Evaluation - Question 4

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

There are many ways in which I used media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages of my product, such as: different software in order to create my music video and ancillary texts; online software in which I have used to present my work and social media in order to contact actors.

I used many different form of software in order to create different pieces of work. One software which I used was Final Cut Pro which was an essential program which I used in order to place all of my shots for my music video in order, edit them and place the song over them, and also to create my animatic. I found this editing software quite easy to use due to previous experience in using it during my transition task from AS Media Studies to A2 Media Studies in which I replicated part of the song Someone Like You by Adele. This was very helpful for me because it gave me a chance to experiment with using Final Cut Pro and learn the basic rules on how to use it and play with the different slide transitions and effects that you can use on it such as black and white and a black border around the frame. Therefore, the things that I learnt when creating this section of an existing music video gave me confidence to use Final Cut Pro when creating my own music video at A2 as I was more familiar with how it worked and what I was able to do on it.

Another media technology that I used was Adobe Photoshop when creating my ancillary texts and my costume ideas. Photoshop allowed me to place different images onto a page, layer them up, alongside text and shapes, add effects to them and edit them to improve or change them. This software was very helpful when creating my ancillary texts because I was able to get a template of a digipak off Google and use this to place my own images on top of it to create my own digipak. I did this by opening the image of the template on Photoshop and then opening any image that I wanted to be on my digipak, decreased the opacity of the image so that I was able to see the template in the background so I knew what size to make the image, I then cropped the image down to the size that fit the template and then added any other objects that I wanted to it such as text. Photoshop made it much easier for me to create my ancillary texts and it allowed me to be more creative with what I was able to do to my images as I could add effects to them and change the opacity of images to create different effects.

Other media technologies that I used consisted of basic software such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint in order to present written work. These helped me easily show what I wanted in an orderly way that made it easy for the audience to read and understand. Other ways in which I presented my work were using online applications such as Prezi, Slideshare, GoAnimate and Emaze. These are more fun and interesting ways in which I have presented my work. The reason why I decided to use these websites is to make my work more appealing towards the audience as it makes it much more interactive and keeps the audience’s attention in. All of these websites were very easy to follow making it simple to create the items. I have used all of these different applications throughout the research and planning, construction and evaluation stages of my work as I think that they have been relevant to use throughout the whole course and I have used them when I feel they would be most beneficial such as: to show answers to surveys that I have created using a website called Survey Monkey, to answer evaluation questions, to show cast and location ideas, to present my textual analysis’ and to present information on different theorists and their ideas.

A further media technology that I have used in the planning stages of my product was social media sites such as Facebook, in particular Facebook Messenger, in order to contact my actor, actress and anyone else involved in my music video such as those providing me with props. This form of media was very helpful for me to contact others because of how global Facebook has become therefore most people use this website and spend a lot of time on it which it made it an easy and free way to contact people. Plus, this way I was able to create a conversation with all of those involved within my music video so that everyone was aware of what was happening, making me a lot more organised in planning when I am going to shoot and costume choices for example.

A basic media technology that I used during the whole project was the TV and websites such as Youtube in which I was able to watch existing music videos and gain inspiration on what to include in my own music video and also notice the type of mise-en-scene, cinematography and editing styles used in music videos to see if there were any conventions that were used so that I could apply them to my own music video. Watching music videos was a very key factor throughout not only the planning stage but the construction stage of my product as I was able to gather lots of different ideas and bring them all together to use in my music video. Some existing music videos that I took inspiration from were Chandelier by Sia and Counting Stars by One Republic which helped shape my music video more as it gave me a clear image as to what I wanted to be included in my music video, and the ideas that I gained from these music videos helped lead me onto different ideas and develop from the ones I found from the existing music videos.

Overall, I would say that I have used a wide variety of media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages of my product in order to create different pieces of work and to present my work. They have all made my blog look a lot more appealing and enticing for the audience and have made some processes much easier for me to do. 

Digipak Improved

Here I have improved my digipak based on the comments that I received from my survey that I created. The only change that I have made is improving the quality of the text on the front cover. This looks much better now because there is no white marks running around it although I placed a white outline on the text so that it stands out more.

