How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
below are two videos that show the process of creating using photoshop and premier pro. In the Photoshop video, I show how I edited the photo on the magazine advert, and how I created the 'out now' graphic, on the premier pro video, I've shown how I created a couple of the effects in my video. The 'leave colour' effect was only shown once, although I had to use a few different techniques to be able to do this, including using a garbage matte with key frames, and cropping out the colour from the desaturated video on the layer beneath. The final video is a time lapse of me making a logo in photoshop.
Hardware
PROJECTOR SPECIFICATIONS
The specifications of the projector were important. I decided to use this projector, and not one that I could find at college, for a number of reasons. Firstly, this projector has a higher luminosity than the standard projectors used in class rooms, meaning the image it projects is brighter. Secondly this projector has a much higher resolution than the average projector, meaning the graphic being projected will be much higher definition. The projector also had an extremely low operating noise, at 30db the projector made less sound than the average human whisper, which was important as I didn't want the sound being picked up by the camera. It also heats up extremely quickly, which was important to allow us to start shooting as soon as possible.
- 18.5 µm² pixel size - This means that the quality of the image is higher than images/videos taken on cameras with lower pixel size. 18.5 µm² is fairly unique and way above average.
- LCD Display - The LCD display comes out and flips round so that the camera can be held in many different ways, but the screen can still be seen.
- The camera also supports 24p, has an eternal mic jack and auto focus.
- The camera has a flash mount on the top, which many other digital cameras don't. This allowed me to attach lighting to the top of the camera to help light the scene.
Here is an example of one of the shots that I got using the macro lens. This shot was edited to be black and white besides one colour, I've explained how I did this in the Premier Pro walk through at the top of this post.
The handle I used in the images above is a simple camera holder, this wasn't a steady cam. The reason I used this holder was so I could hold the camera with one hand while shooting without the footage being shaky. This holder was also used for the shot where the camera moves across the table, I used tis because if you look at the bottom of the holder its sort of like a sledge, and therefore it slid across the table smoothly and easily. The shot I got with this, which featured in my music video, is below:
Another example of one of the pieces of hardware that I used was my Bamboo Graphics Tablet. This allowed me to draw my storyboard straight onto my computer, instead of having to draw it out on paper, and scan it into the computer and edit it. The graphics tablet gave me the ability to create professional looking drawings quickly and easily.
Software
I used a huge amount of software in all of the stages of creating my media portfolio.
Image Editing
I used photoshop for all of the image editing in every stage of creating my media product. Photoshop allowed me to edit and create graphics in a variety of different ways. I chose to use photoshop over competitors such as Paint.Net as I felt it had more to offer in terms of its capabilities and features.
The above clip shows a time lapse of me creating the first logo for my artist (which was later changed from Nothing to Lose to Tame). The above video is an example of me using Photoshop to plan a logo, but it also serves to show how I used Quicktime Screen Recording software to record myself doing it, Adobe Premier Pro to edit the footage to make it into a time lapse, and Youtube to host the footage, and make it possible for me to embed it onto my blog.
Research
I use photoshop in the research stage as it allowed me to crop images I wanted to include on my blog. It allowed me to edit images together to make 'mood board' to present my research findings.
The above image is an example of something that I created on photoshop to help with my research, by using photoshop I could easily put these album adverts and album covers into on single graphic.
Planning
I used photoshop in many ways during the planning of my media products. An example of this is the fact that I used photoshop to draw out my story board.
I also used photoshop to create drafts for my ancillary texts, along with images from google, and drawn images, to make 'google mockup drafts'. This is also an example of how I used google's 'Image Search' to find images that matched the description of the ones I needed to create drafts without having to go out and take the pictures myself. Photoshop also allowed me to edit these pictures to make them look more like the ones I had in mind.
This image is an example, I got the picture of the girl looking sad in the shower from Google Images, and I photoshoped it to make her look like she had red lipstick on and makeup running down her face.
Construction
In the construction of the music video, I used photoshop to create certain graphics that appeared in the music video, for example, the 'Tame" logo was created in photoshop and added into the video. The rest of titles were made inside Premier Pro's Title maker.
I also used photoshop to create my two ancillary texts, including the 3D mockups.
Evaluation
In the evaluation, I used photoshop to edit certain graphics that I needed to include. I also used photoshop to create the + grid that was placed on top of the 4 videos to make it look more professional.
