QUESTION FOUR – HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE

CONSTRUCTION, RESEARCH PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGE?

BY OLIVIA CONCHIE

THE CONSTRUCTION STAGE

In the construction stage of our media

project we used many different technologies

to help create our music video and ancillary

tasks. The Macs were vital for everything

that we did as they provided us with the

software needed for many elements of the

work.

We used cameras to capture all of our

footage which we then uploaded onto our

mac.

THE CONSTRUCTION STAGE

The software that we used was final cut express. This enabled us to experiment with lots of different tools and to create the video to a high standard. We used the ‘Razor’ too to cut up the different clips and shots to make the construction easier. As we had our artist in front of a green screen playing the guitar drums and singing we used the ‘Chroma Key’ tool to erase all of the green in the background which was the ‘Particle Noise’. In addition to this the most technical part of the music video was having the artist on the same video 3 times, one singing, one playing the guitar and one playing the drums. The way we did this was by getting each individual clip and stacking them on top of each other on final cut express. Then we applied the ‘’Chroma key’’ tool to each clip. After we had done this we needed to re-size and reposition. This provided difficulty and challenges for us as we needed the artist to be even in size and ensure the three fit into the frame properly. After much trial and error we managed to complete it so it worked effectively and look realistic.

THE CONSTRUCTION STAGE

Although the ‘’Chroma key’’ enabled us to do some interesting things with

out video it also had some downfalls.

-It prevented us from using some of the shots we wanted to as they didn’t fit

properly.

- It sometimes erased things.

This made it extremely hard for us at times but after hard we managed to

make it work and get it to look effective.

Another problem we had to over come throughout the construction stage

was when we accidentally filmed some of our video in ‘wide screen’ instead

of the standard shot. The way we overcame this was by cropping down the

clip so it was the same as a standard shot. Over all this made the shots

smaller but it ended up improving some of the shots as the main point of

the clip became clearer.

PHOTOS OF THE VIDEO

THE PLANNING STAGE

Throughout the planning stages of our project we only

really used the internet and computers. The computer

was used for everything from scanning on hand written

work, images, storyboards to uploading all our work on

the blogs.

The internet was very useful for organising the group and

keeping everybody updated with what was being done

and what needed to be done.

THE ANCILLARY STAGE

We used many different technologies throughout the production of our coursework. The main technologies that we used were Photoshop and InDesign. The technologies were used for many different areas of the work but mainly for the ancillaries.

THE ANCILLARY STAGE

InDesign and Photoshop were used for many different

things, they were used for things as small as editing photos

to creating the whole ancillary task. We created three

different things for our coursework as a group, we created

the music video itself, a digipak design for what our artist

would have their album in and also a poster to promote our

artist, all of these had different things in that had been

created in InDesign and Photoshop.

THE ANCILLARY STAGE

DIGI PAKMAGAZINE POSTER

THE ANCILLARY STAGE

In Photoshop I had to edit the images that were being used within the ancillaries in order to make them look professional and good quality. For our advert we had to cut Ryan out of a existing photo using the cropping tool, we also adjusted the photos within the ancillaries using the brightness and contrast tools, this particularly worked really well in one of the photos used on the digipak where we made the guitar colour blue really bright, it looked very good and stood out on the digipak. All of our images were edited in a similar way to this. Most of the tools on Photoshop I found quite simple to use, the only tool I found could be quite tricky at times was the cropping tool, as it often went a different shape around the object then what I was intended. To overcome this problem we just practised it until we could do it well.

THE ANCILLARY STAGE

InDesign was just used to create the ancillaries on, this

was very simple to use as all we did was add writing

and photos onto it that we had done in Photoshop. We

did not have to do as many complicated things as we did

on Photoshop, the editing of the photos was one of the

key things to ensure that we had an effective and

professional looking ancillary task

OVERALL

Over all I believe that we worked effectively as a group

with the different technologies used to create three good

pieces of work as an outcome, I do believe that more

could have been done to them to ensure that they were

better but this will therefore be noted for next time.