How did you use new media

technologies in the research,

planning, construction and

evaluation stages?

Rebecca Wilson

Research of a music video but our independent research followed on to gain a

wider understanding through www.Wikipedia.org. This website contributed to the Music Video History Research and helped us find where it all began and how it developed to the standard music videos are being made in today.

For the research to look creative, I needed images so used Google Images for this purpose. Google Images is a search engine, therefore anything you type in will collect images from around the world.

When analysing Katy Perry, besides Wikipedia, I visited her webpage www.katyperry.com for images and information on the star.

The video sharing website www.Youtube.com helped me research pop music videos to build my own artists’ image and gain a wider understanding of how to create narratives to suit the song. The web 2.0 site was used constantly over the unit, as a way to analyse existing artists’ videos, listen to music, watch other student’s work and to upload our own work. All these websites were useful in the research stage, a skill I already possessed in through earlier school years dealing with ICT and the internet.

During the research stage, the main forms of media technologies we used were websites to collect our findings. We were briefed at the beginning of the course on the conventions

Research software expanded when producing my target audience research.

I used a Panasonic SDR-H81 Video Camera to record footage of the people I’d questioned responses. My use of technologiesconverged as I uploaded the footage to iMovie, edited the responses together and then uploaded to www.Youtube.com.

Accompanying my videos, I collated graphs using Microsoft Excel software, a skill I obtained in high school, and then I evaluated their responses in a third, new form: www.wordle.net.

To obtain the six rules in Andrew Goodwin’s theory of Music Videos, I used Google which linked me up to www.slideshare.com. This site lets you upload and share PowerPoint presentations online. I used PowerPoint to construct my findings on his theory and uploaded it to www.slideshare.com.

Part way through researching, we had already decided on the track we would use. We’d all heard the track vaguely, but by listening to the song’s lyrics via www.Youtube.com we could make a decision on how a music video could be created from the song. iTunes was the platform we purchased the song from, which was convenient rather than purchasing from the ever shrinking CD shop industry. I added the track to iMovie and narrated the meaning of the lyrics and the song to help brainstorm more ideas for the video.

Using iTunes again, we purchased ‘Peacock’ by Katy Perry to practice our lip-synching. This tested our camera, editing skills and miming accuracy of our actor. Using the Panasonic SHR-H81, we filmed Natalie then uploaded the clips to iMovie. Before this, we hadn’t needed to edit to match an external sound, so the challenge was new and interesting.

My use of technologies and my knowledge of the hardware and software expanded when producing my target audience research. My use of technologies and my knowledge of the hardware and

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

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Planning The early planning stage was fairly traditional with minimal use of new

technologies. Using a pencil and paper, I created a digipack, a magazine advertisement and a storyboard. To upload my designs, I used the Olympus SP-800UZ Digital Camera before uploading to my blog.

Following the same rule for the storyboard, once drawn out, we took photographs of each panel. The stills were uploaded to iMovie and were edited together and fitted to the music, creating an Animatic which we had already made at AS. This time, we were fitting the shots around a sound instead of accompanying music to the film at AS, so we had to make a minor change to our approach at an animatic. All our movies had to be uploaded to www.youtube.com so they could afterwards be put on the blog.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Planning We weren’t ready to start filming for a week after our animatic was

produced so took the opportunity to practice a few trickier shots and edits we had put in the storyboard, such as low angle shot, high angle shot and match on action. Using the cameras and iMovie to do so really benefited our group and made each one of us more confident in our camera skills: setting up shots, filming, uploading and editing.

The technology I’d used so far was web 2.0 sites built for educational and creative purposes or were technologies I’d necessarily not need to use leisurely such as PowerPoint.

However, SMS messaging played a big part in the organisation of our group, when sat at home and a thought would pop up into our heads on how to improve our ideas. SMS plus www.Facebook.com became almost primary uses to our group for the running of our project.

Construction We had a mini photo shoot, mainly to practice taking shots of our artist

for the print products: our digipack and magazine advertisement. We used the Olympus SP-800UZ Digital Camera to take these shots then uploaded them to the Macs. As a group, we took turns editing through Adobe Photoshop. The software proved difficult for us to use at first, but I managed to grasp the basics and create good quality effects. After the photos had been edited, a digipack template was available in Adobe InDesign. This was also a new software to us but was easier to understand over Photoshop.

The digipack template had a six panel option only and so we created two extra panel shots. Luckily, we had captured around eight usable images after a selection process, and had enough for each panel.

When we had completed the front cover to the digipack, we transferred it to a separate InDesign template for our magazine advert, so our target audience would know what album they were looking for. The image on the front cover matched up to create a visual motif as our artist wore the same costume in a different pose for the advertisement.

Our digipack and magazine advertisement took nine lessonsto complete and it was time to move on to the music video.

Construction

from different angles and edit them together later in iMovie instead of sticking to the storyboard and setting up each individual shot. For our lip synch to be correct, we played the track through an iPod speaker which benefited us in the long run, as you can hear the music when editing, then just mute and add the original track over the top.

The narrative proved more difficult to look continuous with two cameras. Setting up our shots around the action, particularly in moving shots like panning and tracking was tough but we filmed each shot several times.

One part of our narrative featured clips from our performance. The protagonist watches the artist’s speech via Youtube, a short edit of the third verse to create a major change in the narrative. The narrative and performance aspects synergize to be entertaining and eye opening to global audiences. This method showed initiative to converge to existing forms of media and turned out to be a major success.

The iMovie software takes dedication but fortunately, after learning how to use it last year, I had all the skills to edit a video together. This year the challenge stepped up a level, to be able to edit incorporating synched music. The process took twice as long as previous productions but all in all the use of slow motion to exaggerate emotion and use of gamma adjust for the scenes we filmed quite late in the afternoon to seem brighter and happier were just two examples of my skills developing in editing.

Using two Panasonic SDR-H81 Video Cameras to film, we began with the performance side to our video. The cameras come alongside tripods therefore we could film

Evaluation

Overall, I found most of my knowledge and technological skills had been extended rather than obtained as I knew how to use the majority of computer software, websites and a digital camera. I have benefited from going that extra mile to secure my Project would be successful by experimenting with the skills I had on iMovie, for example, and extending them to using special visual effects.

I used the technologies to become a more worldly creative media student particularly in the research stage where I used websites like Wordle and SlideShare to present my work differently.

Using new technologies has been beneficial as I can now research, plan, create and present work in several different methods thanks to the always developing technological world. I can create user-generated content thanks to software like iMovie and PowerPoint and join in with the online world by creating my own web 2.0 content.