Question 4:How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

I have decided to divide this question into four sections, Research, Planning, Construction and Evaluation. All of these sections have ties between each other but the biggest of them all being the internet, throughout the course I have used the internet to aid with all aspects of the project especially in research. The internet has been a key feature because of the blogs, all of our work can be posted on-line so we can access it whenever we like and so can the teachers, this saves a lot of time for the both of us because we do not have to be worried about hard copies and losing them etc.  The blog makes it easier for you to organise your work and present it in a professional format. The internet is an unlimited resource, I used this throughout the course for all aspects, in particular research into genres, other artists etc and it would make it so much more difficult without it.

Research:

The research begun by looking into unsigned bands over the internet, using YouTube in particular to listen to artists work and decide on something that ideas would flow for. Not only did I use YouTube, i used a website called Reverb Nation where all of the unsigned bands and artist come together in a community and this is formulated through the internet and technology. After careful consideration I found an artist by the name of Daniel Cope on YouTube, I then followed him up on different websites like Reverb Nation and decided to use him after listening to his album.

 

Once I chose Daniel Cope, the research the became more of a focus point because to sell and promote this artist I needed to know the genre of the artist along with all of the conventions and themes shown through out his work and other similar artists work. This where Reverb Nation came in more prominently because it gave an overview of the artist with what the genre was and who he was. This helped me a lot because it then led me into developing more research specifically around the mixed genre of Daniel Cope. I also looked at Facebook and Myspace to gather an idea of his audience and what he was like on there as well.

My next step was to research into the genre of acoustic/folk, his prominent genre in his music. I went on to look at a range of different artists that demonstrated similar genre characteristics such as Ed Sheeran, Bob Dylan, Jason Myraz and Matt White. All of these artists were acoustic but then created a hybrid between other genres and this is what Daniel Cope does. Through hours of video on YouTube and constant research into similar artists and genre I moved onto the contextuality of the music video, researching what the locations that I had chosen represented, especially the history of Kett's Hill( St James' Hill).

Planning:

Throughout the planning the two most important things were the blog and my stills camera. The blog was very useful for archiving my research but it was more effective when planning the music video because I could access my planning wherever I wanted and that mean't on the shoot, making it easier if I wanted to reference certain texts, storyboards and ideas. The shooting schedule was also posted onto my blog so I had a constant reference.

My digital stills camera was essential using it to take stills of location, costume, characters, props and much more so then I had a direct reference from my blog of what I wanted. This also came to great use when planning my ancillary tasks, taking a wide range of photographs to choose from, taking a range of different locations, angles and shots to create a good composition. I then used Photoshop Elements 7 to begin editing them and plan for the final product.

 

^My Stills Camera

Construction:

The construction was the most crucial part of the project that was advantaged by technology, through the use of editing programs such as Photoshop Elements 7 and Adobe Première Pro CS5 and Cameras such as the Canon Xl1s. These were the two programs I used when I edited both my music video and ancillary tasks.

Constructing the Music Video

To film the music video I used a Canon Xl1s, my own camera. I decided to use this because I was familiar with the settings and style of the camera because of previous use. The camera is shoulder mounted and gave a more professional quality to the video because it was less shaky because of the shoulder mount. It has a high quality but also shoots in a range of ways. Using my own camera made the process easier for me due to not having to constrict my shooting to renting times as well as the knowledge of that particular camera and it's settings.

For the editing of the music video I used Adobe Première Pro, this was stationed on my own laptop which gave me more flexibility when it came to editing because I knew the program and the effects that I wanted to use.

 

The editing program was useful because it had a further range of editing effects which the school's Première Elements didn't have. 

An effect that was used considerably in my music video was the cross fade, this created gentle links between different sections of the video. These fades connote dream like memory switches which add to the theme/effect.
Other effects included the use of slow motion, I used this to add a romantic effect on certain scenes when they were together but when the character was alone I used it to connote his life dragging on without meaning. Overlay of the video and the opacity played a large part is my edit because of layering up the different clips over one another to create dream like memory effects that emphasised the genre and romance.

Constructing the Ancillary Task

As mentioned earlier I used my own Sony Cybershot camera to take photos of the artist in different locations, the quality of the camera is unbelievable, that mixed with my ideas of composition created a range of photographs that made it incredibly hard to choose from. 

When constructing the ancillary tasks, the digipak and the magazine advert, I used Photoshop Elements 7. This program allowed me to generate crisp sharp manipulated images that were essential to my task.

In Photoshop I used the text creator to add my text to the Digipak, creating the artist name and album name in a artistic but simple font for the audience to read and see. Using Photoshop I focused more on the colour than anything else and increasing the contrast. I did this to create more crisp sharp image that complimented the music video. I also used Photoshop to crop the images and make sure that the composition was perfect creating an aesthetically pleasing image.

Using the opacity tool was also very important, I used this to have the artists face fade into the background of the advertisement. This brought significant attention to him. I reduced the opacity to around 40% so he is clearly visible but fading into the background, I did a similar thing with the girl character on the CD design.

Evaluation:

Throughout the evaluation I have utilised the blog to demonstrate the effectiveness of technology and how it can provide an effective and professional piece of work through the use of embedded images, short presentations,  video clips and much more. This demonstrates how crucial technology is within media studies and without it it would be a struggle, thinking how people got on without this equipment baffles me.