Evaluation Question 4

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





Different Media Technologies

For Evaluation Question 4 we explained how we used different media technologies in the process of creating our music video from the beginning to the end of the making of the music video. These technologies also aided us in some parts of creating the music video. By using technological convergence we have merged different technologies together such as our smart phones and the computer to transfer images between them by bluetooth for example, we have used this for our benefit throughout the process of research, planning, construction and evaluation. These are all explained in the video. I also created a video using a website called 'Animoto', and this website allows you to make a 30 second video which including pictures and text. The video that I created shows the different equipment that we have used in all stages of our music video and also gives information about how we used them to our advantage for our project.

Some of the technologies that we used in the process of making our music video were;

• Camcorder
• Tripod
• Smartphones (iPhones)
• Photoshop
• Final cut Express
• Social Network (Twitter,Facebook)
• iMac
• Blogger
• Bluetooth
• Facebook
• Animoto
• Wordle
• X-Mini Speaker

Research

In the research stage in the beginning of our music video, we used a few different media technologies and social networks website to gain research for our project;

• Youtube 
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Survey Monkey

The most important website here was Youtube, as Youtube is a website where all music videos are uploaded for everyone to see. Because of this we could watch multiple music videos to get inspiration for what ideas we could incorporate into our music video. This allowed us to also see music video from a variety of different music video directors how will all have different ideas and visions. We studied the top 100 greatest music videos, this gained us a good insight into different music video allowing us to get ideas for what we wanted to do for our music video. In particular, we listening watched music videos from artists in the indie genre that we have chosen to do. By studying these videos, we could see how the music videos in this genre as made in terms of style and themes.

We also carried out a focus group and a vox pop to gain research from different people to what their opinions were on music videos. This was the best research we did as they could give us a honest opinion on their views on music videos. This is the most effective way to get ideas for our video by seeing what other people prefer in a music video it terms of ideas and styles.

Planning


When planning for our music video, we only used some of the technologies out of the ones that I listed above. The main ones were;

• Youtube
• iMac
• Smart phones

The most useful technology that we used through the planning stage was the iMacs. We used the iMacs for many different planning tasks. To prepare for our music video, we had to complete many planning sheets so that when we came to the construction part of the project, were completely clear on what we were doing so that we could efficiently record our music video. We also created an animatic, to do this we took pictures of each of the scenes on the storyboard that we had drawn and then used Bluetooth to transfer the images from our Smart phones to our the iMac. We then used Final Cut Express to edit the images together so that the animatic demonstrates the structure of our music video.

Construction

The construction of the video was the main part of the project as this was the part that involved making our music video. This is also the section of the project where we used the new media technologies as we incorporated them together for our benefit throughout the construction of the project. To record all off our music video the main piece of technology that we used was the digital camcorder, the tripod and a monopod. The digital camcorder that we used was not of the best quality but there were good features about it such as; it is very light so that when filming for hold periods of time it does not become tiring. It is also very easy to use so that when getting out the camera to record there was minimum preparation that was to undertake to begin recording. We used the tripod as much as possible throughout the filming of our video to try and obtain the steadiest shot possible. We also used it because we did not have a fourth member of our group so we used the tripod to hold itself up. However many shots we did we also used a monopod so that we could do moving shots, especially in some of the narrative sections of the music video.

Once we had recorded all the footage that we needed, we had to upload our footage from the camcorder onto the iMac that we were using. We imported the footage straight into the program, 'Final Cut Express, so that we could begin editing as soon as possible. Final Cut Express is a very advanced software program but with experience that we have gained over the last two years we had many ideas of things that we wanted to do with tour footage.

Once we had completed all the editing of our music video we then had to create a digipak and magazine advert. The digipak would be the 6-panel album which would include our CD as well as information and artwork by the band. The magazine advert would be a one-picture poster which would include reviews by a range of different prestigious music magazines and newspapers. To take the pictures for the digipak we simply used our Smartphones, and then used the Bluetooth features on both the Smartphone and iMac to transfer the images from our phones to the iMac to then begin editing. To make both the digipak and the magazine advert we used Adobe Photoshop on the iMac's. We used different effects for both the album digipak and the magazine advert so that they are not the exact same, however both the main album cover picture and the advert picture are the same.

Evaluation

For the evaluation section of the music video project, we did not use too many different media technologies as most of the evaluation stage involved writing on our blogs. However we did use some media websites which were beneficial to the evaluation of our music video project. We created images in Photoshop which explained the different conventions of our music video by also comparing them to other popular music videos, mostly videos in similar genres of music as ours. We also created a prezi using a website called 'prezi.com', were we showed how we used made the combination between our main project and our ancillary tasks. `