Evaluation - Question 3

Music Video Final Draft

This is the final draft of my music video. I was unable to do successful fade overs with the footage that I had so I had to create another way in which I could go round this.

For my first fade over that I planned to do, which was between both my actors, I have decided just to place the two shots next to each other instead. This doesn't look as effective as I hoped it to be but it still flows well and fits in time with the lyrics of the song.

My other fade over that I planned to do was with both my actors and my shot of the TV with the broadcast footage over the top of it. I wanted to have the TV positioned in the centre of the frame with my actress lip-syncing on the left hand side of the frame and my actor fading in on the right-hand side of the frame when he begins to lip-sync. However I was unable to do this as I shot it against an unsuitable background. So to resolve this I positioned the TV bigger on the right-hand side of the frame with just my actress fading in on the left-hand side of the screen and this has seemed to work out quite well in my opinion. 

Another change that I have made is increasing the shot length of my shots of the TV against the black background. I have done this so that it leads up to the close up shot of the TV during the broadcast sequence and makes more sense within my video.

The final change that I made to this draft was making the TV broadcast sequence in black and white so that the fade over doesn't look as noticeable. 

Overall, I am happy with my final draft of my music video because I think that it flows well, the lip-syncing is in time with the song and I have a range of different shot types and have experimented with my editing techniques. If I could change it though I would have reshot some footage to make it of a higher quality and I would have filmed my fade over parts against a green screen rather than a yellow wall in order to make sure that my fade overs work well.

Evaluation - Question 2

Music Video Fourth Draft

This is the fourth draft of my music video. I have made quite a few changes to this draft which I think have improved my music video and made it look more professional.

One of the changes that I have made is that I have now put my candidate name and number etc. at the beginning of my music video so that the examiner knows exactly who I am and what this piece of work is for.

A second change that I have made is that during my shot in which I tilt the camera up and then down in the following shot I have put a quick slide transition in between the two shots to make it flow better as this way you cannot see the change in shots. The slide transition that I used was a quick fade which I think has worked very well in my music video because it links to the two shots together well.

Another change that I have made is that during my first split screen I have tried to match the shot with my male actor in with the one with my female actress in as I was unable to change the quality of this shot to make it better so the way in which I have overcome this is by trying to make the other shot match this shot as much as possible. I have done this by using many different effects on this shot and playing with the colour of the shot to match it as much I can. I think that the shots now look very similar to one another however I am quite disappointed with the quality of the footage but this is something that I can no longer change so I have made it work as best as I possibly can.

During my shots of my actress sat in the corner of a room I noticed that the last shot of this before she starts lip-syncing zoomed in too far on her face so I made this shot in slow motion and cropped down the shot so that it is to a better shot length and I think that this now looks a lot better and more professional.

Plus, on my TV broadcast section I have now included the shot of my broadcaster and cropped this shot down so that it fits inside the TV. Although, I still need to do a lot of work on this shot because the fade overs aren't working at the moment and I haven't found out how to make the TV and broadcast footage zoom in. So in my next draft I am hoping to find out how to do this.

After this broadcast scene finished I thought that the shot of the black screen lasted far too long so I have cropped this down and added in a shot of the TV smashed up to fill up the time that I have just cropped out. Also this now foreshadows what is about to happen in the music video, to give the audience an insight as to what is to come.

The final changes that I have made is at the very end of my video. The first change of this is that I have put a Bad TV Effect over the top of my shot of a close up of the TV to make it seem as if the full music video is just a media concept and that this is shown on TV and that this shot is breaking up. The next change that I made is the slide transition between this and the next shot as I have used a Static slide transition which gives the effect that the TV is about to turn off. This shot is juxtaposed with a black screen with a white glowing line running through the centre of the screen which lasts for a split second as this is a typical feature of what happens when TV's turn off. This then ends with a plain black screen to show that the TV has turned off.

I think that all of these changes have improved my music video quite a lot because it has made my music video flow better and look more professional due to the effects and slide transitions that I have included in it. For my next draft I am going to change the fade overs so that they work a lot better and then I think I will be very pleased with my music video as a whole.

Evaluation Question 1 (Textual Analysis of my Music Video)