I have presented my response to Question 4 on the use of new technologies as a series of images and posts as I have a key amount of visual detail to reference too.
RESEARCH-
XTRANORMAL
I have found it very useful as another medium to present my ideas. Here is an example of how I have used Xtranormal to present my brief on our researched band- Foster The People.
MACBOOK PRO
For the start of my A2
Media Project, I bought myself a MacBook Pro laptop. It has been a major
advantage to me this year as I have been able to work along with my partner
outside school time which meant we always had access particularly in
construction stages.
ONLINE MAGAZINES +
NEWSPAPERS
Online
magazines were invaluable to my research. I checked several music online
magazines each week and the NME everyday. They not only informed me about music
news but about technology as well: evolving technology for advertising and the
music industry: I was able to watch snippets of videos very easily, see online
magazine advertising and keep up to date with current music media trends - Q's
online magazine was very good for media trends but did not update on a daily
basis so it was harder to keep up with evolving technology news.
The Times
online journal has been very useful and I have discovered some vital
information across the technology and culture pages.
BLOGGER
My chosen band and most
others use blogs as well as the other Web 2.0 platforms, giving information in
another form. I looked at Foster The People's use of a blog as a means of
communicating and interacting with their audience. It gave information about
the band which helped considerably with my research.
TWITTER
Twitter has been a very
useful tool acting as a social media that I can use to communicate with
friends, teachers, other members of my class/group and other institutions.
Although I mainly use Twitter as a way of following band members, groups and it
is a very resourceful direct source for picking up news.
I have followed several
bands and institutions including chief examiner Pete Fraser as he
provides up-to-date media guidelines as part of my research, using these groups
to find up-to-the-minute information.
Twitter has flourished
since many more people have smartphones, like Blackberry and iPhone because
tweets can come in like texts so people are constantly abreast of the news feeds.
They can also investigate interesting tweets immediately by accessing the
internet on their smartphone. There is a new development in Twitter that
follows trends and peaks of interest in certain areas by use of a hash code to
draw attention to a particular word or phrase - this made it easier to find
current media trends within my research.
YOUTUBE
I have used YouTube as the
start point in my research looking up music videos to build my research and
analyse across a wide range of music video genre's following Andrew
Goodwin's Codes and Conventions of a music video.
YouTube has been extremely
useful because its gives a suggestion after watching music videos which has
allowed me to explore further and find other interesting videos that I might
not have heard about before.
Furthermore, YouTube was a
crucial tool in receiving feedback for our first draft of the music video as it
allowed the public to view our music video and provide comments that
they could post underneath our video and even 'like' or 'dislike' it.
DAGADOP
Dagadop
is an
extremely useful tool as it allows you to search for another video without
interrupting the current one you are watching. I have used Dagadop to build up
my research for music video, creating a playlist of videos that we took
influence from.
MYSPACE
MySpace is a traditional platform for musicians to
provide access for fans to explore further for example- photos, tour dates,
music, videos and general band promotion. In fact Myspace scored 3 numbers 1s
for Arctic Monkeys and My Chemical Romance who used MySpace as their
distribution.
XTRANORMAL
I have found it very useful
as another medium to present my ideas. Here is an example of how I have used Xtranormal
to present my brief on our researched band- Foster The People.
SLIDESHARE
SlideShare is a Web 2.0 based service that allows you to
upload a file format from PowerPoint, PDF, Keynote or OpenOffice
presentations. I like using SlideShare because I believe its layout is clear
when presenting information for example with call sheets, research analysis
etc.
Main attraction, allowing you to embed your presentations onto to my blog. I have presented all my call sheets as a slideshare and included my final draft of the treatment as well because its very clear and organised!
PREZI
Prezi's are an
interactive, storytelling tool
used for exploring and sharing ideas upon a virtual canvas. It is a very
diverse programme, which allows
you to embed videos, songs, pictures and documents when sharing your
thoughts.
I have been very attracted
to Prezis and I have produced a few throughout my project that you can view
here: (link prezis)
http://prezi.com/2kfqcyxxc-ik/music-video/
http://prezi.com/2kfqcyxxc-ik/music-video/
FACETIME
Both my partner and I work
on MacBooks and we both have access to FaceTime, which is very useful
tool for setting up conference calls with each other when working from
home.
EVERNOTE
Everynote is an app that I
have download from the App Store on my macbook pro. Evernote is crucial in planning as it help you to remember
and act upon ideas, projects and experiences across all the computers, phones
and tablets you use as you can login in online to your account.
I have used evernote throughout my project for example taken from this screenshot is the
planning and preparation for the construction of our Digipack design.
