How did you use media technologies in the

construction and research, planning and evaluation

stages?

Research stage

YouTube is the home of all music videos. It is a global success in viewing and sharing music videos and was the first place I looked at when it came to looking at previous music videos for our research tasks.

YouTube made it very easy to explore the full variety of music videos that the internet has to offer. Whilst doing my research it actually hit me how powerful YouTube is as a website. It provided me with a source of knowledge and extensive exploration for music videos. It was particularly important for our chosen genre. This is because the indie acoustic genre is a very hidden genre and isn’t as exposed on music channels and talked about on the radio as major pop artists. The meant that a lot of our research was carried out by looking at YouTube, making it a key technology in the development of my work. We were able to look at other artists’ work and evaluate what they had done and what had worked as well as finding key conventions that could be used in our own work. On the side of the YouTube video, there are always

recommendations linked to the video that you are currently watching. This meant that when we were looking at indie acoustic videos, other videos which we may not have explored beforehand were presented to us. This way we were potentially engaging with a lot more videos than what we could with just our basic knowledge.

YouTube recommendations

YouTube videos also possess the capacity for comments to be made on the videos. Viewers can comment opinions on each of the videos. Each person has an account which actually allowed us to see what kind of people were watching the particular genre of indie acoustic. For this reason YouTube helped us not only look at conventions, but gage a basic idea of who our target audience is.

Our target audience

Creating our questionnaireAs part of our research, we had to find out as much information about our target audience as possible. This meant constructing a questionnaire for people to complete online. Last year, in our AS coursework, we used an online survey called “Survey monkey”. However, we wanted to find a more advanced online survey creator because we wanted to be able to include images for participants to pick and chose elements of album covers and posters. Survey monkey could also only allow us to ask 10 questions and we felt that this wasn’t enough to gain a whole idea of the target audience. For this reason we used an online survey creator called ‘freeonlinesurveys’.

However, after we had began to However this created more problems then it appeared to be solving -we lost the questionnaire after 10 days of a trial of the website. We had lost around 20 responses but had luckily screenshotted the questionnaire. We were able to print out the paper version and give it out but this meant that we had to create our own graphs to sum up the data –something that surveymonkey would have otherwise done for us. At first, we thought that this would be unnecessarily lengthily to do, however, it made us more aware of our results and also allowed us to correlate answers with demographics to gain a better understanding of who the target audience were and what they expect/want in our products.As an alternative we used Microsoft

software to create graphs and charts so that we could easily see our results all together and visually see what the participants had said were their preferences. It also allowed us to be more familiar with our data. Instead of just looking at graphs, we made them –we knew exactly what each graph was made up of, and also what each person said across the board.

iMovieAt the end of our research, we collated all of our subsequent findings and put them together in the form of a documentary using iMovie. We used ideas of stop motion (by taking photos and visualising them at a fast pace chronologically). The stop motion part of our documentary added something extra to our documentary and enabled us to be creative around the way that we put across our information. We also used vox pops to quickly quote the information provided from the interview and focus group. These are just some of the elements of technology that made up our documentary...So, what else?- Voiceovers were used to anchor the visual element of our results.

We were able to tell the viewer directly rather than them having to read something and focus on the visuals at the same time.- We were able to practise with film flares which is an element that we wished to include in our final products. We used YouTube (as previously mentioned) to find film filters that we could overlay onto our videos. We could also play around with the brightness and contrast of the documentary to give it the feel of the genre. This acted as a bit of practise, so that we could test what does and doesn’t work in this way-Fonts were played around with, so already we begin looking at different fonts that fitted into our genre. -Linking visuals to acoustics. This was important because we had to duck music and make sure that vox pops and videos were in the right place. This is significant because we would have to ensure that the acoustics matched the visuals (in terms of performance and the beginning/ending of the song aligning with the beginning/ending of the song).

This process allowed us to put together all of our previous research so that is could be accessed in one area when it came to planning. This way we wouldn’t have to search through unnecessary information, documents or paperwork. The process also gave us some sort of practise because we had to work with the same elements as we would do in our music video (and in some cases our ancillary texts). These include

editing, fonts, colours and timing.

Prezi Prezi is a presentation software that allows you to create an interactive and unique PowerPoint. I used this website a lot in my research to put together all of my findings. I particularly found it useful for putting together my video research for media language. This is because there was a lot of detail to be said about the concept and could be categorised easily. I was able to scatter my ideas, but still keep them in an organised way that I could refer to at a later date when it came to planning. I was able to add images, clips and music.

