1. A2 Music Video
Evaluation
Question 4
“How did you use new media technologies in the construction,
research and planning, and evaluation stages?”

2. Research
 When doing research, on an Apple iMac, to find out more about
the genre we decided to do, we used Google as our search
engine. Google helped us to easily find what we are looking for,
as well as being simple to understand. It was useful finding out
information about the typical conventions of the Indie genre and
to find out more about what the artist of the song, Jack
Johnson, is like and even to find the lyrics of the music video.
Google images was good to have a look at what style people in
the Indie genre are in too and should look like, as well as
looking at other artists digipaks for inspiration.

3. Research
 Another media technology that I found very effective was
YouTube. YouTube enabled us to look at other music videos
for inspiration and ideas. Along with being able to search for
the things you wanted, after YouTube would suggest similar
things to you which is where we found multiple music videos
that really helped with our research. You could search
anything on YouTube and it is almost certain you would find
what you are looking for which was really simple and easy
for us to find what we wanted. This was one of the most
helpful media technologies that
we used throughout our
research.

4. Research
 Our mobile phones were also useful in the process of
our research. iPhone’s were the type of mobile phones
that were used. We were able to research anything we
were keen to learn about when we were away from the
computer. This means we could just Google or
YouTube anything we wanted at any time.

5. Research
 MTV and other music channels were particularly good
when deciding what song we would choose for the
music video. On TV you there are a variety of music
channels for every genre of music. Knowing that we
wanted to do Indie, we focused on those channels,
where we found the current song we did for our music
video: Jack Johnson ‘Better Together’.

6. Planning
 We did all of our planning on an Apple iMac 2 GH2 Intel Core 2
Duo Processor which has 8 GB and more of memory for us to
play around with. These iMac’s are very easy to use and
navigate around, especially if you are used to Apple products.
They were much easier to use than if you were to use a normal
computer, particularly because you can do things like drag and
drop. This is where you can drag the file or image you want and
simply put it anywhere. It was particularly useful on Wordpress.

7. Planning
 For the planning side of our music video, the internet was
crucial. This was mainly used to access websites like
Wordpress. Wordpress is an online blogging website that
lets you crate a profile for free and post what ever you
wanted to on it. This enabled us to create a whole page on
our blog dedicated to the planning of our music video. We
could simply type in any ideas that we had and post them on
our blog so that they would be back there every time we
went back on it. This worked to our advantage to make sure
that we
had the planning of our music
video exactly right, collectively
bringing all of our ideas
together.

8. Planning
 Once again, YouTube was a big part of our planning. It worked in our
favor when planning shots and scenes for our music video as we
would look at other music videos for inspiration to develop our ideas.
 In the planning process, we developed storyboards of what some of
the scenes would look like so that when we got to a filming day, we
would know exactly what we had to do. Once the storyboards were
completed, we used a Epson V300 scanner to put them on to our
Apple iMac’s and then on to our blogs on Wordpress. This made our
blogs more visual so that we could understand everything that we had
to complete.

9. Planning
 In terms of the Digipaks, to plan we used Google to
look at different Digipaks in order to find some
conventions to follow. The Digipaks we found on
Google Images were very useful, so we put them on
our Wordpress blog where we could keep looking back
at them and write notes on things that we could
develop and challenge on ours.

10. Construction
 Before we started creating our music video, we used Final Cut Pro
X to edit some test footage in order to get used to how everything
works and things we could do to the video. We did this twice, one
with footage of people playing tennis and the other was test
footage that we had filmed with a Canon Legria HD camcorder.
This enabled us to have a play around with Final Cut so that we
knew what to do when it came to editing and constructing our
music video. By using this camera, we could get inspiration for the
type of shots that we might do and how to put them all together.
We also did shots in our test footage with a tripod, this prepared
and assisted us in how to use it as we had never used one before.

