Evaluation 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction, research,

planning and evaluation stages?

BlogThroughout the course I uploaded the work I had completed onto my blog. My

blog address is www.harrywhitea2media.blogspot.com. I used the blog to post work I carried out for planning and research, construction and my evaluations. I found that when it came to constructing a predominantly text based document on Blogger, it was easier to create the document using Microsoft word, upload it onto a website called Slide Share, and then embed the document onto Blogger that way. I found that this technique presented my work in a nicer manner as well as making the layout of my blog neater. I organised my work with the use of “Labels”. You can add a label to a new post on your blog by clicking the appropriate label. This allows the viewer to navigate around the blog more easily and also helps to keep my work in order and organised. You can see the step-by-step method of how to label your posts from the screen shots below

First, I ticked the post I wanted to apply the label to. Then I moved my mouse to the “Label Actions” tab and pulled the tab down. Here you get the options list of existing labels that you have set up. I then selected the label I want and then it organises that post under the selected label. This technology has been very useful in helping me organise my blog.

Music Video

CameraWhen it came to shooting our music video we had the opportunity to use one

of the schools Sony HVR-HD1000E video cameras (see picture below) as apposed to the Sony Handy cams. The fact we were able to use this much higher quality camera enabled us to complete shots such as handheld shots, without it being too shaky for the viewer. If we were to do the same shots with a handheld camera it would have looked unprofessional, as the footage would have been too shaky. During filming we used three different Mini-DV tapes, as apposed to Mini-HDV tapes. We came to this decision because you can run into a lot of different problems with compatibility when you use Mini-HDV tapes. Another contributing factor to our decision was the cost factor. Mini-HDV costs around ten times more than a standard Mini-DV. When capturing footage in HD it is not consistently possible to capture in real-time (depending on the speed of your processor) and therefore this could have in theory slowed down our capturing process. As we had captured over 3 hours of footage this would have amounted to a lot more than we would have wished to have spend on capturing.

Considering this was the first time I had used a Sony HVR-HD1000E video camera, I feel that I picked up its functions pretty quickly. I experimented a lot with the lens to make shots in and out of focus, which we later incorporated into our music video. You can see an example of an out of focus shot from our music video to the left.

LightingAs previously mentioned in evaluation 1, we did not feel that the use of

artificial lighting was needed in our music video. This decision came about for a number of reasons. Firstly we filmed on two separate days, both of which were in summer and had very sunny weather throughout both shoots. Secondly as convention of acoustic music videos is minimal artificial lighting or none at all. As previously mentioned in my evaluation 1, we decided against using any artificial lighting so our music video could tap into this convention of acoustic music videos. Another reason was that even if we did choose to use lighting, we did not have any lights readily available. We would have needed to rent some, which could be quite costly. The location we filmed out was a park and so had no sources of electricity. This was another problem that put us off the idea of using artificial lighting in our music video.

One lighting/camera technique that we did use was using the suns flare in several shots. This was a technique we found out by experimenting in the location on a sunny day during pre-production. An example of a flare shot can be seen to the right.

SoundAs the footage we had captured was ultimately going to be part of a music

video, we had to add our chosen artist’s song into the editing software Final Cut Pro. We imported the song into Final Cut Pro as soon as we started the editing process.

During our first shot in our music video, which is an establishing shot of Lewis setting up his guitar and starting to sing, we added the sound effect of a duck quacking. When we originally filmed the shot there was a faint sound of a duck quacking, which when watching back we liked and felt that it added to the feel of the location of the music video. The problem was that the duck quacking was a very faint sound so we downloaded a quacking sound off http://www.freesfx.co.uk. We then imported the sound into Final Cut and editing it to the appropriate sound level by

dragging the line from the middle of the sound waves, further to the bottom to reduce the sound. A screen shot of doing this can be seen to the right.

EditingWe relied heavily on technology when it came to editing our music video. The

editing was completed using the software Final Cut Pro on an Apple iMac. At the start of the course in year 12, I had no knowledge at all about Final Cut, but feel that as the course progressed and the practical elements increased, I became more and more comfortable with the editing software. When it came to using the software in year 13, I had a little refresher session and then picked up where I left in year 12.

