successful music video. To promote the survey we used our individual twitter accounts, asking our followers to help us and fill it in. Once we had collected the results they were converted into various s graphs and charts to visually show what the target audience felt about our ideas. We print screened these onto a word document, uploaded it onto scribd and placed onto our blog. 

To choose the song we were to create our video for, me and George used iTunes to listen to a variety of music that we both, or individually, liked. Eventually we both chose ‘Afternoon’ by ‘Youth Lagoon’ and decided this was the best song to film our video to. We already had our artist in mind and used social networking sites to contact her and ask her what she thought about being in our video, as well as our song choice. We consulted her about styling and used Polyvore (the same online creator tool we used to make our mood board), to browse various types of outfits and dresses, selecting ones we wanted to use as inspiration when filming. We used the selection of dresses in our pitch to show our peers the types of ideas we wanted to use within our video, and this pitch was created on animoto. We were given the task of using only 25 words within our pitch, so the use of images was necessary to convey the tone and genre we wanted to create. We included footage and photos in our pitch that we had taken ourselves, to portray the elements we wished to include. These photos (and more) were later uploaded to Flickr and displayed in a post about the variety of locations we were going to use. Flickr allowed us to keep all of our photos in one place, as well as present them in and interesting way on our blog, in the layout of thumbnails. After creating a fictitious twitter account for Rosa-Leigh, we started creating our storyboard using post-it notes and then used George’s iPhone 5s to take photos of the frames, uploading them to Final Cut Pro X, allowing us to create our animatic. The animatic was really useful as it allowed us to see the length and placements of all the shots, seeing what they would look like in time with the song. Once we had finished it we uploaded it to YouTube and put it on our blogs for Mr Ford to see. 

After creating a hand-drawn design for my digipak, I scanned it in to the computer and saved it as an image to put on my blog. Using a scanned image instead of a photograph taken on your phone means the resolution and quality of the file is better, making your work look more presentable and professional. I used the scanner once again when creating my digipak, as to create the green background, I scanned one of my t-shirts and cropped the image to use on the inside panels. Again, by scanning my t-shirt it ensured the quality was much better than a photograph, and it ensured the colour was not lost in the process either. When creating both my magazine advert and digipak, I used Photoshop to create and edit the images and my designs. Adobe Photoshop allowed me to insert any image, crop, rotate, change the colours, erase unwanted elements and create an entire brand for my artist, as it provides tools such as ‘the magic wand’ and the crop tools, making it the most appropriate form of software for a project like this. I took the photos included on my advert and digipak with my iPod Touch, as used an app called VSCOcam to edit them. I find that app easiest to use as they provide specific filters that enhance photos to make them look more professional. To use the photo I took I simply emailed it to myself, and started to plan the rest of my digipak. Due to the fact there are only a certain amount of fonts on Photoshop, I found my chosen font on Dafont.com, as there is a much wider choice. ‘Never let go’ was then imported onto my computer and installed into Photoshop, ready to use on my products. 

To check that we could film on certain days, we consulted various weather apps and websites, to ensure that there would be no clouds or rain to spoil the lighting of the shots. Without the use of these apps and websites, we would have had to cancel last minute on the filming days, due to not knowing what the forecast would be. When filming with Rosa-Leigh, the majority of the time we used a Nikon D3100 camera, containing an SD memory card which allowed us to obtain high quality footage for every shot. To create the mirror and kaleidoscope effects we used George’s iPhone 5s and an app called Video Star. This app allowed us to film Rosa-Leigh with these effects on the screen, so we could see how the footage would turn out, as we were filming. George’s phone also allowed us to play the song out loud for Rosa-Leigh to sing along to, as it was important to ensure the lip sync was in time. Whilst we used a tripod to film the static and panning shots, I used my Samsung ES71 to film the vintage style nature shots, such as those filming out of the car window. At the end of our filming days we would upload the footage to an iMac and once we had finished filming completely, we used Final Cut Pro X to edit the footage. 

Once we had finished editing the footage we uploaded the finished video to YouTube and created a questionnaire for our target audience, peers and friends using Microsoft word. We put the document on scribd in order to upload it to our blogs and this then allowed us to evaluate our progress and see what we had to change. Feedback from Mr Ford for our first draft was also emailed to us, and not only did this show us what we needed to change, but it also made us think about the video as a whole and what else we could do to improve it. Evaluating the video at each stage was useful, especially with technology such as Blogger and Final Cut Pro X, as we could watch and re-watch our video to ensure we changed the right aspects and got the lip sync in time. Blogger then let us write about what we were doing, why we were changing certain elements, and the evaluation of our progress.

To evaluate the project as a whole these questions were given to us via Mr Fords blog, including examples of past students work. These links were helpful guidelines as to what we were supposed to do and what elements we should try to include. To create draft answers I used Microsoft word, as Blogger doesn't account for spelling or grammatical errors; meaning written work isn't accurate. By creating a draft answer using Microsoft Word it also means I can change the format of words, easily change the structure of my writing, and check the word count. To create visually exciting answers to the four evaluate questions I plan to use platforms such as Glogster.............