1. Shianne Brown
Question 4
How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and
evaluation stages?
Planning
We used the internet as a pivotal source during the planning stages of our production.
Although this is not a new or upcoming technology, it still allows us to browse other
artists for information, for instance our interest for indie folk music was sparked after
watching and listening to Mumford & Sons, Laura Marling and Regina Spektor. On
the other hand, the internet could be seen as a changing technology as there are
innovative ideas emerging, such as the success of blogging, MySpace (social
networking) and emailing strategies, in regards of getting email alerts to your mobile
phone.
We wanted to market an artist which has a niche target audience and originality and
depth in their voice. This would be a challenge to us as this particular music choice
was not what we were usually accustomed to. It was difficult to find an artist,
however through unsigned music websites and MySpace, we were able to find a
specific artist who has the characteristics we wanted. Whilst waiting for a response
from the artist Laura Marling’s agent, we used emailing to get approval; this proved
to be difficult due to the demands of the music industry and was unable to get
approval.

2. Shianne Brown
Our attempt to get approval from Laura Marling’s agent.
Through the realm of blogging, I was able
to keep up to date the progress of my
media production; this was a chance to
keep a diary online which represents the
change in technology. Perhaps up to 5 - 10
years ago we used manual diaries, which
were not particularly the easiest form of
writing in addition to the time consuming
aspect which was and has indeed been
challenged and developed by online
blogging.
It allowed me to break down the
progression of the main and ancillary
tasks. Blogging is a relatively new method of showing a journey or development. It is
also a chance to depict your work in a professional way; it is contemporary, relevant
and new to our culture of the development of new media products. I used ‘Blogger’ at
first and then moved to ‘Typepad’ as it presents your work in a neat and professional
way; I preferred it as I feel as though it showed my work ever more coherent.

3. Shianne Brown
Construction
During the Age of Digital Revolution, music videos are able to devise
depictions of surrealism and imagination, through the art of HD
cameras, CGI and photo manipulation and much other advanced
software. It is interesting to note media technologies are growing at a
sufficient speed which encourages rivalry and competition, however
this is amazing as it allows creativity to emerge and as an audience we
get to get a taste of abstract and different styles. Adobe Premiere Pro
was the software we used to edit our production, prestige and common
in the industry, Premiere Pro enabled us to alter colour adjustments, transitions and
the speed of particular clips.
High Angle Shot.
During this particular scene we altered the colour adjustments slightly, (although the
sun was of assistance) it engendered a sense of surrealism and character to our
production, we changed the contrast and the lighting in order to give our music video
start quality, as the bright light often represents stardom. In addition, following

4. Shianne Brown
Goodwin’s theory, I was able to use a significant amount of close ups of the artist
which develop a visual style, which consequently is used throughout the production,
as well as in my ancillary texts. To a degree, Adobe Premiere Pro, allowed us to form
a communication with the audience via close shots which progressively constructs a
certain image of the artist. Furthermore, according to Carol Vernallis’ ‘Experiencing
Music Video’, this type of editing is referred to ‘MTV style editing’, this places
emphasis on ‘quick cutting’ and ‘editing on the beat’. This is turn concentrates on
genre
Two different shots emerged into one to bring an illusion of peace and sanctuary for
artist; which sends out the same message of peace to the viewer. This was a way of
developing the convention of the folk/indie genre as there is not a huge emphasis on
the combination of two shots, it
emerges two thematic depictions
which we have expressed in earlier
footage, peace and escapism.
As we were using Adobe Premiere
Pro we found a transparency tool
which allowed two clips to merge
into one, one being the background
whilst the other was most
prominent. And so, this particular
shot constructed an image of
heading away, as the sea in the
background epitomises freedom,
escapism and the magnitude of her
happiness. It is smooth and subtle
which gave the moving image, peace as it was not a sharp edit which is often used
within the pop genre, yet we followed the particular genre of indie/folk music.
Therefore, through the development of editing software, producers now have the
ability to manipulate the moving image to create an ideology that they want their
audience to see. This is a decision that producers often make in the planning stages of
their production.
The construction of this scene is a depiction of the media technology used within the
real industry. In Nelly Furtado’s ‘All Good Things Come to an End’, the producers
have used the transparency tool to give a smooth and calm atmosphere to the
audience. This tool also gives an escapism and surreal ideology incorporated in it, as
it combines the sublime (sea) and normality (artist walking away).

5. Shianne Brown
Similar to Nelly Furtado, we wanted to use the forage (long shot) of the sea,
combined with the appearance of the star; however as a form of developing our own
ideas we have used this shot as a significant moment in our work as Nelly Furtado
frequently uses it in her work, we did not want to over use it as it would’ve made the
shot less effective.
Whilst filming we used a HD camera recorder which enhanced the quality of the
filming to construe our naturalistic concept. The majority of our scenes are open scene
which were significant as the sun had a great impact on the quality and the naturalism
we wanted to illustrate. The invention of the camera-recorder has allowed a
generation of D.I.Y productions, whereby we no longer have to use extremely
expensive equipment in order to make a media productions.

6. Shianne Brown
Planning
Additionally, we created an animatic which is a storyboard with motion; this is used a
lot with the moving image industry, with the focus being on planning as it gives
distributors and buyers of the movie a chance to see what the final product will be
like. This also is a new media technology which is fairly recent with one of the first
music video’s creating this before actually shooting it was The Gorillaz.
Using Windows Movie Maker, we were able to develop our animatic. This enabled us
to use music and use transitions which would be a part of our real product.
Evaluation
In order to get feedback we transferred our work from an Apple Mac laptop which we
used to edit onto a hard drive. From the hard drive we then transferred our music
video onto our laptop. There were some complications as it did not work and so we
had to convert the video into a QuickTime Player format. This gave us the
opportunity to show our work to different audiences to gain diverse answers and
feedback. In addition, to record the audience feedback we used several methods,
firstly we wrote the questions for our questionnaire, thus manual answers were
produced, however some of the questions had numeric values so I transferred them
onto Microsoft Excel, inputted the data and then converted it into charts; bar and pie
charts to be specific. This would give a more professional and easy to read depiction
of our results from an audience.