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

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

   

When researching into the genre for our music video, we predominantly used Google and YouTube, as they were the most operational tools in order for us to be able to produce the most informative research. Furthermore, we looked at Spotify to select an artist and a song that was not too well known. Furthermore, we checked to see if the song had been owned by Warner Brothers or other well recognized record labels such as Sony. After deciding on this song we jotted down several ideas on a bit of scrap paper of what theme would best fit this song and then continued to plan a storyboard of what the video would consist of.  With this information we then proceeded to the computers in order to plan the props we would need and order in time for our first filming dates which took organization as we didn’t want anything missing when we began our recording. So we used the internet and eBay in order to purchase the glitter, balloons and the fire flares. This was the research we specifically did for our music video. The research we completed on our digipak and magazine advert came from our individual blogs were we were set the task of analysing several artists products which allowed us to actually get involved in the research and write our own thoughts of what the artist wanted to achieve. The planning enabled us to be able to move quickly in our groups into each task we would need to complete so we each had information we were then able to feed back to each other making our research and planning processes quicker and we all completely one individually.  

  

The technologies we used whilst constructing our music video consisted of; Final Pro X it is one of the leading non-linear digital editing platforms within the consumer market. Final Pro X was the easiest for us to be able to use whilst making our music video and there are even essential editing tools we were able to use that everyday editors would expect. Although it was perfect for us it is evident that all of the post production processes such as colour correlation and audio sound mixing is not available on PCs. It also holds high recommendation for those who are new mac editing users as the interface is affordable and enables people to shoot, edit and share their films from start to finish within one software. Making it easy for us to be able to access all of our music video as all of it would save easily to the Mac. The use of the iPhone 7 plus was used in order to record the dancers within the music video as we believed this camera has the perfect lens in order to capture the choreography we needed for this piece. The use of the Sony a5100 gave us the smooth shots that we needed to have throughout the length of our music video. The camera allowed us to be able to film easily as the camera is only small and easy to pack away and carry with you. Alongside this, the charge on the camera is good so the recording. However, in parts of the music video it is evident that the camera in some aspects was not focused in all of the shots. This is especially apparent within the night time shots as the camera quality looks far grittier. Construction of our film took several re tries and therefore, this was why it was so important that the camera we were using was able to film lots of footage in one go that we could then go away and place onto the Macs and cut and edit until it was the way in which we wanted. We constructed the digipak through collecting a variety of shots of our artist from different angles which enabled us to gin the perfect shots that we wanted that were as focused as we needed in order to create the artist we wanted to show our target audience. This meant we used our research on high street fashion and dressed her the way in which we know teenagers will love and girls would like her outfit. The royal blue trousers were also quirky and made her stand out upon the digipak. To further perfect our artist we went onto Photoshop where we blemished her skin of spots and saturated the image in order to make her look more tanned, also so that her trousers would draw people in as they are bright and funky. We wanted our artist to be presented this way and the technology of Photoshop enabled us to make her look like how a real artist such as Rhianna is presented upon her digipak. For our magazine advert we used the idea of the dancer’s upon the magazine this is because we believed this was a smart marketing tool. The advert we created however, had a bland background that didn’t fit directly and give the feel of big and bold as it was grey and wasn’t going to grab our audience’s attention instantly which is what a magazine is meant to do. Whilst evaluating our magazine advert it came to our teacher’s attention that the background needed to be brighter. In order to achieve this we decided to edit a colourful design into our magazine advert this is something that will now make our magazine advert stand out against other adverts. With the use of all three aspects from the dancers, to the artist and finally the background I believe that our overall magazine advert will lock our audience’s attention which was proved from our year 12 feedback. 

Finally the evaluation of our music video we took on the given feedback and made sure the narrative made sense by taking out all of the fillers and inserting new footage e.g. the extra scenes of Amber and Danny which allowed our narrative to be viewed more clearly.  As well as this, making changes to the lighting on the Macs on the Final Cut software as we wanted it to see although the flares were being used at night time as this way the colours stood out more within the night sky and they better linked in with the narrative as why would you be running outrageously with flares in broad daylight. The digipak consisted of 6 sides instead of 4 which meant we could add further hints of what our product was going to offer to our audience and is easier to engage people if you are presenting more imagery. We also placed the use of our signature link upon our digipak product in order for our audience to make the connection between all three of our items.   

The use of blogger as a computer programme allowed us to be able to present our stages leading up to our music video, digipak and magazine advert. It allowed us to present our information in order of the posts we had to first complete to our final stages of our three produced products. The technologies we used were the computers in order to research into our ideas as a group and come up with a rough plan for our genre and the music video we wanted to create. We then went home and found a variety of themes that we had considered individually and came up with a final theme of a teenage party. We decided to use Photoshop in order to trial and error many ideas we had come up with for our magazine advert and digipaks within our individual blog and then finally within our group. The use of technology enabled us to be able to just send our information through email so it was easily accessed by all of our group members. Furthermore, the use of technology to create our products allowed us to create the exact theme we wanted for our music video. From the flashing LED lights, to final cut pro and finally Photoshop to produce the 3 media products we wanted to achieve. We also used CoolText on the internet to create several of our trial and error fonts for our three products and decided as a group which would best fit our genre and stand out the most to our selected audience.