Video Editing
I used Adobe Premier Pro mainly, but I did use Final Cut Pro as well (once). The reason that I preferred Premier over Final Cut was because I had more experience working with premier, and so felt more confident in creating the video on that. I used Final Cut to create the video above, of the 4 different videos side by side. The reason I used final cut for this was because of a feature it has that syncs up different camera angles using the audio - this feature allowed me to automatically sync up all of the 4 video clips perfectly and make it look much more professional. Th resulting video (above) was used in my evaluation.
Research
Video editing software was not used in the research part of my portfolio.
Planning
An example of how I used Premier Pro in my planning is that fact that I edited together my lyric analysis, and synced it to the music, on the software.
Construction
My entire music video was edited on Premier Pro.
Evaluation
An example of me using video editing software is the video below, that I used to illustrate me using image editing software. I used Quicktime Screen Recording software to record myself doing it, Adobe Premier Pro to edit the footage to make it into a time lapse, and Youtube to host the footage, and make it possible for me to embed it onto my blog.
Survey Software
I used both Survey Monkey and Google Forms to create online forms during the creation of my media product. I started using Survey Monkey, but by the end of the project I was using Google Forms. The reason that I changed from Survey Monkey to Google Forms was because Survey Monkey was a premium service, and the free service that I was using had many restricted features, for example, you could only ask a maximum of 10 questions of the free version. On the other hand Google Forms was a completely free online software (webware), so I could ask more questions, lay it out differently etc.
Research
During my Audience research, I used survey monkey to gather demographic and psychographic information on my target audience.
Above is a screenshot that I used in my Research from the audience survey that I conducted, 89 people answered the survey, the screenshot above shows the 'what is your age?' question results. By doing this survey, I found out a lot of quantitative and qualitative data about my target audience. I found that the majority of the target audience were females (65%) ages 17-18. I found that the target audience was quite into music videos, watching around 3 per week - this showed me that they will be fluent in the language of music video codes and conventions, reminding me that I should be careful to either keep to them, or purposely break them. I also found out that the target audience expected to see dancing, singing and something out of the ordinary (among other things) in the music video. My survey showed that respondents felt passionately about there being a narrative to a music video, and it should be interesting to watch. I found that some of the things they didn't want to see hyper sexuality/exploitation of women, sexual content or irrelevant story lines. I also got a lot of qualitative information about people's favourite music videos, and what they liked the most about them.
To get more responses, I used an online coupon website (which lists coupon codes for top companies (e.g. 10% off amazon orders etc) to find two coupons that I thought my audience may be interested in. I then embedded these on the last page of my survey, and told people if they filled the survey out, they would get the coupons.
Planning
I didn't use survey software for the planning of my media product. But I did survey people. I used social media group chats by Facebook to ask my target audience questions about what they liked and disliked about my ideas. Image below.
Construction
I also used social media to find out what my target audience liked and disliked about my music video and ancillary texts.
The image above shows how I used the group chats to ask people which logo they liked the best. I ended up using the logo (logo 3) that the group chat (focus group) chose.
Evaluation
I used Google Forms to get information from my audience in the audience feedback survey. This information was used in Evaluation questions 2 and 3. And example is below.
Slide Show Software
During the course of my project I used software like Google Slides, PowerPoint, Slide Share and Prezzi to create and embed slideshows onto me blog. I used PowerPoint to design all of the slide shows, as they could easily be saved and imported into Google Slides, Slide Share or Prezzi, or alternatively, I could save each slide as an image and embed them onto my blog. This year I chose not to use Prezzi anywhere near as much as I did last year, the reason for this was because I think it takes too long to load, and is buggy and crashes a lot. I used Slide Share until it was bought out by LinkedIn, and the web software was changed, and as I didn't have a linkedin account I couldn't sign in, so instead I used Google Slides - which worked much better, loaded faster and was higher quality.
Research
During the research part of my blog, I used Powerpoint to create slides which I exported as pictures to go onto my blog. The below picture is an example of that, I used Power Point to label the conventions of different album magazine adverts. The picture to the right shows how I also used Microsoft's Excel to create a bar chart, which I then exported into PowerPoint.
Planning
I used Powerpoint to make, and Google Slides to host, my story board. I did this because having it in power point form allowed me to have the image, the shot number, the timing of the shot, and information about the shot itself. I felt it was easier to make it in powerpoint, and then export it into google slides. I also used powerpoint to create my lyric analysis, which I exported as pictures and put into Premier Pro to sync to the music. I then exported it and posted it to Youtube to allow me to embed it into my blog.
