Evaluation Question 4 (Anderson)

List of digital technologies:

•          Blogger
•          YouTube
•          Prezi
•          PowerPoint
•          Survey monkey
•          IMacs camera
•          Storyboardmaker.com
•          Sound cloud
•          Photoshop
•          Final cut pro
•          Premier Pro CS

All of these were used in constructing my media products. As this is my second year of studying media I have gained more skill on how to use these digital technologies which overall helped me more throughout in the creation of my music video digipak and magazine advert. Digital technology was very useful throughout my journey to be able to present my work. The main digital technologies what I used included Prezi, PowerPoint, YouTube, Photoshop and Premier Pro CS6 and these were used in the construction of my pre-production and post production of my media products. Having the access to these digital technologies during my  pre-production and post production stages of my products helped in presenting my planning ,research and end products in a much more visual way . My work would not have been as visually presented if I was to use blogger alone.

Blogger:

This was the main digital platform that allows us to present our planning and research for our media products. The research and planning mainly focused on all of the technical codes which are mise end scene, camera shot, angles and movement, sound and editing. This consisted of costume, lighting, narrative, location, song choice, possible camera shot and artists. Being able to show all of the research and planning made it helpful to show how I used these technical codes and how we implemented them into our production Just like every digital technology there are both positives and negative. For positives I did find it useful to embed other digital technologies such as Prezi and YouTube for others to see directly from blogger instead of being redirected to another page. The layout of blogger is also very easy to use adjust. Disadvantages however was that it did lack certain tools such as being able to draw shapes and place arrows and because of this, it made me create my research of  audience profile for example  on word to which I then screen shot to be then shown on blogger. Finally one down side is that there is a certain alignment for pictures and videos which makes it harder to write text just beside it.

Research stages:

We used media technologies such as YouTube and sound cloud to help research songs that are both non-copyrighted and created by an unsigned artist. We tried not to use any songs that already had a music video as it might have made us create somethings that looks the same. Having access to both of these platforms allowed us to find a range of songs and also have access to the artist itself through social media. YouTube was used for us to post our research and planning, use of technical skills and also our audience feedback. Both YouTube and sound cloud gave the options to search specific genres which for us were hip hop.

YouTube and Sound Cloud:

The advantages YouTube is that unlike sound cloud, it plays the song along a video. From this we were able to distinguish if it was just a background image, lyric video or music video. Another andante was that it was easier to find non copyrighted music and there are channels such a non-copyrighted rap which is the channel we used to find our song ’TGIF’ by Chris Yonge. This video did not include a music video just a background so this made it clear that we could use this song. Sound cloud however also had the option to find specific genres of music like rap, grime, blues, etc. which made it easy to just find the hip genre that we were going for. One downside however is that from sound cloud alone we are not able to know if there is a music video on other platforms which is why YouTube was the most useful by itself. Sound cloud was helpful for pitching our ideas but not as much for researching our choice of song.



Internet:

The use of internet was helpful in the planning of our locations which could be used for our music video. Google maps helped to find out how to get to these locations and google images showed us what the locations look like. Once example of the location we research was the graffiti tunnel in waterloo and knowing what the location looks like helped plan ahead what types of camera shots and angles would suit best for this location. Only issue is that you are unable to plan and research if your internet if offline and sometimes when your internet speed is slow which was sometime the case on the macs, it makes your searches more time consuming. We had used the internet to also plan our digipak as we were not as familiar to what a digipak was or its structure and layout. Having access to the internet gave us the ability to view real digipaks from artists such as ‘Drake’ to help us create our own. We found out that not all digipaks have to same layout in structure and how many consist how having 4 nets up to 6 nets. Being able to look at other digipaks helped us to understand the focus how we can implement the conventions into our product. Using google images again helps us find a 6 net template so without this we would have had to create the template our self.