DESKTOP NOTES
I found adding notes onto
my desktop was a very clear and methodical form to plan my media project as
well as adding reminders in the form of a simple 'To Do list' for the weeks to
make sure I completed the sufficient amount of work to keep in with my
deadlines for the project.
HOTMAIL/EMAIL
Email was very useful in
communicating ideas to each other during the planning and particularly the
construction stages of our project. It was very useful in sharing files between
each other in swift communication saving the trouble of delaying the precious
hours at school to share files.
MOBILE PHONE
I use my phone to great use
as a portable device away from the computer. I use my blackberry which is a 3g
device to access my emails, Facebook, twitter, online resources. Finally, its
very useful because all my group/band members own a blackberry device, very
similar to mine and I can communicate with them over an instant messaging tool
called BlackBerry Messenger, which is...
CONSTRUCTION-
DIGITAL SLR CAMERA
I used a Nikon D3100
Digital SLR camera for filming the footage for our music video as well gaining
the still to use for our stop frame animation and shots for parts of our
digi-pack and my magazine advert.
However by the end of our assignment, the media department bought a new camera (Canon 550d) which similar to was my own camera was an SLR; however the general quality and the fact that it could capture at 1080p HD was the reason for using it for our studio shoot. It was a
The school media department
was also able to provide a fish-eye lens which we used for added effect in some
of the studio scenes to give a more innovative arty effect.
ADOBE PREMIERE PRO CS5
Adobe Premiere Pro was the
software we used to edit our footage in order to finalise and construct our
music video. In fact this software is professional industry standard meaning
that we had huge access to a wide range of possibilities when editing our music
video that you wouldn't have with for example iMovie 11. I found it was very
complex at very sight to work with but using a number of tutorials online for
example http://www.lynda.com/Premiere-Pro-CS5-tutorials/essential-training/59974-2.html and fellow students help, which gave me enough resources and an understanding to work with the software.
ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS CS5
During the editing stages
of our film, we were very lucky to have access to Adobe After Effects, which
allows you to create
motion graphics and add visual effects to a professional standard. We used After Effects to strong effect
throughout our music video for example during the opening scene with the vinyl-
the changing colours were added, as the vinyl was spinning, we also adjusted
the lighting levels and enhanced the saturation in the some of the particular
scenes to give off a more aesthetic/phsychedlic setting.
ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS5
I used photoshop as part of editing the digipack and my magazine cover. I also used it to great use when adjusting the colours on the keyboard scene.
LOGIC PRO
We used Logic Pro to cut
and edit the timings of our song because we felt the song was too long for us
to support our storyboard. I felt it was important that we had a high quality
version of the song so we brought the song used for our video off the iTunes
music store. I was very fortunate that my partner was a music technology
student because he had a complete understanding on how to use Logic Pro and cut
the track down to a suitable length based on a group decision. The
process was relatively straight forward furthermore as we loaded it into Adobe
Premiere Pro on my laptop, laying down our track for the visuals to structure
around.
QUICKTIME PLAYER
During the post-production
stages in our project me and my partner seeked advice from experts working on
Adobe After Effects, much to our amaze, we discovered that QuickTime had the
function to ‘screen record’.
This was extremely useful
when learning and producing more technical effects on Adobe After Effects.
iPhoto 11
iPhoto is used for storing all my footage for my music video in an organised layout where i can organise by dates which is easy to access. iPhoto also stored all my photos that have taken for my magazine advert and digi-pack shots.
iMovie 11
I used iMovie 11 to import my strop frame animation shots and piece together the separate frames into a sequence and exporting as a .mov file. I used iMovie because the software is much more simple and quick to use rather than Adobe Premiere Pro.
I also used iMovie 11 to export my movie on to YouTube because it was a direct and fast method to upload and it retained the 720p quality that was lost uploading the music video any other way.
EVALUATION-
YOUTUBE
YouTube is
the main platform for marketing and distributing a video so me and my partner
uploaded our video onto YouTube for feedback, to build up a following and also
make adjustments to our footage according to public response.
FACEBOOK
Facebook was very useful
for obtaining feedback: I was able to get feedback on video footage, different
font choices for my print products and the design of the print products
themselves. I also shared a Prezi on my newsfeed for people to view.
YUDU
GARAGEBAND
Together me and my partner
used Garageband on my macbook to record the voiceover narration for Question 1.
I thought it was a relatively straight forward and easy process considering my
relative inexperience to the software but I thought the quality of the sound
was loud and clear and it was easy to chop and change where we wanted the voice
overs to go. In fact we were able to place the audio tracks and layer them
wherever we wanted around our music video as garageband allows you to bring to
layer the video so you can see where all the tracks are getting layered.
