Evaluation 4 (By Emily, Vicky, Sophie and Voke)

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

The equipment and media technology we used through out the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages and all three of our platforms were:

Final cut
Photo shop
Mpeg stream clip
Quick time
Google
You tube
Camera's - school video camera and Canon HD eo3od
Tripod
MTV
NME
Picasion
Prezi
Mind maps
HTML codes
PowerPoint
Face book
Wall wisher - AuthorSTREAM
Apple Mac
Blogger


Camera and Tripod

First of all we had to film the music video. The equipment used to film this were two camera and a tripod. The first camera we used was a Canon HD eo3od. This camera had great lighting on it and the pixels made it great to film with however the battery did not hold enough space for the amount of filming we wanted to do. Therefore we used our Media teachers camera that she supplied. It was a video camera and so therefore it was made to cope with a lot of filming where as the other camera was a camera with a video recording on it. The camera we used from school was just as great and had a tape in it where it recorded all of the filming we had done. This way it was really easy for us to upload the filming onto the computer. Once the filming was uploaded on to the computer it was really easy for us to cut parts out that we needed.







Final cut

Final cut was one of the main programmes that were used. This was really important for us as we had to know exactly how to use it and how to use it well. Our music video was going to be produced and made great by the editing of the video. First of all we had to upload our filming we had taken to the final cut pro to edit our video. A short clip from the programme "Jing" is shown on how Myself and Vicky edited the music video. As the editing was our role within the group. It shows a number of different techniques we used such as uploading the video, editing it and adding in transitions.

To be able to edit the video we had to import our video file into Final cut. Once all films were imported we were then able to use clips from all the files to make our music video. We also needed to drag the audio (the song) that we were making a music video to into Final cut. Once we dragged that in we locked it on the side so that it couldn't change or be replaced when we were dragging down clips of filming to edit. Things such as overlays and cross dissolves were used. These had to be added in by pressing the effects button and clicking them. Cross dissolves allow smoother movement in and out of clips and  at the bottom of the screen there is a button that has a black line on it; this is used to create an overlay. overlays show two clips on the screen at the same time with one being slightly more faded so that it is clear to see both clips. These are both demonstrated on the Jing below. We added in a warning sign as we were using flashing lights in our music video. And with our research we had found out that any music videos with flashing lights usually have a warning sign at the beginning. We placed this into Final cut on a different line so we were able to cut it and make sure it was shown for the right amount of time. After that we started to cut down the film into the sections that we needed. To do this there is another screen that can be used for cutting certain parts needed out. So we set the in and out points of the filming that we wanted and dragged it down to place it into our video. I did this again and again to keep producing the music video with all the different filming we had carried out. This was really efficient and made it really easy to do what we needed to do.
Once we had created the music video we started to change the opacity of each image. By clicking the opacity button I was able to change  the different colours of the video to make  it look more professional.

Final cut was also used before we had started filming. Originally before filming we had all created a story board together with the ideas of how our music video was going to look and what was going to happen in our music video. Although the drawing of the story didn't use any technology, we then inserted all the pictures onto final cut and made an animated video out of them. This way we could see what our music video was going to look like in drawings before filming.



Quick time and MPEG stream clip

After finishing the editing and once we were happy with the video we had to put it into quick time movie and then export it into mpeg 4 so that it was the correct format to be able to be put onto Blogger. Quick time movie is what the video is exported to after Final cut. However Blogger does nt accept quick time movie videos and therefore we then had to import it to Mpeg4 stream clip so that we were certain that after it had been changed it would show on our blogs. The video its self is named Finalcutvideo.mov.
Photoshop

Photoshop was used to produce our digipak. Our progress of the ancillary tasks is shown in a Jing video as well as our music video. We used Photo shop to create a magazine advert and our digipak, which included the front and back cover of an album and the inside cover and the CD holder.

