EVALUATION - QUESTION FOUR - FINAL

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation stages?

Blogger.

Throughout this and past year's coursework the main piece of technology which I have constantly used is Blogger. This is website that allows me to 'hand in' work to the metaphorical desk of the internet. My Blog address is http://www.edmediabog.blogspot.co.uk/
(N.B. Sadly a rather unfortunate typo). Throughout this course the idea is to post your thoughts ideas and updates onto the site and then have your teacher read them etc. This has been a fantastic service to use as there is no time lost in whether you left your work at home or if you lost your memory stick, simply because it stores everything on the website ready for you to edit and upload at a later date. Also a very helpful safety measure saves your work immediately after it has sensed you have changed it, so you will always have the most up-to-date work even if your computer unexpectedly closes. When first using this system it was suggested we use an additional service called SlideShare which allows us to upload documents in a neat and easily expandable window, allowing us to save space. I decided against it as overall the result was still the same except without the extra account information to remember and the technical difficulties that I have seen alongside it.


Camera.
Since all of my footage was stop motion and the rest was created on final cut express I didn't actually use a video camera for any of the filming (Which is actually a little impressive considering it's a Media Studies A2). But I did check one out just in case I had a change of heart, it was a Sony HDV CMOS Handycam with which I also used a Manfrotto 190xB tripod in case of any necessary steady shots. 
However for the rest of my footage I used my teacher's (kindly lent) Digital Canon EOS 1100D. This allowed us to change certain settings in more detail(namely the exposure) to how I wanted it, which would allow us to create this effect. Which is what I was aiming for at first obviously but then I decided to go down a more simplistic route after it was realised it wasn't feasible to write out all of the lyrics in long exposure lights. But after all of the effort and the day taken out of college to shoot said scenes I still added a few shots in.
Another advantage of using an SLR was that the capturing process was seconds not hours, while other groups were still capturing after an hour, I was currently editing together all of my shots. Giving me more time to focus on the smaller things such as choosing which the right photos are to use.










































Lighting. 
Lighting was a crucial part of my video as originally the light exposure was going to be the main setting, so as you can see in the video all of the scenes with the light exposure technique are shot in the dark just to make the words more pronounced and 'obvious'. 
Apart from these mere few seconds of shots there are only two other lighting types, as one set were shot outside so there was obviously natural light used and there was no extra artificial light used as luckily it was a light day and it would have been obsolete. 
Lastly the shots inside the house are all done under normal artificial lighting. This was actually planned as it meant that the footage I captured would look far more realistic as if you were really in 'Justin's' home with him. I also decided not to use any extra lighting as I would have had to hire it myself and it would have been risky as never having used it before I wouldn't have known what the effects might be and if they would have been good. Also with practical difficulties such as transport etc. All the while taking up time that could have been used to edit.
The genre of indie/rock actually fitted in quite well with the less well lit almost 'grimy' images the camera took, enabling us to connect with the genre fans if they were to see the video. 


Sound. 
Sound was a much larger part of the project than it usually is at this level of media studies. This is mainly due to us having recorded our own song due to the artists we originally intended to use running low on time to write a song. So we decided to write our own which at the time seemed logical. Sadly not. Anyway having already started we decided to construct it into the luckily to hand Garageband. So after many weeks of beat finding, lyric writing, and instrument playing and cups of tea it was finished, all of this part of the process gave me real experience with the program and has given me new skills which is something I don't regret. 
The rest of the audio work was fairly simple and just involved importing it into Final Cut Express and locking it down in the audio track so it wouldn't split which was one problem I came across in editing. The only other part to it was that whenever a new video clip was imported I had to detach the audio and delete it from its video a tutorial for which can be seen below:

1. Choose clip from selection.

2. Place clip in Timeline with song's audio track.

3. Click the Lock Key (A) on the video track to stop it from also deleting. Then click on your video's audio track (B) to delete it from the video. Then click the Lock Key again to be able to edit your video. 






















