Question 4 - Essay Format

Question 4 – How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Before beginning any of my research and planning, I had to create a blog on www.blogger.com, so that I could keep note of every element within the process of creating all three of my products. At first, this was difficult for me to understand, as I had never worked using a blog before. However, it has proved to be extremely great in displaying my multimedia skills and portraying my work in a visually interesting way. It was essential for me to find a variety of ways to showcase my media work, not just in essay format. I began to familiarise myself with Prezi, which is a web based presentation application, which helps to present work in abstract and entertaining ways. The embed tool on Prezi is what allowed me to put a copy of any presentations I created onto my blog – meaning a copy of my work was always accessible online.

When presenting videos and copies of my music video drafts, I found Vimeo was particularly good as it allows you to host videos in HD. Often after exporting my music video drafts, which were made using Premier Pro, I would discover that uploading them straight to Blogger was not possible. This is because the file size of my music video drafts were generally over 100MG as I would convert them in high quality, and files over this size would often be disallowed on Blogger. Therefore, finding alternative ways to showcase videos was something I taught myself to do. Other methods might include placing my video into Windows Live Movie Maker and converting it from that, as it would automatically reduce the file size, however visually the video didn’t look bad.

Using Microsoft PowerPoint was often a route I took, especially when analysing products such as my similar product research for music magazine adverts. This is because using the Text Box Tool and the Shape Tool (when drawing arrows to parts of the images), meant I could analyse products quickly and easily, as I am familiar with PowerPoint. However, adding a PowerPoint presentation to Blogger is not simple. There are two ways it can be done, you can either save the PowerPoint as individual pages and upload them as JPG files, so that they are viewable from blogger as images. Or, you can use Scribd – which is the method I used more often. This is a digital documents library that allows users to publish presentations and then access the embed code, enabling you to post it on blogger by pasting the embed code in the HTML section. SlideShare was also used, but as a provider of information when carrying out research on the Indie Folk genre, this website displays presentations created by people around the world – meaning I could access different views and opinions of my research topics such as “Who are the Indie Folk target audience?”

I also used a website called SoundCloud in order to upload long essays, which might be appreciated when being read aloud. By using this website meant I could upload audio files to Blogger by embedding them into a post. Social Networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter were accessed when carrying out audience feedback. The options to have conversations online meant that I could receive criticism and advice on my products quickly and also meant I could post my work and have many different people view all it at once.

When shooting photos for my ancillary tasks I used a Cannon 550D. This camera was equipped with a cinematic shutter speed with a 1.8 aperture lens. This meant I could take photographs in shallow focus for a more creative and artistic look. When editing these images I would place them into Adobe Photoshop, which allowed me to use the Crop Tool to make images the size I wanted for my digipak or magazine advert and the Magic Wand Tool is what assisted me in cutting out particular parts of an image in a professional manner. The Brush Tool also came in handy when making my magazine advert look more interesting, as it meant I could scroll through a selection of shapes and images and print them onto the background of my advert. I chose a 3D swirl, in black and in white, which added to the simplistic and pretty theme of my product. When editing the photos for my digipak, experimentation with colour was key as I wanted to try and portray the 50’s era by adding a sepia like tone to all the photos. To achieve this look, I would create an Adjustment Layer and edit the Brightening or Contrast of the photo – choosing a more yellowy and orange tone.

In production, I shot my music video using a Sony HVR-Z1E Professional 1080i HDV / DVCAM Camcorder; this is because I wanted to ensure my footage was of the highest possible quality. Using this camera provided a cinema-look to my production piece as it uses CineframeTM 25 Mode and 2-mode Cinematone GammaTM which creates a progressive-look effect. The slow motion feature accessible on this camera meant I could create the slow paced shots I needed to compliment my song choice. To light the shots of the mother character, as she was indoors I used 2 Arri 650 watt lights that come equipped with barn doors, meaning you can control and create the shape of the light you want. I chose to make a straight slash of light across the wall and window inside, creating a tense and negative atmosphere.

I used Adobe Premier Pro CS5 when editing my music video, as it allowed to me to cut shots using the Razor Tool and rearrange them into the order I wanted and then add the song and any other audio I desired to have within my music video – for example the tweeting bird noises at the beginning of my video and also the ringing of the bell. The option to add titles came into use at the beginning of my music video, when the artists name and song shows on screen, as well as my own. To create this, I placed this title on top of the first shot in my video and used the Dissolve transition to make the writing fade on and off screen as it would on professional music videos shown on music channels such as MTV or VIVA. I also used Adobe Premier Pro to create short videos to present my ideas and evaluation process, using a Dictaphone to record my speech and then adding images and short video clips to illustrate what I was saying.

After Effects was used when adding a filter light to my music video – although I did not use this in my final product, it was experimented with in my second draft. To do so, I first chose the filter I wanted to use which was called Cinematic2. I would then add an adjustment layer over all of my footage and drag this particular lighting onto the layer. It gave my whole video a yellow tint, with extra defined shadowing. However, after converting it and watching it, I decided it decreased the quality of my footage, resulting in me deleting this layer and going with the lighting from my original film shoot.