The making of the digipak was Sophie's role within the group, while myself and Vicky produced the Magazine advert once our editing had been finished. Firstly what is demonstrated in the video is how Sophie made the inside page of our album. We already had the images that we wanted to use by screen grabbing them from our music video and changing the brightness of them so that they all have the same brightness, we then placed one on top of the other to show them in place.  After having the pictures we used the idropper tool that colour picks, to pick Jake's hair colour and by using the pain bucket tool we coloured the back ground in the same colour as Jake's hair. The font we created was from www. DAFONT.com The paint splat effect Sophie demonstrates is involved in that font. To get this we increased the size of the font and rotated it across the screen. After that Sophie shows how we made the back page. We screen grabbed an image from the beginning of our video and transformed it to fit the page. We changed the contrast and colouring of the image to create a better looking, more professional look to the image. To make our actor look better we used tools such as the spot healing tool that helped touch up blemishes our actor had. We then moved onto the front page were we used the same effects to make the image look better and more professional. We added text to the front cover using a font called "code bold". To add finishing touches we used a gradient tool and coloured it black to add a strip down the side of the CD. This is commonly found on all CD's.

Youtube, Google, MTV and NME

For our research into music videos and digipaks, and our overall research and planning we spent a lot of time using websites such as Google, You tube, MTV and NME. You tube was used to find research into music videos, when we were looking for the particular song we wanted our music video to be made to. We went fro the genre INDIE. We wanted a song that wasn't very well known that we could bring to life with out music video. The only way we were going to pick the best, most suitable video for music video was by doing research and looking at lots of videos and waying up the positives and negatives about each. Once we had found the song, we then used You tube to find features of music videos that we would want to use for inspiration such as  Pixxie Lott- Its all about tonight for overlays and Kanye West- All of the lights for the lighting and fast cuts. We did this because we wanted our research and planning to be thorough, we wanted to know exactly what features we could use and how to do them. This is why we looked at different features and tutorials as to how to carry them out on Final cut.
We used Google to research into images and facts about the band our song was produced by Bloc Party. Google was where we found the facts and statistics in our research and planning. We needed to find out things such as the font used by Bloc party as we needed to make sure the font we used was the exact same to keep a house style throughout the albums. We also used it to find out information on things such as our target audience. Once we had found our target audience and the genre we were catering for we used website such as MTV and NME to find out what music channel our music video could feature on. MTV and NME are the websites that were going to give us the most relevant information on the genre that we were creating for. From these websites we found facts such as where Bloc party's songs have recently been in the charts and opinions from the audience about Bloc party's songs.

Mind maps, Picasions and Prezis

After doing all this research, programmes such as mind maps, picasions and prezis were used to show the information we had found and to start planning our music video. I used mind maps when planning what an INDIE genre is and what it consists of. This helped me bounce off of what I had already wrote and helped me think of more and more ideas. I used picasions and prezis to make presentations about things such as what music channels are suitable for my genre and the conventions of a music video.This meant that i could easily go back to them and see facts and information about the conventions of a music video if i needed to. The prezi's were quite easy to make and it allowed us to put in pictures as well meaning we had even more information to be able to back to and use.  I used Picasion mainly for uploading a lot of images, this way i could make a little slide show that presented them all.

  
HTML coding 

HTML codes were used to make my blogg look presentable. The blog is what I am storing all my research , planning and work on so therefore I wanted it to look great and presentable. By adding different codes such as drop down boxes and boxes with a scroll bar to put information in my blog automatically looked so much more well looked after.
Face book, PowerPoint and Author stream 

Here Sophie made a wall for our audience to comment on

During the evaluations I have used programmes such as Face book, PowerPoint and Author stream. I used Power points to make Power print presentations to show my scripts for a video that we have created.This means that when people are watching the video they can also read the script if they wanted to. I also used a PowerPoint presentation to show how our group made the digipak and music advert. This meant I was able to put all our screen grabs in a presentation and present them better.  I used Face book and Author stream to get feedback about my music video from not only people of the genre we were creating but a wider range of people as well. This was a great way of receiving feedback as it was very natural and the people commenting were able to be anonymous so they could say exactly what they wanted to. Positive or negative.

