Question 4 Evaluation

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

With the construction of our music video, evaluation and in our research and planning stages, we used a range of different tools, software, websites and filming equipment to achieve a final product with high standard ancillary texts and blog work to show the depth of work gone into our coursework.
In the research and planing stage we used internet websites like youtube to look at professional pop/rap music videos. This was to give us inspiration and ideas for our own music video. The one website that we are always going on is blogger, posting all of our findings and ideas. This keeps track of what stages we're at and is a quick way for us to look back at our research for tips etc.

After mind mapping all of our ideas we drew up a story board. We than filmed it in order to give a very rough idea of what our video would be like. For this we used a canon camera, recording our story board and then transferring it onto our blog. We also used the camera to film our actual video:
Along with the canon video camera we used a giottos tripod to capture all of our footage and enable us to use whatever camera angle and panning that we wanted. The tripod was also extremely useful to keep the camera steady in focused footage such as lip-syncing as well. There wasn't any other technologies involved in the actual filming process.

Editing was a process heavily involved with different technologies. We first had to download our song, 'You Ought Know,' from youtube and put it onto Final Cut Pro. This involved youtube converter where we had to copy the link from youtube to the youtube converter, then it would download and go on to itunes as an mp3. Once it was in itunes it was easy to then place in to Final Cut Pro ready to make adjustments, for example it's volume. Final Cut Pro was also the software used to edit our video until it was finished. We imported all of our footage, marked what parts we wanted, cut them out and then placed onto our timeline where all clips are put in place. These clips would then be left exactly how they were filmed, or we changed them using a variety of tools and techniques:
One of our most commonly used tools was colour correction. This gives you the option to change your clip to whatever colour that you want. One example would be the clip of the rabbit on a lead where the grass, rabbit, and actor's leggings keep changing colour. Another technique that we often used was reversing footage. For example in the begging of our music video we reversed the two dives into the pool so it looks like they appear from the water and flip up onto the high diving board. Other techniques that we used was speeding the clip up or down, both use in our video, for example the clip where all three actors are walking down the hall way and we sped up the footage to make it more interesting and eye-catching. We were also able to create short shot durations using the timeline where we'd place are footage on there and cut them very small, placing either side of other clips to create a flickering effect. Final Cut Pro was extremely useful and the most appropriate software that we could have used.
To produce ancillary texts that would conform to other ancillary products of professional music videos, we needed to research online, other previous magazine adverts and digipaks. One magazine advert that was a great help in giving us ideas was Rihanna's Talk that Talk album. All the information included on the ad, and the pictures and visuals were great for inspiration and helped us understand what we needed to put on our own. This internet research was a great tool in helping us produce an appropriate rage of ancillary texts.
Continuing with ancillary products, we needed to actually create our own. For this we used Photoshop. This technology allowed us to upload any photo that we wanted, and shape into an advert and digipak. For example, we uploaded a photo of our table scene in the forrest. Photoshop then allowed us to cut out the background and replace it with an alley covered in graffiti. This enabled us to keep up the theme of bright, random quirkiness! Another example of a technique that we used in photoshop was the blur tool. With this we morphed the background and made it blurry/smudged. We used this tool on the background of our final magazine advert. Some other tools we used on this software were:

• Dodge - makes he image lighter on the areas that you've highlighted 
• Burn - Makes the area darker
• Eye dropper - which picks up the exact colour of a part of the image that you have clicked on.

We used all of the same tools for both our magazine advert and our digipak's front, back and middle. Photoshop was an extremely useful technology that gave us plenty of opportunities to be as creative as we wanted. There was a wide range of tools options that we enjoyed experimenting with and including in our final ancillary texts.

The final bit of technology that we have used is Prezi, the software that this evaluation is presented on. It is a creative way of showing our work and research throughout our whole coursework. We have been able to include pictures, videos, snippets of professional work, and writing to support all of decisions in our work. A different way of presenting would be the path between each bit of information: his is a link that takes the viewer to each sentence, paragraph or visual anywhere on the screen. We have enjoyed this technology as we have never used it before and it is much more exciting and interesting to look at and work with than a normal presentation with slides.