Wikipedia Wikipedia became a major source of knowledge for our research into record labels. It gave us listings of artists that belong to each record label and gave us information about each of these artists and these record labels. We were also able to find out the different types of record labels and distributors. The website, for this reason was very important because it allowed to look at which artists of the genre belonged to each record label and what each record label could offer an artist.

planning stage

Celtx

I was able to use a high quality software that enabled us to create a storyboard. High quality images were imported into the project and placed in chronological order. This software was extremely useful because we were able to select the shot of the image and add a description underneath. We could also sort the images into scenes which meant that the organisation of the different parts to the music video was kept to a high standard. It enabled us to carefully select shots and be able to start to envision the music video more and more. It gave us something to work with and follow when it came to our filming so that we were completely prepared and organised for efficient filming.Pdf files The software allowed us to save each page of the storyboard as a PDF file. This meant that we could easily see the finished product in a sophisticated layout. The conversion into a PDF file made the files compatible to be saved on our phones. This way, the storyboard was easily accessible and we could use our phones to help out when filming rather than carrying around loose pieces of paper.

iMovie... again

I was able to use iMovie to upload my images from the storyboard and create a stop motion video. I did this by increasing the amount of time that the images were shown for. This created a visually moving sequence to suggest how exactly the music video would look. This was extremely successful as it captured the detail of what the video would look like and enabled us to see whether some shots were too repetitive or whether we needed a shot to help tell the story. This meant that somebody else could look through our plans and watch the video and be able to replicate exactly what we wanted our music video to look like. This is something that I believe consolidates our in depth planning for the video in all of its detail.

How did it help us?We were able to notice in this particular sequence that the transition of the artist moving from a standing to seating position was too fast and she just appeared to sit down with no idea of movement. Without the use of the stop motion video we would never have been able to notice this.

Organising our filming We were able to effectively use and plan our time with the use of technology. We used a windows calendar to plan out exactly when we would be able to film and were able to keep up to date with this through the use of an alarm app. The alarm app enabled us to set reminders so that we would know with plenty of time when we had to prepare to film and ensure that our actors were still free. At this stage we were also able to use weather apps to check whether it would be possible to film. Our music video was highly dependant on weather because it was dependent on the changing seasons and dependent on good weather outside. Although the rain would have created a cold and dark ambience ,

we were aware that it would have restricted our filming. It would have made the clips dark and therefore grainy and it would have also meant that we would have to try to protect the camera from the rain. The app enabled us to plan ahead and realise that the structure to our music video had to change, because of the upcoming bad weather. This meant that we would still keep to a deadline and so in this way this technology was extremely useful to us.

THE SMALL DETAILS dafon

tWe were able to use a website called ‘dafont.com’ in order to pick a selection of potential fonts to use throughout our products. The nature of the website allowed us to select a theme in which we

wanted our fonts to follow and could preview what each word/letter would look like in that particular font. We selected ‘handwritten’ and were able to view thousands of fonts fitting this criteria because we wanted a quirky and personal feel to our products. We could then download whichever fonts we wanted, entirely free of charge, and try them out on our products.

We used an app called ‘polyvore’ to create moodboards and outfit profiles. Polyvore allowed us to search for items, such as clothing, fairylights etc. We were then able to put together the ideas in a creative way to show what kind of person our characters are like visually. We added backgrounds, fonts, and small embellishments to create It also enabled us to strategically put together the outfits for each setting so that we could visualise them and also present them so that our actors knew exactly what to wear and when to wear it.

THE SMALL DETAILS ...continued

We used an app and website called ‘weheartit’ a lot during the planning stages of our coursework. Weheartit is a simple website used for uploading and reblogging images. The main target audience for this website is teenage girls –matching our target audience. This meant that a lot of the content was suitable for our coursework, because the majority of images are based upon photography, books, relationships and fashion. For this reason, we were able to search for specific items and themes, and use these during our treatment. We used these images in our treatment to convey the look that we were heading towards. We were able to use this website/app to look through the images for inspiration and ideas for our poster/album artwork. We were able to combine our research with these images because both matched our target audience. Weheartit, for this reason, seemed to be a lot more insightful in comparison to a search engine like Google Images, because it was catered for our own target audience and the images were uploaded by the target audience themselves and are not shown in any particular order (unlike Google who shows the most popular images towards the top). It was on weheartit that we were able to come up with our idea for the poster/album artwork.