 Blogger 

Blogger was the website that we used to store all our information on, with out blogger we wouldn't have course work. We were able to make Posts that could include links, images, text and videos. Blogger allowed us to create really informative, well presented posts that were going to help get across to our audience what our music video was.

Apple Mac

The Apple Mac was what we used to be able to use the Internet, Final cut, Blogger and other things such as Photo shop. The Apple Mac was easy to use once taught. To print screen things we had to use the grab tool. And we had change alot of pictures from TIF's to JPEG's. The Apple Mac was where we were able to log onto Blogger which stored out Media A-level.



Videos

Videos were made a lot during the creation, research, planning and evaluations. A video was made on Final cut first as we had to produce a rough cut, then a final cut. I then created two videos for my evaluation 1 and 2.

Evaluation 3 (By Emily, Vicky, Sophie and Voke)

What audience feed back did you receive?

When creating the three platforms that we did we knew that audience feedback was vital. We needed to know what people thought of it and if they felt they would buy the music video.
For our rough cut we asked our media class and teacher to look at it and make notes. Make notes on what they felt was great about the music video and what needed improving. We used our media class as we were sure that they were going to know what went well and not only what to improve but how they felt it could be made better. Although our teacher isn't in our target audience for the music video like our media class we knew that by not only getting good point and bad points from her but sitting down with her and analysing the video and how we could make it better would be a great. We received feedback from the media teacher and students saying things such as: "Great story line" "Nice cuts" "The use of lip syncing in the video added great realism" some negatives of the music video were: "The strobe lighting follows on for too long" "the editing needs to be slightly faster and more like your animatic" "The signs are shown for too long". Over all our media students and teacher enjoyed the story line of the music video and the transitions that we used but felt that our cuts could be faster and our actual footage could be shown less frequent and for not so long.

 
After our rough cut was edited and we had made improvements we then put it on "Face book" for the general public to comment. We felt that this would help us receive a range of comments rather then comments from media students and teachers. The comments were varied and helped us a lot as each comment was different and praised us on different things and felt we could so better on different things as well. Many of our friends on "Face book" are music fans anyway so it was great to hear there view and I knew that their view would be critical yet realistic.
Here are the comments we received from out music video below. Overall they were all quite positive and gave us good insight to what we did well. The majority of people liked the story line, felt that the lip syncing when we have a split screen of both our actor and actress was great and that the new chorus had fast paced cuts that matched the tempo of the music. Here it was clear to see we had improved on our editing since the rough cut.

Here Sophie made a wall for the viewers that were not on Face book.




We also had a small private viewing for both of the media classes to view each others final music videos and comment on them. This was really insightful as it was nice to see people enjoying our music video and being extremely analytical while watching it. Our media class all wrote their comments on a piece of paper for myself and the group to analysis. Our comments from the rough cut were extremely different to the new comments. The new comments from our media class were that they enjoyed the new fast up beat chorus, they felt that our video as a whole was a lot more clearer and the lip syncing had really been improved. They also felt that the genre of the music video was really captured and shown through acting. This shows that we really researched our target audience and created ways of showing it through our music video.

For our digipak we went through the process of asking for our teachers view as we knew that it would be critical but valuable. Her experience and her critical view helped when showing the digipak to her because we knew that we were sure to get the truth about the positives and the negatives of the digipak. Our teacher felt that our music advert was great but our CD cover didn't match it well enough, this is when we decided to create two digipaks. This way our music advert would cater for both. We researched artists that had two covers fro their CD's and Albums such as Jessie J and Cold play and felt that we were in the correct position to do so. After doing this our media teacher felt that we had shown a great use of skills when making thew digipak and music advert and that we linked them really well together.

I feel that our audience felt that our music video suited our genre well, was suitable for our target audience and captured a interesting story line. Overall 80% of our target audience felt that our music video was a great representative of the song and about 40% of that statistic meet our target audience and fit into the genre we aimed to please. We feel we have met the demands of a INDIE music video however with out our target audience feed back we wouldn't have been able to do this.

Here is a video of what people thought of our music video and digipak: