Evaluation 4

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The most important part of my a2 coursework was that I had access to important software such as adobe Photoshop, premier and after effects which I used to create different parts of my coursework.
Research for my music video meant that I would be using websites such as Youtube and MTV to analyse and get inspiration from music videos of a similar genre. These sites contained thousands of videos and I could scan through them picking up new and effective Ideas which would help in my main task. I found clips such as “The Streets – Blinded by the lights” and “Ultrabeat – Pretty green eyes” as they have similar codes and conventions as mine. All of the product research that I did was very important in creating my product so I had to make sure I kept the information safe. I used the website www.blogger.com which is a blogging website and saves information under certain categories making it easy for me to keep track of my work. Videos and production logs can be saved on the website and I can also post diary posts to show how I’ve kept up to date with my work.
For the production task I had to create a photo shoot for my artist where I used a canon 550d camera which was very high quality. As it is a digital camera it means I can save hundreds of photos on a memory card so that I can take many shots until I have the right one. This is the same camera that I used for the shooting of my music video as I got used to the buttons and settings so I found it easy to record with. These digital cameras are being used for music videos for mainstream artists as they are cheap to buy and still produce a high quality. There is not much need for big cameras any more as these cameras are low budget but still produce the high quality that certain music videos desire. Devices like ‘The Red Camera’ cost around £20,000 and they are even being made into smaller and more portable devices which are used by Hollywood film crews. The smaller the camera ,the harder the handling so I used a stabiliser with my Canon for the start and end of my video to keep the camera sturdy.

I used Adobe premiere to cut my music video and add small effects. The cutting of my video was extremely important as I wanted to comply to Andrew Goodwin’s theory of the song and the visuals relating. Adobe premier allowed me to cut my video in time with the beat and choose what transition I thought would be suitable for each clip.
When creating my digipack I used the digital camera and adobe photoshop. I took many photos on the camera which were saved on the memory card then transferred them onto a laptop where I then opened the photo on photoshop. I could cut out the background thanks to me taking the pictures on a blank canvas. This made it easy for me to see the difference between my artist and the background. I then used editing tools such as color layers, motion blur and text layers to create my digipack in the style that I wanted. I look at tutorials online to teach me how to darken and brighten certain specific parts of my photo and it worked well.