Hayley Cook - Evaluation: Question 4

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

In the production of this video a combination of school equipment was used along with other items possessed by our production team. The borrowed equipment was found to lack a certain quality similar to the other cameras, which created an almost grainy effect on some of the footage. This then meant that other arrangements had to be set as to re-shoot the performance scenes on multiple occasions. These extra shoots then took up a great deal of our actors time and resulted in some level of annoyance felt on their part as the initial buzz of filming faded and felt like  never ending cycle of performances, especially for our singer.

Despite this, the only major technological issue faced was that with the lighting. Although the cameras were correctly white balanced because of the different cameras used the lighting on one was not the same for another, meaning that if we needed two cameras for one shot the lighting would most likely be off on one of the cameras. However, once these issues were addressed we then uncovered a slightly problematic tripod, which wouldn’t remain in its appointed settings. This then meant that some shots had to be repeated as to stop the drifting of the camera. This occurred during the attempt at an extreme close up on our singers lips which are not present within the video as they appear to give it a slightly eerie feel, and others are used instead to create a more diverse element within our video.

After this the editing process then arose, which was to be conducted on Apple’s Final Cut Express. Mastering these techniques and effects upon this programme appeared to be slightly less problematic that last year’s attempts, as we found the technology to be far less complex as we had been previously acquainted with it, allowing for familiarity and so a much smoother editing process. We found once knowledge was obtained of how to achieve certain effects, i.e. changing the speed and colour of certain clips, the retaining of such was an easy process. For example, once we learnt how to achieve increased speed on our music video we could repeat the effect. Even is an issue was encountered a solution was always simplistic and understandable.

Prior to the creation of our music video we composed our ideas and wants for the video into a pitch, highlighting the effects and reasoning behind certain aspects of our video. This was conducted on microsoft power point as it was a programme to which our production team was greatly acquainted. Within this we composed mood boards to denote our intended overall look of our video, highlighting comedy and humorous conventions. We also used wordal to compose terms as phrases which we found to be definitive aspects within our video. This allowed us to easily convey what we wished to our peers, to whom we pitched these ideas.


Similarly before composing these videos we set out to create a segment of a music video to which we applied lip sync for the first time. This arose as a means of practice and preparation for the editing of our video as to acquaint ourselves with conducting aspects such as lip syncs. We then used Tom Jones' "It's not unusual" in which ourselves and our peers participated. This exercise allowed for us to ensure that we could in fact create a music video and ensure that the audio matches well with the footage. We found this to be a highly useful and worthwhile exercise. 

Other technologies used such a blogger has allow our production team to exhibit our work. This was then found to be a rather simple task, despite our blog lacking regular postage. No drastic issues then arose as a result of this. Similarly we uploaded various rough cuts of our music video to youtube in order to gain feedback from peers as to compose our video in a more successful manner. We also used social networking sites such as facebook to carry out similar activities.


Photoshop was used to complete our digi-pak, poster and magazine advertisement. The aim was set of creating and developing brightly coloured and bold pieces which would stand out in shop stores. This concept of these eye-catching ancillary texts then conforms both with the pop genre and those also targeting a youth market. In the creation of the digi-pak an initial idea arose for a silhouette of the band members to be present with the frames of brightly coloured sunglasses. However, we decided to put the title of the album "Famous" in the glasses as to lay focus upon this as well as the traditional pop genre elemental factors which are reflected in the bright and bold colours used. We also used a stamp tool to create the peace signs used, giving the band a more traditional feel.


THE LINK BELOW WILL TRANSPORT YOU TO MY WIX WEBSITE WHERE THIS IS DEPICTED:
http://editor.wix.com/editor/5793c360-fe0f-0e0e-6234-64e0648f7051/5793c360-fe0f-0e0e-6234-64e0648f7051?requesterAppOpGuid=9D415034-FCE1-4AF7-BE51-A140E8E82BD3