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

Using my blog I have been able to record all aspects of my research and planning for each of my productions; the music video, digipak and magazine. For my music video I begun by researching into target audience asking questionnaires on music and music videos and documenting all results on my blog using Slideshare and embedding the results onto my blog. Through this I can refer back to these results which later on will help to make decisions on the target audience and how to aim our video at our chosen audience. I then researched into the music industry evaluating example music videos, CD covers, and the music channel Viva and CD adverts all of this was documented on my blog so that I can refer back to it so we can look at how we can make a music video to appeal to our chosen target audience and also gaining ideas, effects and design style for each of the productions. Planning for our music video we first selected our song looked at the lyrics and came up with initial ideas, then following with questionnaires to our target audience documenting the results as well as embedding a slideshow of our initial storyboard then developed storyboard. More detailed planning went into the video including the cast, costume, location props, filming schedule and possible shot types we could use and also looking at example videos of similar genre. Throughout the planning I documented all the research and planning of our music video evaluating each piece as it was documented. Slideshare allowed me to load various word documents and presentations that I was able to embed onto my blog which was a quick and easy process to do and is a better way of viewing those types of documents. Through documenting the information on my blog throughout the planning and shooting of the music video I was able to refer back to past information to make sure that our video would appeal to our target audience. The production of my digipak and magazine were similar looking at examples of each then creating the first drafts using Adobe Photoshop then getting feedback from the target audience in the form of questionnaires asking for their input then documenting the results on my blog to view then creating a final draft from the feedback I had received.

For our music video we shot the scenes with a Sony DV camcorder and also the tripod. Throughout the filming we made use of natural lighting no artificial lighting was needed as the natural lighting was sufficient for all of the scenes whether it was at the graveyard or in the family home of the mother and daughter. When our video was then ready to go into post – production we used the editing software Final Cut which is a video editing application created by Apple Inc. The effects we used in our video included, cross dissolve; which is an effect where one shot would fade out over another shot quickly which between some shots it was a better effect than just cutting from one shot to another it was a smoother transition between the two shots. Another effect we used using Final Cut was we removed the colour from some of the scenes to show the audience that the scenes were from the past of the mother and daughter having fun together, so it was clear to the audience which scenes we present and others hat were set in the past so that the audience can understand the narrative easier. In the scene of the daughter sitting on her bed looking at past photos of her and mother she throws them off the bed onto the floor using the effect of reversing this shot, the photos were thrown onto floor then the shot was reversed where they returned onto the bed and then thrown back onto the

floor again and we in this shot we also changed the speed of it so it was quicker to emphasize how upset the daughter is over her mothers death. A change we made with the scene of Carly singing is we re-scaled it so that the image was cropped to get certain things out of the picture. Using Final Cut was a brilliant piece of software to be able to use for the post – production for our music video as there are so many tools which then aided the developing of my creative skills with the effects that could be used for the music video.

Naturallighting

Crossdissolve

Colourremoved

Reverseshot Overlapping

shots

For my print productions (magazine and digipak) the software I used to create both of them was Adobe Photoshop which is a graphics editing program. The production of my digipak using Adobe I made use of several

effects. Working in the format of a PSD file I used multiple layers to construct the digipak. Using images I took of Carly from an arranged photo shoot I used a Nikon D200 and begun editing these photos using the cropping tool, a stamp tool which allowed me to copy other areas of the photo and paste it over another part e.g. the hair to make it more smooth lined. I also used the background eraser tool which erased everything around Carly’s figure and then finally changing the brightness and contrast of the image before opening them it into my digipak file. The lips were another image I took which I cropped then using multiple layers changing the brightness and contrast, painting the lips red then

overlapping these images to create lips then importing it into the my digipak file. Using multiple layers in my digipak file, I selected a background colour then moved the images around to where I wanted to place them, then finally adding the text in last, and saving it as a JPEG ready to upload to my blog. For my magazine advert working in a PSD format, I opened the files of my digipak and the lips then placed them on my magazine advert. I also made use of shapes as a background which allowed me to fade the colours using the lighting effects available changing the settings of the angle of the light so that the colours faded into one another, then finally adding the images of the HMV and itunes logo using the select tool throughout to move the layers around then saving it as a JPEG ready to upload to my blog.

Original image

Edited

Using layers

Tools I used - select and move

tool- crop- eraser- clone stamp tool