Q4 draft

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluations stages?

Research;
Youtube.com – This allowed me to conduct initial research into the conventions of the rock genre by looking at existing media products, I was also able to use the found videos to create a shot count which aided in the planning of my own video.
Facebook.com - I setup a page for my record company, which allowed me to gather audience research. It enabled me to post updated version of my video to be critiqued by my target audience, which in turn influenced the decision I made during the editing.
Twitter.com - Twitter allowed a platform, not only to gather audience research but also to post diary style entries of what I had been doing and what I had left to complete. This helped a lot with time management. The creation of the twitter profile also continues the theme of the record label, which I established through a Facebook page.
Blogger.com - I used blogger to display and organise all of my work. As well as it is vital to the presentation of my overall work, I also found it very useful as an archive tool as it contains lots of sources from which I can take inspiration. It shows a clear progression of my idea and project development, which aided the production of my final products. The information on my blog is also easily accessible and helped me to schedule my time efficiently to finish each task.
Apple iMac - I produced the majority of my work using an Apple iMac. The mac OS has a number of different tools, which made creating my project a lot easier. Final Cut, for example, is a programme, which is only available on mac.I also used the screen grabbing functionality to gather research and document my production process. This is done by pressing cmd, shift and 4 and dragging the curser over the area that needs to be grabbed. An image will then be saved on the desktop.

Planning;
iMovie – I used iMovie to create a storyboard animatic. This helped me to visualise the way the video will look by synchronising the drawn images on my storyboard to my chosen song. I used photoshop to crop each individual frame from my storyboards and then imported all of the images into iMovie. The programme has a timeline feature, allowing me to order all of my images by simply dragging them; creating a very basic form of the animatic. I was then able to import the music file that I intended on using in my video, which helped me to time how long each image would be shown. This enabled me to changed the time of each image by dragging the side of the clip, making the visuals sync with the audio. When it was all in sync, I was then able to export the video to a .mov format and upload
Email – I used two different email programmes in the planning stages of my project. Outlook allowed me to send a permission request to the record company behind The Pretty Reckless to ask if I could use the song Since You’re Gone for my project. Unfortunately, I didn’t receive a reply to this email.I also used Hotmail to send emails to my actors, ensuring they were available for shooting. I also sent them images and video clips of how I wanted them to look/act before they got on set. This made it a lot easier to direct.
Prezi - Creating a Prezi allowed me to document my influences and key concepts. This helped me to ensure my project followed my desired direction. Prezi allowes information to be laid out in a mind-map style. Looking at information in this way can aid the development of new ideas.
Photoshop –
Camera –

Construction;
Final Cut – I used Final Cut to create my rough cuts and finished product. It allowed me to categorise my clips into folders from different shoots. For example I had a 'narrative' and 'performance' folder. Final Cut has a very intuitive interface, containing lots of different tools, which makes video editing very easy. I was able to cut my clips and place them together on the timeline very quickly. There were also options, which allowed me to view the wavelengths of my audio track, which helped me to sync the video to the music very efficiently. I was also able to add different effects to my clips such as black and white, the fade to colour and the different speed settings.
Photoshop – I used photoshop to manipulate all of my images to make them fit the theme for my Digipak and Advert. Photoshop allowed me to heavily edit the image of a landscape; creating lots of artificial shadows, setting the sky on fire and superimposing images of the band members onto it.
Camera – For the first shoot I used a different camera to the one I ended up using for my final product as I felt the quality was unsatisfactory. I used a Nikon D3100 to shoot both the video and images that I used for my final product and ancillary texts. The camera allowed me to shoot in HD with greatly improved the quality of my video and it also allowed for the zoom and depth of field to be changed quickly while filming. This helped me to conform to some of the conventions of the genre which I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. I carried out 2 photoshoots for my Digipak and Advert, one consisted of the band and the other focused totally on fire and matches to match my theme.

Evaluation;
Final Cut
Prezi
Fraps