Question 3: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Research 
Before we started planning and constructing our music video, a lot of research had to take place in order to make the production of our  video run smoothly and effectively. It also allowed us helped us work out how we wanted our video to look visually.


YouTube allowed us to look at music videos from a variety of different pop indie artists. this gave us an idea of the visual style and codes and conventions of this type of music video. Youtube.Com allows us to access many Indie pop music videos and it is easily.

We are living in an era where the Internet and various different social networking and blogs are used  as a way of finding out information of new songs and artists. Face book (social networking site) allows individuals to upload songs and music videos from a variety of sources such as vimeo and youtube. Facebook exposes me to new songs. It also allows people to comment on the video, making us critics. We are able to comment on the things that we like and dislike about the music video.  Its a very social and relaxed way to find out about music and express your views.

Vimeo also allowed us to access music videos from old media students. This allowed us to see what worked well and what can be improved. I found the evaluation of student music  videos very helpfully as it made me very critical on what worked well and what was too ambitious for our small scale small budget music videos.

The research for my digipak and  and  involved me using a variety of web sites such as HMV, and Amazon as well as google images. HMV, allowed me to browse a variety of digipaks and analyse the , price, layout and it also had customer ratings, which gave me an idea of how popular that song was. Whereas Amazon allowed me to search music by genre, this was particular useful in the research of my ancillary products as it allowed me to see a variety of different indipop digipaks.



Planning Video 

Before we started the production of our music video we had a lot of planing to do. We started off by using a digital camera to take images of ideas we wanted to use in our music video. we then uploaded these images onto final cut pro, where we was able to make an aromatic story board.

 We used blogger in the planning and evaluation stages.

• We were able to look at various different blogs which allowed us to Analise other pop indie digipaks and music videos.

Construction

We used a variety of media technologies in the construction of our music video.

• Brand new state of the art video cameras
• Memory cards 
• Lighting kit 
• Tripod 

We used the equipment listed above when we filmed our music video.


 



During the editing process we used

• Mac computers 
• Hard drives 
• Final cut pro

To edit our footage we used Final cut pro
This software allowed us to do a number of things.  

We used the idea of spiting up peoples bodies and combining it with another persons. We done this with faces and bodies.

I used the crop key to get the section of the persons face that I wanted to use. I then placed the cut up images on top of each other on the time line so when the footage was played it created one person.
At first i found this as a challenge as it was hard to connect the faces, and still make it look like a face. However with a little practice it was alot easier to do. 






We also played around with speed in our music video. we done this so it created the illusion that the events that were occurring were repetitive and he always went out with other girls and stood up his girlfriend.  (cmd j)- this allowed you to change the speed of a clip.

in these clips we used final cut pro to adjust the colours and increase the brightness so it made the image quality look better. In addition to this we used the effect "Dazzle". this made the sprinkles on the girls lips look a lot more shine and sparkle.






A tool that we used quite a lot in our music video was 'chroma key'. I found this tool tricky to use at first as there was alot of darkness in the shots therefor there was a risk of us effecting the character we had in our shot. i then used 'colour picker' this allowed me to change the background colour. once i chose the colours that i thought suited the scene and fitted in with the music I added a transition and another colour. the different transitions added allowed the colours to change behind the artist in an interesting way.



 to create my ancillary products i used photo shop.

•  Used custom shapes to add butterfly's and i changed the colours of them.

•  I put a purple filter over this image so it fits into the style of the rest of my digi pak as the picture was originally too dark and i don't think it fitted in well with the visual style of the digipak.

•  I changed the brightness of this image as it made the picture look brighter and nicer.

•  i used the same image with a purple filter for my advertisement
• I added text to my advertisement 
• i also added a transparent grey filter behind my text as it made my writing stand out, as before it was hard to read the writing.