Construction
During the construction of my music video and ancillary texts, I didn't use powerpoint.
Evaluation
I used powerpoint in many of my evaluation questions to answer the question graphically. Because blogger's WYSIWYG editor isn't as capable as Microsoft's when it comes to formatting, it's much easier to use powerpoint and export the slides as images. Examples can be seen at the top of this evaluation question.
Word Editing Software
Although I did type up some of this blog's wording on Word, because blogger would often crash without autosaving, I decided to stop because I'd have to spend ages re-formatting the text, as word and blogger have different core formatting styles when it comes to the conversion of rich text the HTML.
One example of when I did use Microsoft Word was when I created a table for my audience research analysis. it showed what respondents liked about certain music videos, as Blogger doesn't have a built in table maker, I made the table in Microsoft Word and copied and pasted it into blogger, this also copied over the table formatting. The table can be found at the bottom of this page.
Blogging Software
Blogger.com was used in all of the stages of my music video production. I used blogger to write about my research, and organise all of the information on separate posts. I used blogger to write about my planning, making it easier for me to go back and view my planning to help with production. I used blogger in the construction of my media product, as it was all uploaded onto blogger (although videos were uploaded to youtube and embedded into blogger). And I used blogger for my evaluation, as the answers were all typed up on blogger.
Video Hosting
I used Youtube to host all of the videos for my blog, as youtube's infrastructure and user interface was much more developed than its competitors such as Vimeo. Youtube allowed me to upload and seamlessly embed videos into my blog, and because of its fast servers the videos loaded quickly on my blog.
Research
During my research, I used youtube to find out about genre and form. I looked at music videos to get inspiration, and find out about the different types and styles of music videos.
Planning
I looked at music videos on youtube to get inspiration, and find out about the different types and styles of music videos. I also hosted my planning videos on youtube, like my animatic storyboard and lyric video analysis.
Construction
I used youtube to host all of the drafts and the finished video.
Evaluation
I used youtube to host some of the figures I used to answer the evaluation questions. For example the video of my audience watching my music video and answering questions about it, and the clip of 4 of the stages of production.
Social Media
Two examples of Social Media that I used are Twitter and Facebook.
Research
I used Facebook to send people links of my audience survey, which allowed me to get a variety of responses from different people and build an audience profile.
I used Facebook and Twitter to advertise my audience survey.
As you can see, I used discount codes that I found on vouchercodes.co.uk to incentivise people to fill out the survey, I found them simply by googling 'discount codes', an example of one is below
Planning
I used social media during the planning of my products for multiple reasons. One example of when I used social media was when I used twitter to check that the user name for my artist wasn't already taken. I also used GoDaddy to check the web address was free.
Construction
I used social media sites like Facebook as they had Group Chat capabilities. This allowed me to create a focus group that I could ask questions about my products, and find out their opinions as I made them, for example when I was creating the artist's logo, I couldn't decide between 6 different designs, so I asked the focus group which one they preferred.
Evaluation
I used what I found out from social media in my evaluation above.
VJ Software
I first used a piece of software called Magic Music Visuals, which allowed me to create a GLSLShader that would react to my chosen song. "GLSL (GLslang) is a short term for the official OpenGL Shading Language. GLSL is a C/C++ similar high level programming language for several parts of the graphic card. With GLSL you can code (right up to) short programs, called shaders, which are executed on the GPU" [source: wikipedia]. The code I used to create the graphic is:
I then recorded another graphic, which I burnt onto a DVD to be played on the projector. The movement of the graphics on the video correlate to the beat and volume of the music.
Conclusion of Software and Hardware
RESEARCH
For the research I used Wikipedia and other online resource to find out information. I used Google Search to easily locate the information that I needed on the internet. I used Youtube to find examples to embed into my blog. The blog was made through Blogger, which allowed me to create a website containing my portfolio, blogger allowed me to do this without having to fully design and code a website, as it comes ready made, all I had to do was add my content.
I used freegifmaker.me and other online gif makers to turn small sections of music videos into gifs which I could then embed into my blog, this meant that I could easily illustrate exactly which part of the music video that I was talking about with moving pictures. I used Google Images to find pictures that I then embedded into my blog to give examples of what I was talking about.