Social Media:

Social media was useful in terms of contacting the artist for permission to use there song and finding our more about the artists personality. Knowing more about the artist’s lifestyle helped in trying to portray his actions when filming our music video. The messages he replied with shown in the image below told us how he is quite a relaxed and laid back artist so we tried implementing this in our music video through the use of hand gestures and facial expressions. The downsides of using just social media is that is doesn’t show all of the artists full song and this is more likely to be pasted on other platforms such as YouTube. Social media is more used for fans to keep updated with the artist’s work and his everyday lifestyle

IMacs and Photobooth:

When creating our research we used the program photo booth. This is a built in software on the iMac which uses the camera on the iMac to record videos and take pictures.  To continue our research into genre and progress with our media products, this was good to record our initial ideas and group pitches. Another key thing we used this for was to record our audience feedback. From this we were able to re watch our audience’s opinion to see what improvements we could make on our products. The built is camera also had quite a wide lens which was useful in recoding many people at once instead. Some disadvantages however was that it only records video and not audio. Some audience member was quite shy on camera and therefore did not want to be recorded.

Storyboardmaker.com:

When creating our storyboard we used the website storyboardmaker.com to create a cartoon visual presentation of what our music video should look.  It allows you insert images as well as cartoon visuals that are given on the website. This helped us to create our animatic use the pictures from and pre-sets from the storyboard were saved to be edited using final cut pro.

Digital Camera:

We used a canon dlsr camera for the creation of our music video. As we used this camera for our AS course to film out thriller opening, this made using the camera much more professionally as now we are more familiar on how to adjust the ISO, Shutter speed and aperture to be able to film video in iw light settings and also to achieve a shallow depth of field. The camera also had the option to place a grid on the display which helps implement rule of thirds when recording shots. The main point of the camera was to record what is in front of the camera which is our artist but with various angles. The ability to zoom in and out helped in readjusting the video to focus on what you want to film. This zooming in on the artist will help to achieve mid shots of close ups. The camera was also used to take pictures which were later used for our magazine advert and digipak shot pictures. Auto focus made it easier to film while walking however I preferred to use manual on shot when standing as sometimes the camera would focus on what even is the closest which may not be what I wanted.  Advantages of the DSLR Camera was that it is able to film in high quality (1080p) which made is easier in post-production to change the scale of the video without it losing any of its resolution. This camera had settings that can go up to very high ISO which helped film in the tunnel scene where lighting was low. Some downsides was that I wanted to film create slow motion in post-production however the camera did not have the option to film 60 fps but only 30fps. Because I this I used my own camera. The NIKON D300 to achieve this as the option of filming 60fps was available. As we filming in high quality, this took up a lot of space on our SD card which lead to bring many SD cards and constantly having to change them when we had no more memory. Not only this sometimes our footage will corrupt which lead to filming again. Finally as some shots were filmed at night like our the party scene, our footage did contain noise which decreased the quality of our video and  made it look less professional.

PowerPoint:

PowerPoint was key in my research and planning. Not only was it easy to use with its various amounts of tools but also includes many background presents to make presenting your work more visual. You can place wide variety of images, shapes and text boxes which can all be customized with colour. One problem is that videos cannot be played. These meant we could not add our audience feedback or podcasts so if we wanted too, we would have had to redirect the person viewing this with a link

Prezi: 

Prezi was good in visually presenting our work and also had the ability to be embedded into our blog. Unlike PowerPoint the animations look much more interesting. It also comes with many free pre-set designs for you to present your work. Some down sides to Prezi is that it is quite a time consuming process. Sometimes your work may be lost and also the each slide is quite small in size to large amounts of text cannot be fitted into it. 

Premier Pro CS6:

Premier Pro is an editing software just like final cut pro and this was used to make my music video 'TGIF' . I preferred to use this program as there are more inbuilt presets that helped to make my music video look much better. An example of this would be the ability to colour grade manually. This was done with a three way colour corrector and the benefit of this is that your footage looks less dull and more professional. Besides the video this program also let me create the clean version of the song. There are also more built in transitions in premier pro and unlike final cut pro it has more tools to be able to create your own transitions as you can transfer your clips to after effects to be edited more further. One main advantage was that is was easier to stack clips on top of each other which is something that final cut pro cannot do. It also auto saves every 5 mins so there are less chances of you losing your work. One disadvantage is that when using many effects at once on one clip. the preview does not render as quickly.