Evaluation Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Billy Clayton

Blogger Throughout the course of the year, case studies, research and planning, music videos and several other

pieces of extra curriculum work have been posted on blog publishing service Blogger.com. The site allows users to create a customized space for work sharing and has been an effective form of documenting set tasks. Once logged on, the site displays a list of previous posts which allows you to edit or alter work. This has been a beneficial tool as tutor feedback, which is often provided via the comment section on each individual post may advise some enhancements, thus enabling me to achieve the highest grade possible. To categorize my work, the use of labels, such as ‘G324 Planning Music Video’ and ‘G324 Completed Productions’ have been featured in order to make accessing each post easy and instant, allowing me to return to previous case studies to make revisions when necessary, as well as giving tutors, for example, a quick formula to locating my work ready for assessing. Blogger offers a default word document layout for pieces of work as well as a HTML section. This section is used for pasting links to power points or prezi’s, which I have found to be one of the most appealing ways to display my work which then puts the power point directly on to my Blogger page.

Soundcloud & YouTube Sites and apps such as SoundCloud and YouTube were predominate

uses throughout the course of the year. SoundCloud, a Swedish based online audio platform helped the group and I to find possible tracks for our music video. The site allows you to select genres and explore the tracks posted under the specific genre via hashtag. After days of exploring, we came across CoCo & The Butterfields track for ‘Warriors’ on the site. Once discovered that they were both an unsigned band and British, we knew we had found our track for the whole production, thus, SoundCloud provided us with the platform necessary for discovering the track itself. YouTube has also been a primary source to video researching and referencing throughout the planning and evaluating stages of the course. When undergoing research for similar artists to our chosen track, the ‘recommended’ bar besides each video has provided us with a variety of artists to reference as members of the same genre, thus helping to define our possible target audience. Also, when completing case studies, particularly genre and audience based tasks, I have frequently linked to music videos from YouTube of artists I am well aware of in order to closely reference and evaluate them, presenting screenshots as factual evidence to the points being made. When it came to distributing the final cut of the music video, YouTube was used to share the video, uploading it to my own personal channel before embedding it to my Blogger account, ready for both peer assessing and tutor feedback.

Music Video When it came to shooting our music video, a Sony HD Camcorder was used for this process. The camera

includes features such as a manual focus which detects the subject in frame, such as a face or close up object which maintains immaculate focus and definition. The camera also had a grid layout on screen whilst shooting which displayed how central our focus was, which again was beneficial during the shoot as it prompted us to direct our actress in to standing exactly where we wanted her. The use of zoom also benefited the production as this was used in various establishing shots as well as extreme close ups of the characters face to present expression. When it came to reviewing our work so far, the camera enabled us to select a playback tool in which we could re-watch footage and narrow down a selection of shots to the most aesthetically pleasing ones, providing us with assurance that what we were producing was either correct or required revisions, saving both time and effort.

Adobe premier pro was used for the editing process of the music video. This software allows footage to be imported on to a timeline and ordered correctly, proceeding the chronological flow of the music video. It also offers various editing enhancements beneficial to the appeal of the visuals, such as the ‘fade to black’ and ‘cross dissolve’ tools which were heavily important aspects to our music video as it helped to establish character and storyline changes. This is also where the MP3 file containing the track itself is placed on top of the footage, allowing cropping of both the footage and the track to take place in order to sync one another correctly. Again, a playback tool is provided for reviewing purposes for both the timeline-placed footage and the original camcorder footage, allowing us to narrow down and select the best shot for final usage.

Premiere Pro Examples

Premiere Pro with the timeline present Premiere Pro’s feature ‘Cross Dissolve’

Digipak When it came to researching real album covers and magazine advertorials for artists releases, I made

use of Google images and artists own websites in order to find cover art I was familiar with. I created a Blogger post displaying an array of artists promotional packages which would act as inspiration for my own print productions process. I then organised a photo shoot with friend and music video actress Danielle whom I have photographed on several occasions using a Canon SLR 450D camera. I shot the images outside, making use of the natural broad daylight and set the camera on ‘flash off’ and ‘close up’ mode in order to produce a very high definition image of the actresses face. I then imported the images on to Adobe Photoshop CS5. This programme offers enhancements such as the blur tool, the resize tool, the colour alteration tool and the warmth and hue tools.

This is where I enhanced the colour of the photos; the colour saturation and hue were altered in the editing process in order to emphasize and bring out the present colours of the photo. Danielle’s bright red hood with lipstick to match, blonde hair and blue eyes were made bold and captivating in order to continue the theme of magical realism in the print productions piece, thus maintaining the audience appeal I aimed to produce. The lasso tool and magic select tools were also used when creating a band logo – I took the band’s real logo and altered the colour from red to black and erased certain aspects in order to maintain a minimal approach and fit appropriately with the images. Font selection was also used in order to maintain a Folk/Contemporary vibe.

Adobe Photoshop CS5 ExamplesUnedited original image

Resized, colour altered image