Paint Paint was an extremely useful tool in the planning stage the coursework. It allowed us to make rough plans and work with our ideas without committing to layouts, colours etc. We used paint to create several plans for our poster/album artwork. It was the plans that enabled us to see which would be most effective as an album cover and advertising poster. The use of paint allowed us to experiment with layout and colour on a basic level. We used former images taken for the storyboard and manipulated them to fit into several designs. This enabled us to visualise our plans on a more realistic level and allowed us to notice what did and didn’t work within each design. This allowed us to make the decision to continue with the polaroid idea. This quick plan also enabled the creating side of the digipack a lot more of a quicker process because we had already experimented with layouts and colours and could use our plans successfully to create an improved replica.

PRODUCTION stage

Camera and tripod

“With 16.2 megapixels, a swivel Vari-Angle LCD monitor, full HD movie capabilities, new EFFECTS Mode and new HDR setting, you hold the power and performance to capture beautiful moments and the freedom to get creative.”

We understood that we needed good clips to be able to work with because even if the editing of the clips was perfect, the overall quality of the music video would not be as good as it could be. For this reason, we ensured that the camera we used was specialised in film making so that the footage would be high quality. The camera we used was a Nikon D1500. This enabled us to create a high quality finish. We were also able to focus and blur details, which was conventional to our genre by pressing the shutter release button halfway to lock the focus to exactly how we wanted it. The high quality allowed us to crop and zoom when it came to post-production without making the clips decrease in quality. We were also able to manipulate the white balance so that the lighting and colours were of a high quality so that we had high quality clips to work with. The playback feature on the camera allowed us to check the footage that we had shot so that we knew whether it was good enough before it came to the editing stage. We also used the camera to take the images for our digipack. This meant that we could work with high quality images. We were able to focus on the foreground of the polaroid and blur the background of the park which in itself created a nice effect. We also used a standard tripod. We were then able to film particular sequences steadily when it came to shots that focused on the action, rather than a camera movement. We were then able to take the camera off the tripod for more up close, action following shots. The tripod allowed for steady clips.

Post-PRODUCTIO

N stage

Imovie and all of its features

Although we may not have had access to the highest quality video editing software, iMovie was practical for what we needed. Our music video didn’t rely on complex effects, the plan was simple and quirky. We were able to cut clips precisely, rearrange them and stabilise each clip. The concept of a music video highly relies on the editing of clips. iMovie allowed us to precisely edit the clips in most ways that we wanted to create montages, maintain continuity and fade to/from black/white. We were also able to slow down some of the clips to create a slow motion effect that was so conventional to our music genre. We were able to chose the rate of slow motion so that it was subtle and not too obvious. We used this in the ‘walking home’ scene to highlight the emotion and chaotic nature of the part of the narrative. We were also able to edit the audio affect of the song that we would use as a radio playing in the background. The newer version of iMovie allowed us to edit the beginning song to sound like a radio in the background of the introduction. We altered with sound waves and frequencies, a sound equaliser and added a telephone audio effect to create a realistic effect. The colours of our clips were highly considered because it was so key to our genre. Pastel colours are conventional to the genre, and so we edited our clips to have a slight tint to them. We didn’t want to make it too obvious so that it looked fake, but the slight tint of colour created a ‘cute’ feel to the clips. We were also able to emphasise this ambience with the use of film filters and flares. We used YouTube to convert a visual clip of a film filter and add them as an overlay onto the clip on iMovie. We was able to increase or decrease the transparency of the film filters to add a very subtle change in colour.

Creating our digipackAfter narrowing down the images taken, we had

three images to work from. Our idea of taking a photo of the polaroid of Auria seemed problematic in practise. This is because the quality of the polaroid image of Auria was way too dark and blurred. We wanted to establish a relationship between the audience and the artist through a close up and direct gaze. Neither of these were shown in the polaroid. We were then able to take a separate photo of the artist that we could edit into the polaroid frame. We were able to do this with the use of the app ‘iPiccy’. We had previously tried to edit the images on pixlr, and photoshop but neither gave us the needed tools. We could crop and rotate the photo onto the former image and layer it. We were also able to use a blurring tool to smooth the edges of the image so that it wasn’t so obvious that it was a manipulated image. We then used the app to edit the filters of the image to create a consistent package of the two joined images. We increased the brightness and lowered the contrast of the back, middle and front images and added a photo filter that was unique to the software.

Creating our digipack... continued

We were then able to use our images to add the text of the titles and song names. Because of the high quality images, we were able to use a simple Microsoft software –powerpoint. Powerpoint enabled us to quickly add text and position it exactly where we wanted it to be. We did not need highly sophisticated software to do so because the majority of the work had already been done on the images. We simply just added and rearranged the text to create our final product. In this case, even the simplest of technologies worked best for our piece.

evaluation stage