I used Survey Monkey to create an audience survey and vouchercodes.co.uk to find coupon codes that I could embed at the end of my survey to make people want to fill it out, this worked well as I got over 90 responses in less than 2 days. I used Facebook and Twitter to advertise the survey and get people to fill it out. One part of my survey had to be presented as a table, as it showed what respondents liked about certain music videos, as Blogger doesn't have a built in table maker, I made the table in Microsoft Word and copied and pasted it into blogger, this also copied over the table formatting.
To do all of this I used either a college iMac, my iMac, A college PC or my Macbook Pro.
PLANNING
I used PowerPoint and Adobe Premier Pro to create my lyric video analysis, which I then uploaded to Youtube and embedded into my blog. To help me understand the lyrics from another point of view/perspective when making my lyric analysis, I used genius.com to find out more information on the song lyrics.
I used Photoshop to draft designs of my artist's Logo, and I used Facebook to ask people what they though of it, and created a focus group that I could use to get information from my target audience quickly and easily during the planning and construction phases. I used DaFont.com to plan which fonts I wanted to use, and get inspiration for my logo and the typography of my media products.
I used my iPhone with iMessenger to ask people what they thought of my drafts and plans. I used PowerPoint and Photoshop to create mood boards with pictures I obtained through Google Images, which helped me plan out my vision. I used Microsoft Word to create a risk assessment, and the exported it as a PDF. I then used a PDF to JPG Conversion Software to be able to upload the image to my blog.
I used a Graphics Tablet along with my Macbook and Adobe Photoshop to draw out the story board. I then used PowerPoint to organise the drawings, and annotate them with a shot number, their timing and a short description. I then uploaded this to Google Slides so it could be embedded into my blog. After that I used Premier Pro to turn the story board into an animatic, by editing the different shots to the music, and adding some 'ken burns' effects so that the stills zoomed in and out, as they would in the music video. I then exported this and uploaded it to Youtube so that I could embed it into my blog.
For my casting, I used Instagram to find out about my Makeup Artist, and I took a picture of my actor with my iPhone. I used my iPhone to take pictures of my actor trying on dresses in the charity shops, and I again used freegifmaker.me and other online gif makers to turn small sections of music videos into gifs to show the inspiration of my artist.
I used photoshop to create mock-ups for my ancillary texts, and Google Images to find images I could use in place of the pictures for my plan.
CONSTRUCTION
I used Facebook to ask people what they though of the different media products that I created, and created a focus group that I could use to get information from my target audience quickly and easily during the planning and construction phases.
For the visuals of my music video, I first used a piece of software called Magic Music Visuals, which allowed me to create a GLSLShader that would react to my chosen song, and create a graphic that I could project onto my artist. I decided to not use this as the screen recording software used up too much of my computer's CPU, and the visualisation wouldn't play, instead I created another screen recording of a different audio reaction video. I then used iDVD to burn this video onto a DVD with could be put into a PlayStation which was connected to the projector to project the graphic onto the artist dancing in front of it.
Once I'd shot all of the footage, using my Camera, Tripod and Lights, I took the Memory Card out of my camera and put it into a Memory Card Reader that went into my Laptop. I then imported the footage into Adobe Premier Pro, where I edited it to the music and exported a first draft, which I uploaded to Youtube and Embedded into my blog. I noticed that the song was sung by a female, and my actor was male, so I used Audacity to edit the song and change the pitch (I pitched it down by around 20%), this make it sound like the song was sung by a male instead of a female.
I used photoshop to create my ancillary texts.
EVALUATION
I used the Quicktime Screen Recording software to record my screen while I created one of the artist's logos. I then used Adobe Premier Pro to speed up the footage and add music to create a time-lapse, and then uploaded it to Youtube and embedded it onto my blog.
I used photoshop to crop images to upload to my blog to illustrate what I was talking about in my evaluation. I used Powerpoint to create slide shows and either exported them as pictures or uploaded them to Google Slides to embed into my blog. I used Youtube to find examples of music videos to embed into my evaluation answers. I used my iPhone camera, and filmed people responding to my music video, and used Premier Pro to edit the responses. I then exported the clips and uploaded them to Youtube so that I could embed them onto my blog. I used Final Cut Pro to edit together footage of my animatic, two different drafts and my final music video so the development could be seen side by side, and uploaded this to Youtube.
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