Using final cut express we used a number of pre-installed transitions, which enabled us to have a smooth cut between shots, for example the transition “Fade to black”. We also used an application that Kenny had on his computer than enabled us to use more interesting transitions. For example we used the transition “Focus Pull” quite a lot as we thought it made an interesting cut between shots. Also as we had been using the lens to focus in and out of shots throughout our music video anyway we felt that the use of a focus pull transition would tie in with this and help to create a reoccurring theme. We also used the Final Cut feature of changing the speed to make some of our shots in slow motion. We felt that as our music was quite slow paced, slow motion shots would tie in nicely, linking the visuals to the pace of the music, which is one of Goodwin’s music video theories.

One editing technique we decided to use was the use of sectioning the shots of our narrative section of our music video. We did this by creating masts on Adobe Photoshop CS3. We also used an application called "Motion" that our friend Rob managed to get a copy of on Kenny's iMac. This application allows us to edit the masks that we created using Photoshop. We then took the Photoshop file with several layers to create each section of the screen. We then used the separate layers as the mask and created several black square/rectangle and applied the footage on the top. Then you have to go on the composition mode and apply the settings " travel matte - Luma". We then dragged and dropped our chosen piece of footage into each section,

lined it up, perhaps shrunk it down a bit to fit in the section and then applied it. We then used the masks to make each section appear at a different time. An example of the finished sectioning editing technique we used can be seen in the screen shot below.

During the pre-production stages we experimented with this editing technique by creating a short video. The video can be seen by clicking “here”.

Another software we used as part of the post-production editing was “Magic Bullet Looks”. We used this software to colour the first edit of our music video to meet the demands of our audience feedback and to tap into the summery feel often associated with existing acoustic music videos.

As you can see from the screen shot to the right, there are a number of colour filters you can use. We scrolled through many and then selected which one we felt was most appropriate to represent a summer feel to our music video.

Internet

In addition to Blogger and Slideshare as previously mentioned, I also used websites such as Facebook, Youtube and Survey Monkey throughout the course.

I used the social networking site Facebook to post the link of our first edit of our music video. Along with the link I requested that people watch the music video and then write a little comment about that they thought of it. This played a big role of our audience feedback and I feel was a successful measure in helping to improve our music video as well as giving us confidence in it.

I used the video sharing site Youtube to upload evaluative videos as part of pre-production discussing areas such as locations, characters and shot types. Then I embedded them onto my blog using the code given on the Youtube video.

I used the free online survey creator as an alternative means of getting audience feedback, as apposed to consistently relying on handout questionnaires. This method allowed me to create an online survey from which I distributed the link on Facebook and to people who were both in my target audience and outside of my target audience. I think this method was successful in obtaining audience feedback as the person’s identity was hidden so they were able to say what they really felt, without feeling obliged to be polite, which they might have done in a typical handout questionnaire. Print Productions

I used Adobe Photoshop CS3 to construct both of my print productions. As the original photo I used was not the correct size or format for both a digipack cover or a magazine advert I manipulated the image to the correct format. First of all I changed the canvas size to make it a square shape. I was now left with the rectangle picture and a blank area that made up the square shape. I addressed this problem by using the clone tool to make the picture bigger but still have the same scene. Using the clone tool I dragged the photograph out to the right. This made the size and format of my digipack cover correct. You can see the transformation of the format and size of the digipack in the two photos below.

The next thing I decided to do to edit the image was to flip it over so it was basically a mirror image of this. The idea behind this was so that the blood on his chest was now on the left side of his chest, representing a bleeding heart. I decided this would make the digipack cover be more metaphorical and would allow my target audience to relate to the album cover. You can see these changes I made by looking at the original photo (On the left) and the edited version (on the right)

Another edit I did to the image was to change the sign that Lewis was holding. In the original photo Lewis is holding a sign saying Monsieur Lewis. I thought that it would be better for the digipack cover to use his stage name of The Next Forever as this would enable my target audience and his fans to notice his name and recognise it. Another reason for changing the name is to stop any confusion arising to the viewers. I then developed the idea of changing the name to change it to the actual song title name and then have The Next Forever in another area of the digipack album cover. So now I changed the sign he was holding to say the tracks name - "Upstream". I did this by using the brush tool and then the colour select function to select an area of the sign in which the sign hadn't been written on and then I coloured over the writing. I then used the brush tool and a graphics tablet to handwrite the word "upstream" on the sign. You can see the changes I made to the sign in the two images below. The first image is the original photograph, the second image is of the edited photograph so it says the tracks name – “Upstream”.

