Question 4

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

We used a range of technologies throughout our assignment for preliminary, research, planning and production, this allowed us to acquire useful knowledge that was before unknown. The preliminary task was to recreate the first minute of a music video as closely as possible in order to learn new skills which would help us in our final videos. Within our preliminary task we used different technologies such as Scribd and YouTube for presenting our work; Scribd enabled us to adapt our word documents and PowerPoints into a version that would be easy to embed onto our blogs, however there was some difficulties in using this software as sometimes it would change the layout and words that were in the document but after a few tries and tweaks it looked like the original again. YouTube gave us the ability to upload our video to one of the internet's most popular streaming sites for free, making the video available to public views and feedback. In the production of our video we used an iPhone to film the footage as we found it to be easier to film with for the close-ups which were heavily used in the video we were copying; to edit the footage together we used iMovie as it was readily available and easy to use. From this process we learnt key skills that would help us in the coming months to produce our final production; skills such as cutting to the beat which is where a transition between shots occurs on significant beats or parts of the melody and creates an overall more effective video as it makes the video move smoothly and creates a feeling of continuity between the video and song. It introduced us to thinking deeper into the connotations of certain elements of the mise en scene and editing and how every shot has a relevance, this made us think about what camerawork and angles would suit particular genres. We learnt the skill of lip syncing and making sure that in post production the vocals match up to the movements of the mouth to avoid any odd looking shots. From producing our preliminaries we found that the performance aspect is key and that there needs to be some kind of performance from the actor in many different locations to make the video look effective and interesting. 

Within my research I used Padlets, YouTube, a Prezi and a Word Cloud to present my work; Padlets are a free online presentation maker that allows information to be presented in a unique, aesthetic and different way than the standard blog post. I used Prezi to make an interactive presentation to make the experience of the post more interesting and entertaining for the viewer and a Word Cloud to present key words appropriate to the blog post in a more visually pleasing way to avoid a repetitive format; we also took the chance to take our own photos on an iPhone camera and upload them to our blogs. When researching a suitable unsigned artist we found a website which would then lead to our chosen song called natalielungley.com, this is the official website of our unsigned artist and contains information and videos of songs she has covered and even written herself, from this we chose her original song 'Secrets'. Through our research we learnt various skills that would prove useful in the production stages such as looking at the style of the song and choosing if illustration, following the lyrics word for word, amplification, developing on a particular theme within the lyrics, or disjuncture, completely irrelevant to the lyrics, would suit the song. 

When planning we once again used software such as Padlet, Prezi, Scribd and original blog posts to present our work on blogger. I also used PowerPoint and Word Online which is where you can embed your documents from the Microsoft One Drive straight into your blog without having to go through the process of Scribd, however Scribd was still used for various documents to keep the diversity of technologies. Screenshot images of Facebook messages were uploaded as proof that contact with the artist had been attempted as well as uploaded iPhone and DSLR camera images of our audience feedback and original images. The performance aspect was developed here when we learnt that having many performance based shots in many locations would be more effective as it keeps the video interesting and fresh and the mise-en-scene would need to fit the conventions of our specific genre. 

In the production stage of our assignment, PhotoShop was used to piece together the ancillary tasks of creating a digipak and magazine advert. Using PhotoShop allowed us to explore various editing tools and techniques and what particular mise-en-scene and effects suited our genre of choice. Having had previous experience with PhotoShop in years prior to year 13 we had a chance to hone the skills we had picked up over the years and develop them. Using this software we used healing tools and paintbrushes to airbrush the face and lengthen eyelashes, we also managed to slim the face down using a distortion tool to provide us with the Hollywood look of perfection where every model is heavily made up and edited. To add atmosphere to the overall look we layered a grey-scale filter over the images and blended them together so they transitioned smoothly into one another, on the grey-scale filter we erased some of it to allow colour through where we wanted it, we chose to focus on all the red accents on the ancillary pieces to give us our colour scheme. We found the petals slightly harsh and a little too dark against the lighter colours which was drawing too much attention away from the model who was the focus; to combat this we altered the opacity of them. Drop shadows were added in under the text to make them stand out more against the grey-scale background, this gave the font a little more presence within the composition of the product so it wasn't getting drowned out by images. We shot the footage on a DSLR camera that was placed on a tripod for stability although some shots came out shaky due to weather conditions so were excluded from post-production; we used a projector to project a video over our subject and filmed the result which created quite an effective shot for our genre, this idea was influenced by Lana Del Rey's video 'Summertime Sadness'.