Music Video:
Digipak:
Magazine Advertisement:
Evaluation Questions:
Question 1
Question 2
Question 3
Question 4
Other posts:
Research
Planning
Progress Updates
Production
Thursday, 20 April 2017
Wednesday, 19 April 2017
EC: Evaluation Question 4
“How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?”
We used 'blogger.com' as a collaborative e-portfolio in order to collect and construct our progress and production. We each had individual tasks to complete and upload, however, the use of 'blogger.com' became an advantage when we were assigned group tasks. The feature of multiple editors allowed us to collectively work on a single post from any compatible device, as blogger uses online storage and does not require a download to run. This also meant we could use our time as a group to discuss the content and work we were going to achieve, and make a plan to follow when we were not together, allowing a more efficient structure of working.
We used the search engine 'Google' in order to acquire information about the genre of our artist, and we used the video sharing website 'YouTube' to view Flume's official channel, which contains his official songs and music videos, in order to gain a greater understanding of his style and conventions. Another website we used was 'SurveyMonkey.com', which allowed us to construct the questionnaires we needed to in order to get a collective audience feedback, and have a variation in the respondents geographic due to the international access of the internet.
Web 2.0 was the most useful tool in all of our coursework, as it allowed us to research and plan our video, by researching the conventions of the genre and artist, and also view many sources of information, enabling us to check the validity of the information we viewed. Being able to watch existing music videos from the same genre and artist as a key aspect to our inspiration, as we were able to establish common forms and conventions that we could follow in order to make a complying media product.
For principle photography, we used a Canon 1200HD Camera, which is a popular type of item regarding prosumer technology. The availability of such technology allowed us to create a higher quality video, and be more creative in the types of shot we used. The high quality of camera allowed us to film extreme long shots in order to establish location, allowing us to construct our narrative with ease
The editing software that we chose to use was: Da-Vinci Resolve. This allowed us to edit several of our media products, including our animatic and final production. This software allowed us to utilise editing techniques such as colour grading, and cutting. This enabled us to construct the illusion of continuous action, enabling us to form a narrative, which is a key part to the conventional music videos of this genre.
We used Photoshop to edit our printwork. It allowed us to change brightness colour saturation, allowing us to conform with the purple/pink colour scheme that Flume uses in the majority of his media products. Our research on Flume using Web 2.0 informed us that Flume does not appear in his videos, but has previously appeared on an album cover, and appears in the majority of his adverts. From this information, we decided to include a star image in both our digipak and advert - our digipak having two of four images as a star image, and our advertisement image being a star image.
To conclude, the use of modern media technologies was vital in the entire creation process of all of our media products, as Web 2.0 allows for extensive research, and prosumer technology for the creation of our products.
Thursday, 2 March 2017
DC: Navigation Post
Final Production and Evaluation
Research
Planning
Progress Updates / Reflections
Production
Sunday, 15 January 2017
DC: Dan Clark 0040 Final Production Evaluation
Final Production
Digipak
Magazine Advert
Evaluation
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Our group used Blogger.com as a collaborative e-portfolio to bring together all of our planning, construction and evaluations. For example, the number of planning tasks we completed throughout the process, this includes research into our artist and genre and focusing on the metanarrative and conventions. Another example of the use of media technologies is our Web 2.0 Research using Survey Monkey. We found it very useful as it acted as it allowed us to gain feedback on our initial ideas on a platform that was highly accessible to our target audience, we simply had to send them the Survey via email or text for them to access it. We also conducted research into existing media texts, using both our chosen artist, and a range of other artists within the electronic genre. This research allowed us to ensure our ideas were conventional of the genre and the artist, for example the use of a narrative music video, accompanied by a digipak that featured Flume.
As we developed our narrative for the music video we constructed an Animatic. We hand drew each frame within our narrative, filmed the frames and edited the footage together using the editing software Da Vinci Resolve. We found this to be a very useful stage of planning as it allowed us to fully visualize our narrative, tweaking any frames that we felt weren’t effective. Furthermore, it allowed us to create a guideline for our cutting rate, something particularly important in a music video due to the beat of the song.
