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.