Editing. 
When it came to editing it was a very time consuming process as obviously it involved changing the timings of each photo used to half a second or a quarter of one and all with around 150 photos. One of things which I found most important was in fact editing the pictures together to go along with the beat which if it didn't, would have been perhaps even disorientating for the audience. Also, the ideas of the pace of the video fitting the musics links very heavily up with Goodwin's musical theories. This involved experimenting with many different timings which again was very time consuming. the other part of  my video which is the shaking text was pretty much the same principle. Come up with different ways of displaying the lyrics which represent what they're saying at that time, while also making sure that they're in time with the music. 

For instance, when the lyrics on-screen are "crunching bones on the soccer team" the word 'breaking' splits in half and hangs down (as if it were broken...). 


Similarly with "got him seeing double" the word double appears twice (as if whoever was looking at it was having double vision).










It was tricky editing this at first because I had never used Final Cut Express before so I was literally learning from nothing and working on a mix of guessing which buttons to press and a series of some helpful but mostly unhelpful YouTube tutorials. but after all of this I am now comfortable with using Final Cut Pro, Express, and even the newest format 'X' to edit in most situations. When it came to transitions the decision were fairly simple to make as it was a stop-motion video which requires cuts to be most effective. There was one use of a cross-fade to switch from chorus to verse and vice-versa this was just so the footage would appear too jumpy and hopefully make it look a little more professional than it was at the time. 


There was also one particular shot which was done by writing out the lyrics of the song in cornflour and then rubbing them out. Then after this was imported I reversed the footage and changed the speed so that it fit in with the timing of the lyrics. I was very happy with the end result which basically looks as if someone is wiping the lyrics into the cornflour with one hand.

                                  
















Internet.
Also used along with Blogger were two main other sites which were YouTube and Survey Monkey. Both of these sites were imperative in their use as they allowed us to post our rough edits and our finished videos to blogger and helped us get feedback, for instance one of my feedback sheets (created on Survey Monkey) was attached as a link in the description of the video and people who viewed the video filled it out for us. This was a most useful tool as it saved us from finding people and dragging them to the computer for feedback, and it also was a good opportunity for unbiased opinions as it was unlikely that the person who may be on the other side of the world would be too interested in protecting our feelings. I decided to go against what other groups had done and not share my video on the social networking website 'Facebook' to get other people's opinions as I had mentioned earlier I was trying to avoid unbiased opinions. Survey Monkey was also the best way to collate all of the answers within the questionnaire so as to get an easy reading on people's ideas, views and opinions.


Print Productions.
I decided to go with a digipak which was the shape of a normal CD case but in fact was made of cardboard and with a slip in the front, this was because it could seem more environmentally friendly if it was used in real life maybe attracting new customers and possibly not alienating others. 
I used Photoshop CS3 for the designs of my Digipak and magazine ad. I already had a general knowledge of how to use PS so I was lucky in that sense. I first started off my deciding it was going to be an America themed digipak due to the references within the song. So I gathered all of the pictures that I had taken on a recent trip to New York and assembled them into lines blocks of pictures with similar colours and light to darkness ratio. I then chose a background picture which was a sunrise over silhouettes of skyscrapers and a man (Justin). I then upped the yellows in the picture using the colour balance wheel which then made the sun stand out above all of the buildings. I then used this colour for anything band related (e.g. the logo) using the colour picker tool. 
I then took all of the previously mentioned New York pictures and placed them over this image onto another layer. Obviously this made the silhouette image disappear. but I then made all of the other New York images translucent by adjusting the opacity levels. This covered all of it and so I left space for the band logo. I kept it simple and just used a font that I thought represented the band's style and genre. It was soft without serifs which took away the gentle refined aspect, but didn't go overboard with something that could have been the same font Slayer uses...
For the reverse of my digipak I simply re-created the same images except on the reverse and instead of adding the band name I added band member information and other information on other aspects of the group. All the while keeping within the same yellow used within the original sun picture. 


For my magazine ad I kept strictly to the colour scheme of my digipak mainly referring to the yellow and used the two same pictures of the band members as in the digipak. The only other real advances from the digipak (as I wanted to keep them very similar) were the reviews which were added in different layers over the top of everything else. Also, using the internet I was able to copy the itunes logo to add a more realistic feel.