Before we began shooting we pitched our idea to the class. We made our Pitch in Prezi, compiling all of the planning and research that we had conducted. This included links to PowerPoint slides from the website Slideshare, and links to planning videos we had uploaded to YouTube, for example a video of us testing out various pieces of equipment.
During Principle Photography we used my own Canon 1200D HD Camera, and various pieces of Camera equipment. Some shots we are particularly pleased with include the extreme long shots that established Brighton as the location, which we found to be effective due to the quality of the HD Camera. We also found our tracking shots to be effective, for example a tracking shot following the Protagonist as he walks through the party scene. We tracked the protagonist walking through the middle of the room before leading the camera to follow a line of action off to the side of the room, then returning to the protagonist. We believed that the use of the track in this shot increased its effectivity due to the smoothness of the Dolly. Finally, we found our close ups to be effective due to the quality of the camera, we also felt that the disjunctive close ups of the characters early on in the video established the narrative effectively. We faced several challenges while shooting the production, for example an important piece missing in the Jib. We overcame the problem by shooting the shot handheld, using the tripod on its highest setting, and climbing on top of a piece of furniture. Another challenge we faced was the fact that our primary location, Brighton was a fairly long drive away. While wasn’t a problem during the early stages of filming, as we drew closer to winter by the time we would arrive in Brighton after school it would have already turned dark, rendering the footage useless due to continuity problems. We overcame this problem throw a combination of colour grading to help re-establish the continuity, and entering weekend shoots with a clear plan to ensure we shot as much as possible on those days.We edited our video using Da Vinci Resolve. We decided to use Da Vinci due to the fact that colour grading was crucial for our idea, and it is a very proficient colour grading software. Our video involved one black and white line of action, and one in full colour. We focused on the black and white line first, experimenting with several different forms of black and white by tweaking first bringing the saturation of the shot down, then altering the Contrast and hue of the image. We wanted a dark image to connote the emotions of depression and negativity, so we upped the contrast, bringing out the dark colours and shades in each shot. We also decided to place a vignette on the footage, as we liked the effect it had on other videos that we had analyzed. After using the vignette, we found that it was particularly effective when combined with the black and white shots, as the dark colors faded into the black vignette well, particularly when we raised the contrast of the vignette even higher than the base footage. Similarly, during the happy resolve at the end of the video, we altered the hue to bring out the orange colours in the shot, to connote the protagonist’s feelings of happiness. Cutting on beat was imperative in our production as our chosen song fit within the electronic genre, music which relies on its beat. We carried out the planning to match the beat however there were some discrepancies. To overcome this, we went over our timeline several times, editing the footage to ensure it cut on beat exactly, maintaining the overall flow of the video.
We used Photoshop during the production of our physical subsidiary texts. It was important for us to form a link between our Digipak and Magazine advertisement to construct a cohesive image for the artist. I used the similar technique of duplicating an image of the artist, one overplayed over the other. I then adjusted the colour of the lower image to a a light purple as it is the artists signature colour, before applying the comic style filter 'Poster Edges' over the top. I then used the eraser tool to remove half of the artist face on the top image, revealing the comic book style image below. When shooting our images for the Digipak we decided to use multiple backgrounds in order to give us freedom when developing the albums style. One of our favourite images of the artist used a background that wasn’t cohesive with our chosen style, therefore we selected the focus of the image, before removing the background, we found that due to the objects in the background of the image we couldn’t simply use the magic wand tool to remove it. Therefore, I used a combination of the eraser tool, the selection tool to progressively remove all of the content in the image except for the artist. After comparing thisimage to our other chosen images we decided it didn’t fit due to the colour and the lighting used. We adjusted the brightness and contrast to construct a cohesive Digipak, selected the artists clothing and changed the colour to the artist’s signature purple, before removing the branding using the stamp tool.
When Evaluating our coursework, I decided to present both Questions 1 and 2 in a Visual style, using Da Vinci Resolve to visually display my points through a combination of images, video clips and text. I believe this form of evaluation was very effective, as it allowed me to convey the ideas and decisions behind the production, without having to physically explain it through text.
In conclusion, we used a variety of media technologies throughout each stage of production, using it to visually present our Ideas, produce our production to a high quality, and evaluate our work cohesively.
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