1. HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE
CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND
EVALUATION STAGES?
There are many ways in which the use of media technologies has improved and helped creativity within this project. When beginning
the project, the research stages included essential use of technology. The band that we chose to use are not very established in the
music industry yet; they are an unsigned local band meaning there was little information on the internet about them that we could use
for our research. Mainly, we used social media in the form of facebook to get information about the band and to get in touch with
them. Facebook has been especially useful in this respect as we were able to keep in constant contact with the band to ask any
questions that we may have. For example, the initial message sent was to ask for permission to use the song. This was useful as we
could get a direct response, whereas if we had chosen to use a largely commercial band or song, there would be little chance of
actually getting permission from a famous record label. The use of facebook also contributed to the actual music video as we could see
updates that the band posted; one post revealed that there would be a local show. We therefore took the opportunity to go and film
some live footage of the band playing a gig which we have included to give the music video a live performance element. This would
not have been possible without social media. Facebook messenger was also useful as the whole project was based around group
work; this meant that the group needed to be in constant communication to discuss ideas, delegate tasks and arrange meetings for
filming sessions. Facebook messenger was the most ideal way of doing this as it is very a convenient modern technology.
Social media has also made a big contribution in the research stages. We created a questionnaire on a site called survey monkey in
order to gain audience research. This is a very useful tool as it is very easy to use as you create your own questions and the style that
you want them in and it analyses the results of the survey for you to produce qualitative and quantitative data. I posted this survey on
facebook to get responses from as many people as possible and get the best content about what an audience wants. We gained over
100 responses which was great for the audience research because it allowed us to see what our target market was interested in and
2. The research and planning stages included a lot of discussion as it is a group project. We decided to document this and record some of our
discussion on a smartphone as evidence. We then uploaded this sound clip onto soundcloud - another modern way of listening to music -
and then this could be embedded onto our blogs. We were taking notes during our discussions, however, we concluded that this was a more
creative and interesting way to display it and it also continued the use of more technologies.
The basis of all of our coursework had to be uploaded onto a blog and for this I used blogger; I believe it is important to make the work I
upload to my blog visually interesting as well as informative; media technologies have assisted me in doing this. For example, using google
slides allows for different layouts and colour schemes rather than a simple microsoft word document. The presentations made on google
slides then have to be uploaded to a site called slideshare so that it can be embedded onto my blog. Attaching the files in this way makes
them a lot clearer for any visitors to my blog.
As part of our research, the group decided to record a video of ourselves reacting to some music
videos as a form of analysis; this was a decision made with the aim of creating a new and
different platform for the analysis, instead of it being in a written format. The video was filmed
using a Nikon D60 Digital SLR Camera and edited using iMovie. We chose to use this software as
it was simple to use and we thought it would be a more appropriate technology for the small task
at hand, considering we knew that later in the project we would be using Premiere. This meant that we had created diversity in
our editing techniques and also been more efficient as this software was less time consuming and due to this video only being
part of the research stages, this meant that the quality of the video needn’t be as polished as the music video for example
because the level of professionalism needed was much less.
When trying to upload our video we came across an obstacle due to the fact that featuring the song in
our reaction video created some copyright issues. This made it impossible to upload the video to
Youtube and instead we chose to upload it to another video sharing site named Vimeo. This alternative
platform allowed us to avoid any further issues as we could get an embed code from this and transfer it
to our blogs. This shows the group’s initiative when faced with a problem and it also meant that the
range of technologies used expanded.
3. Adobe Photoshop CS5 was used a lot during the planning and production stages as we already had experience
from the first year of media studies; this meant that we didn’t come across many problems and if we did, we
knew how to solve them immediately, making the process fast and easy. When planning we used this software
to compile images into a mock up for the digipak that we were later going to create; this displayed the style and
the type of images that we wanted to include in the final digipak.
In the production stages we used photoshop to create the final digipak and magazine advert. Our new and
more developed understanding of photoshop allowed us to create two very professional looking products.
