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

stages?

For the initial research I used the iMacs at school to browse the internet for the information needed.

I used websites such as Wikipedia, NME, Lyricsmania and Youtube to research the history of music videos, to watch through existing music videos made by various directors, different styles of video - which were narrative, concept and performance to select potential songs, and research my chosen artist, song and lyrics.

At the end of October I acquired my own Macbook and did the majority of my work on it, as I found having everything in one place was much more simple and allowed me to work on my project at home and at school without any of the difficulties that come with transferring work via USB sticks and emails.

In the planning stages I used Microsoft Word for the rough storyboarding of my video. I also used this program to produce the rough plans for the ancillary tasks, as it is simple, easy to use and quickly and efficiently produces what I needed.

For the filming of my video I used a Canon PowerShot A2300 16.0 MP digital camera with 5x zoom. I chose to use this camera over a video camera as it is compact and convenient to carry around with me at all times, which is what I needed to film the scenes for my video. The image quality of this camera is superb – 16.0 MB is more than enough for high quality shots. The footage was saved to an SD card in the camera, and transferred to the Mac via the card reader slot in the side of the computer. This proved to be a lot quicker and more convenient and efficient than using a video camera, as the entire process was cable free.

For the post production stage of creating my video, I used iMovie. This project was my first experience of using the program, and so it took me a while to get the hang of it. Uploading the clips, adding music, cutting the clips and adding transitional effects in was fairly straightforward, however it took me a long time to figure out how to move the start of the song to a later part of the video in order for me to add the sound effects I desired in the opening scene. To resolve this, I searched how to do it on Google, to find that a few people had experienced the same problem, and so there was a spectra of answers to help me sort out the problem quickly.

I used tools such as the stabiliser to smooth out bumps and jerky movements in my footage. I tried out various different effects, settling for the ‘bleach bypass’ filter to alter the colours. I have used a sliding fade effect in the opening scene to resemble the person person waking up and their eyes opening. Throughout and towards the end of my video I have used cross fade transitional effects. The final transition is a fade to white effect, which works really well as the final clip is a tracking shot towards the end of a tunnel with a bright light coming in at the end. The fading of this clip to an entirely white frame represents the idea of there being a light at the end of the tunnel, and a sense of relief after the chaotic journey to this point.

The sound effects in the opening scene, of the alarm clock and then the disorientated feel of a drone sound show the confused sort of feeling when the person wakes up surrounded by the remains of the drug fuelled night before.

For the ancillary tasks, the photograph I used was taken on an iPod touch and edited on the photo editing app Instagram. I created the rough draft of my digipak and poster using Photoshop. I then discovered a free photo editing website called Pixlr, which has similar filters and effects to Instagram but is available on laptops and desktop computers rather than just on mobile devices. This helped me to create a much more professional looking digipak and promotion poster compared with my first draft.

For the evaluation I have used a presentation format uploaded onto slide share to be viewed online. In this presentation, which you are watching now, I have included various different transitional effects and added a music track.

I also recorded footage of myself answering one of the questions verbally, filmed with the webcam built into my Macbook, edited on iMovie and uploaded to Youtube, and the other two questions have been typed up in a traditional format on Microsoft word and has then been copied and pasted straight onto my blog.

Throughout the project I have uploaded all of my work onto the blog website Tumblr. I had no previous experience of using the site and at first it was difficult to maneuver but I soon got the hang of it and overcame the difficulties.

Overall I feel that I have learnt a lot from the technologies – hardware and software that I have used throughout this project. I have developed skills using programs I had not used before such as iMovie, and I improved on my skills using the programs that I had used before such as Photoshop, compared with when I used them during my AS magazine project.