Evaluation - Question 4

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
This year in my A2 Coursework I have created a blog on Blogger.com to use as a portfolio for my coursework, which is not something I have used before. Despite initially struggling with such a sway or recording and displaying my work I found that this has been extremely useful for me in many ways. Using an online blog means that I am able to access my work from anywhere, and constantly able to update it and access past posts with ease. Furthermore, it has allowed me to be much more creative with how I display my work, for example I have created video diary posts and used websites such as SlideShare to post power points I have created. Prezi, the online presentation program was perhaps the biggest help for me this year as using it allows me to be very creative with how I display work, and I can easily embed it into my blog. I also began to use the free screen recorder Cam Studio, for video for my blog and in these evaluation documentaries, as it allows you to record yourself doing your work and thus show how I came about my media products.
In terms of the planning stages, I found myself easily able to access existing music videos due to sites such as YouTube, meaning I could research a wide variety of videos and analyse them without much hassle. The inspiration for my digipak and magazine advert also came from the internet when I searched images of cameras on Google and found an image of a camera with a smashed up lens, thus the internet was a valuable resource for ideas and inspiration for me.
To take the images for my ancillary tasks and the footage for my music video I used a variety of equipment. For the location shoot of my main actress I used a Canon 550D camera, as it allowed me to shoot in extreme detail and play with the depth of field to create more visually interesting effects. This is an example of the advanced media technology I used in my coursework as I was able to take them out from the school over the weekend to conduct my shoots. However, I used a different camera for my green screen shots as I wished to shoot in HD to get the best possible footage. I also used my iPhone throughout these shoots and
smashing up the camera to record me conducting the shoots, as this was easy for others to use and provided good enough footage.
I used Adobe Photoshop CS3 in the construction of my two ancillary tasks, my digipak and my magazine advert. In these I added text, and used drop shadows to make them appear more professional and realistic. I also played around with the lighting, saturation and highlights of the images to get a more edgy, visually appealing effect on each image. Using such a program was much easier and more effective than using a program such as paint, as it has a huge variety of effects ad tools, and allows you to manipulate the image itself not just add things to it.
I used Adobe Premiere Pro to create my music video and put it together before exporting it into Adobe After Effects, but I also used it in the evaluation stages to create these evaluation documentaries. In regards the to construction of my music video I used the advanced program on Adobe After Effects Pro to manipulate the footage I had gained and make it more visually interesting but adding the cartoon effect. I will show you how I came about this effect with an example clip from my video. I firstly removed the green screen from all the performance clips and places a mid yellow solid behind them instead, then continued to desaturate the footage, whilst leavening a colour in clips where there was one bright dominant colour in the frame. This made my video look more appealing to my target audience, making it appear more edgy and recognisable as an indie/rock music video. I then made the performers appear more like a cartoon by using the effect ‘posterise’ which I changed to a level of around 4 on every clip. I continued to make the performers appear to be on scraps of paper and standing out from the background by adding a black outline and white solid behind each of them, in addition to a drop shadow to add to the 3D effect that makes them appear on top of the background. After this, I decided to posterise the time on selected clips, mainly the footage of Sam playing the red guitar giving it a jerky effect. I decided to embrace the zeitgeist of this decade of internet and social media sites by taking advantage of web version 2.0 and the audiences ability to interact with the media. I firstly created a group on Facebook in my planning stages that included all those involved in my music video, so I was able to contact them all easily, send tem documents such as the brief and actor release sheets and keep them updated in terms of progress and shoots. This also allowed them to
reply with any questions or concerns they had, and give me feedback on my video and ideas as many of them would fit into my target audience profile. The social networking site was also useful after the construction of my product, as I created a fan page for the band, and those who ‘liked’ the page would then be able to exclusively view the video the weekend before its actual release. This would encourage fans to join the page, resulting in viral advertising in addition to the internet ‘buzz’ that may be created around the product. Viral advertising is especially effective as it can reach a huge audience worldwide and is essentially free as you do not have to create any physical products that involve printing. It will also help me reach my target audience who are young and thus likely to be using the internet and social media sites.
This is also the case with the sites such as YouTube and Vimeo, which allowed me to upload the various cuts of my music video with ease and distribute them effectively to not just a local audience but worldwide. Such sites also remove the need to hire a media producer or advertiser to release it publicly and to a wide audience.