The magazine advert is all based around the original photo that was taken at the Faus Pax gig. The photo
was taken on a Fujicolour Superia Colour 400 then manipulated to create the effects that you see. The
background of the whole advert was created by using the pipette tool; we picked up the colour from the
photo and applied this to the background to create continuity. There are lots of small details that photoshop
made possible which make the advert seem much more professional - for example, in the bottom left
corner the tag for Instagram has a gradient over it to make it look more realistic by matching the actual
instagram logo. In addition to this, the other red and yellow text was achieved by duplicating one layer,
recolouring it and then moving it slightly so it was visible underneath the other. This creates a more visually
appealing look, instead of one block colour. We made the yellow colour on the release date brighter to
make it stand out more to an audience. The stars on the advert were copied and duplicated from a Q
magazine to make them look more realistic. The lines that appear above and below the main image on the
advert were putthere to make the shot feel more authentic and make it flow on the page better. This was
done by taking an image of film edges and then using the magic wand and quick selection
tool to cut out the parts that we wanted and placing them on the advert. The detailed use
of all of these tools clearly shows improvement from our previous work. It also exhibits
creativity and the skills we have utilised when using technology. For the digipak, similar
technology and tools were used to create the images and the effects on them. The digipak
consists of images and text - the fonts were all taken from ‘dafont.com’ then extracted and
dragged into a fonts folder where we could then see them on Photoshop and resize them
with the text tool. Using this site allowed us to have multiple fonts that are all interesting.
4. The filming process for our group was difficult and we faced a few problems. As i
mentioned in my post for the pre-evaluation, the first few filming sessions were irrelevant
as we did not end up using them. For these sessions we used a Nikon D60 SLR camera
because it is of good quality. We used this camera with a tripod and sometimes a shoulder
mount to balance it. These are the cameras the college provide for us to use, and although
we had never had any previous issues, on one of the filming sessions we discovered that
the Nikoncamera that we had been given was not working. At this point in the project we were on a tight schedule and needed to get the
video filmed as quickly as possible. We did not want the broken camera to hinder our progress so we decided to use another
group member’s iPhone 7 to shoot the video. We had previously seen other media studies music videos on youtube that had
been filmed on a smartphone and these were of a very high standard. The iphone 7 has a 12 mega-pixel camera which is
impressive for a smartphone and it also has optical image stabilisation; this ensured that there were no issues with the shots
looking shaky or hand held, as this was a worry when we realised we would no longer be able to use a tripod with the iphone.
The shots taken with the iphone ended up looking better quality than those we had already shot with the camera and therefore
we went back and refilmed some things for consistency purposes. This shows our group’s initiative yet again as instead of giving
up, we were persistent in filming and found a solution which actually benefitted us. The use of technology was very important as
it was extremely convenient, easily accessible and allowed us to create better quality footage for the video.
The most important technology software in the production process was Adobe Premiere CS6; we chose this
as the editing software for the music video as it was the most advanced. This was an extremely useful
software as it enables you to edit the footage in an unchronological order. This was an advantage because
we could organise clips at the end of the sequence before the beginning if we wanted to. Each member of the
group spent some time editing the video so it was fair and through this i developed my skills further. We
were able to add the audio and cut the clips down to the size we wanted and then put them in an order
which looked visually appealing and fitted in time with the music. We did things such as adding effects and
transitions to the clips as well as enhancing audio and contrast levels. There were some clips that looked slightly different to the
rest, so instead of re-filming, we decided to adjust the contrast and brightness levels of the clips so that they didn’t look
noticeably different. Premiere was also used in the evaluation stages when editing the short audience feedback video.
5. YouTube was another essential technology during this project; it was used during the research stages
for the textual analysis as the videos we analysed could be accessed easily and re-watched as many
times as we wanted to get as much detail about them as possible. Through this, the group realised that
this was definitely the most used music video sharing site and so this is where we uploaded the final
video.Uploading videos to YouTube is a very quick and easy process and we recognised that this was a good way to allow our video to
reach a large audience in the quickest time. Another advantage of using YouTube is that it creates a very easy way to embed the
videos onto our blogs.
Another key piece of software that was necessary was a site called slideshare; I chose to use a blogger account to
upload my coursework to and because of this slideshare was very helpful as it is not possible to upload a
powerpoint straight onto blogger. A way around this problem is to upload the presentation to slideshare and then
use the embed code to transfer this to my blog. This code then allows me to compose the link which then creates an effortless
viewing experience that people can see instead of them being forced to manually click on a link which can be time consuming.
As well as using google slides to present my work, microsoft word has also been very useful in the process of
research and planning. I use this software less often than google slides merely because I feel that powerpoints
have more of a visual appeal, however, for simple documents, microsoft word is perfect. For example, we used
word when creating the shot list and shooting schedule as this did not have to look attractive in any way and we
felt this would be the most efficient way of getting the job done.