Next I had to create an album title. This process involved going onto “www.dafont.com” and from there I downloaded a font that I thought would be ideal for the album cover. I then installed the font onto the iMac and then opened it on Photoshop. I used the text tool to write the text. I then positioned at the top left area of the digipack as I thought this would be an appropriate position.

I then decided to change the colour of the text. When it came to selecting a colour for the title, I decided red would be an appropriate colour for the album cover. This is because red connotes thoughts of romance and this is what the songs theme is about, so I thought red would be appropriate. I then decided to use the colour of the fake blood from Lewis' heart in the image. To do this I extracted the colour from the heart using the pipette tool. Then I selected the font and changed the colour. I thought it would be a good idea to link up some of the text to make it flow more. I did this using the graphics tablet and the brush tool. I drew lines to link up some of the letters such as the letter "x" in the word "Next" and the letter "v" in the word "Forever". I thought this looked nice and made the title more interesting looking and visually appealing. You can see the letters I joined up using the graphics tablet in the image below.

Next I create the back cover of the digipack. Again I used Photoshop CS3 and imported the picture into the program. This photo was already the correct size for a digipack so I did not need to edit the size of the canvas.

First of all I changed the colour and brightness of the picture. I went on the tab “Image” and then “Adjustments” and then selected “Colour balance”. From there I increased the levels of yellow. Then I selected the “Image” tab and then “Adjustments”, “Brightness/Contrast”. I increased both the brightness and the contrast to a suitable level. The purpose of doing this was to match the colour scheme and brightness to that of the front cover image. I thought this was important so it makes it more professional, as the original image was dark and greyer than the front cover so would not flow very well. You can see the changes I made to the brightness, contrast and colour in the transformation below.

I then used the brush tool to paint the sky the same colour as it was in the front cover image. I decided to do this to increase the level of continuity and make the digipack flow better as a whole product, as apposed to two individual images. Again I used the pipette tool to select the colour of the sky in the front cover image and then used this colour and the brush tool to paint the sky the same colour.

To finish the digipack I used the same font to write the track listings and a website address where you can find more of my chosen artists work.

When it came to creating my magazine advert the process was relatively similar to the one I carried out to create my digipack. First of all I opened my digipack album cover into Photoshop. I then made the size of the canvas bigger and a rectangle shape. I made sure that the extension to the canvas would be added on top of the existing digipack cover. This way my album cover would be at the base of the rectangle with a white section above it that I could use, instead of the extension being added either side of the original album cover making the album cover in the middle.

Next I used the paint tool to make paint the extension. When it came to choosing the colour I decided to use the colour select tool by clicking on an area of the existing sky on the album cover. I came to this decision because I thought it would be a good idea to continue the colour of the sky in the extension of the canvas as this would make the magazine advert flow and look professional. I thought using the same colour as the original sky would be a better idea than using a new colour and seeing an obvious difference from where the original album cover stops and the extension to the canvas was added.

When I finished painting the sky I selected the layer of the text "The Next Forever" and decided to move it to the top of the canvas. I decided to this because it is predominantly the most important piece of text of the magazine advert. As we read

from the top, left to right, to the bottom, I thought by placing the artists name at the top would make this the first piece of text the audience would read. I then added a new piece of text and selected the same font as I had used in the artists name to create a recurring theme that the audience could recognise. From audience feedback of my original album cover, they stated that they liked the colour of the text, so I decided to use this colour again in the new text. After typing out the words "Presents" and "Upstream", I highlighted the text and clicked on the colour squares at the bottom, this opened a new box with a colour wheel. I used the colour selection tool and clicked on the original text of "The Next Forever" to get the same colour. This then made the new text the same colour as the existing text, again reinforcing the recurring theme of the font and colour scheme. I think this also makes it more professional looking and appropriate for my artist's genre as using a variety of primary colours would look a bit tacky and misleading of the genre of my chosen artist's music.

ConclusionOverall I feel that the technology I have called upon throughout the course has

helped me create professional looking media products. I feel that I have improved my knowledge of technology particularly when it came to using software such as Final Cut Prod and Adobe Photoshop CS3. Modern technology such as the social networking site Facebook has also helped improve my product by allowing people to comment on videos and say what they thought about them.