11. Construction
 Final Cut Pro X was used in the construction of our music video.
We used it to import our clips and put them all together to make
the music video. Once all the footage had been uploaded, we went
through it to find this bits that we found we could use. When you
find a suitable piece of footage, you select the part you want and
drag it down to the timeline and drop it where you want it to be
placed in your music video. This worked to our advantage so we
did not have to place the whole clip of footage on the timeline and
edit it there. We were able to highlight bits of the video that we
could use and mark the parts that were no good
to us. This made it simple to find what we
wanted so we did not waste any time.

12. Construction
 Final Cut Pro X makes editing and constructing a music
video a lot easier than anticipated. There is a wide variety of
effects and transitions that you can add on to the music
video so that it looks professional and not boring. Seeing as
our music video is in the Indie genre, we established that the
typical Indie conventions do not use many effects or
transitions unless it is a really out there video. This is why in
our music video, we only used the fade transition and effect
so that we
could overlap two clips of footage to
look like the character is remembering
something/having a flashback.

13. Construction
 In Final Cut Pro X, we were able to edit some of the footage
that we did not feel was right. On some of the shoots the
lighting looked fine, but when reviewing the finished product,
the footage seemed yellow and discoloured. To solve this we
edited it so it did not appear so yellow and added a white
balance so that the lighting looked normal and bright. Also,
with some of the footage we moved that camera slightly so it
looked a little bit unprofessional but luckily with Final Cut Pro
we were able to use the ‘Stabilisation’ tool which analyses
the primary movement and stabilises the video to that
primary movement, making it still and good enough to use.

14. Construction
 The Camera we used to film our music video was the Sanyo 3m/10ft
Waterproof Xacti Dual Camera. It is a very good camera that had lots of
storage and memory to keep all of our footage on there. We were able
to shoot many different things throughout the filming period without the
camera dying or running out of space which was really useful so we
could get a lot done in one day instead of separating all the filming
days. This camera is also HD ready, so all the footage was shot in HD
and looked really good.
 As well as this, we used a camera Tripod so that our footage was still
and lined up where we wanted it. This made it easy as all we had to do
was click play and it would film what we wanted.

15. Construction
 When designing the Digipak, we used Adobe Photoshop CS5.
Photoshop is a brilliant media technology for producing things like
digipaks. You can design it however you have imagined it by
simply using the tools that are on Photoshop. What we found
particularly useful was the use of effects and being able to play
around with the images and colours to exactly what we wanted.
We also were able to download new fonts from 1001 Fonts, which
were then imported and put onto Photoshop so we could use
them. We could find any font we wanted to fit in with our Indie
theme, which we managed so completed our look for the Digipak.

16. Evaluation
 Part of our evaluation was created on the new media
technology called Prezi. This is an online presentation
website where you can create your own presentation in a
new and creative way. It can be quite difficult to navigate
around, however, once you get used to how everything
works it is a really good way to be able to display information
and present evaluation questions. On Prezi, you can import
YouTube videos without it navigating away from the page
which works really well especially when you are presenting it
to someone. You can also import pictures very simply, by
either importing them or dragging them from your desktop
which is a useful technique.

17. Evaluation
 Microsoft Powerpoint was also part of our evaluation.
Powerpoint allows you to display many different things
on a number of slides. We thought that this was a good
tool to use for doing an evaluation question as we were
able to separate slides into subject areas so that is
clear and easy for people to read. Also for us to
navigate around. With Microsoft Powerpoint, you can
import images and add effects on to them which makes
the whole powerpoint more visual and interesting.

18. Evaluation
 For the audience feedback question on our evaluation,
we used the Canon Legria HD camcorder to record the
audiences reaction to our music video. This enabled us
to get a clear image of what they thought of the music
video and what we could do to improve it. It makes it
easier to understand as it is a video of them talking,
which is better than a written review because it is more
visual and its like they are talking to you.

19. Evaluation
 Slideshare was used to put our Microsoft Powerpoint
on to the internet so that it was accessible to everyone
that needed and wishes to see is. This is a very useful
tool as it would be very difficult and inconvinient to just
post each slide on to our Wordpress blogs. With
Slideshare we can just simply post the link and it will
take you straight to the powerpoint.