Evaluation Question 4 - Moises Varela Guilherme

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

Research was an essential part of making this music video. We had to research the genre of music which we wanted to  make a music video from, research of  magazine adverts in order to make our own and also extensive research into digpaks to create our own. 

The internet played an important role in me gathering research and within that I used I predominantly used two different search engines in all my research. All school based research which I did during lessons, I used 'Safari' on Appel Mac Computers and when I did further research at home I used 'Google' on my Microsoft Window Computer. With both search engines I was able to access various websites which provided me with all sorts of information which I was seeking at the time. Using the internet allowed me to access vast amounts of information on digipak's, music videos and magazine adverts. I used the Internet to also find lots of images that are featured in my blog.  I used google to search for a lot of information and resources and it provided me with a of useful information during the production of my media product. It lead me to indie rock bands such as 'Arctic Monkeys', 'The Killers' and our chosen band 'Dinner and a Suit'.  

When it came to presenting any research and work I have done research on I used a range of platforms from Powerpoint Presentations which I uploaded using slide share, or Prezi which is a fun and innovative way of presenting ideas. I also used one of the most common forms of detailing my work which was using the Blog.  Powerpoint is something which I felt I was very aware of and found it easy to use as I have been using it since year 7 to make class presentations and research projects. With Prezi I was only introduced to it last year and I found it challenging at first due to the variety of animations and and designs, but Prezi is different to Powerpoint as I find it is more interactive for audiences.

I used Powerpoint to answer Evaluation Question 2, but also in the early music video research stage. I made a powerpoint presentation on Nicki Minaj's music video to Anaconda, whilst I also used Prezi  to analyse Jessie J, Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj's 'Bang Bang' video. I feel that having a variety in the form of presentation of information is better than a plain blog post as the information if accessed in different ways and it is more interactive. 

To gain audience feedback we used flip cameras as a means to record data from our focus group on certain aspect of our media product. This played an important role when were planning our music video. we should them an animatic video of what we hoped our music video would look like. As they watched the video we used the flip cam to record their answers to the questions.  Our animatic is comprised of a series of images from our storyboard film on a white background with the music playing in the background, the picture would change in accordance with the music video. We edited the animatic video on iMovie putting all the images and sound together to create this moving storyboard. The idea of an animatic is to show them what we intend our final video to look like. We recorded all our audience feedback wether it was statements or quotes with regards to all our media products in our portfolio. 

I personally used social media to follow Dinner and a Suit to see what they are like as a band, subscribing to their 'Youtube Channel' and liking their 'Facebook Page'.  With the help of social media and the accessibility that artists have to it and being able to connect with fans, I was able to gain an insight on how they promote their music/albums.  

As a group however we used Facebook as a means of communicating our thoughts and ideas in a group chat. In our conversations we were able to come together outside of lesson time and come together to pick our song and unsigned artist to which we would make our music video for. 


Planning





Construction

For the construction of our music video we  used the Canon EOS 650D camera to give a high quality edge to our filming. We used this camera to not only film our music video but also take still shots to be used for the construction of our digipak and magazine advert. In order to use the camera effectively we had to ensure that we checked the white balance and exposure setting on the camera whenever the lighting changed or if we moved set locations. This mean that when we editing the film it would look cohesive and of high quality and not out of focus. Whenever we filmed from new location or different angle at a different time of day where the brightness was not the same we had to change the exposer and white balance settings on the camera to suit each shot.  To edit I use Final Cut Pro on a Mac desktop.  We used different transition and effects this software provided us to help create atmosphere in our video making it more realistic adding realism to the video. The main transition used was called ‘cross dissolve’. We only used two effects in the whole of video and these were ‘matched lighting’ and ‘desert glare’. The reason we chose to match the colour of one shot to another was because the difference between them was too poignant and looked odd. The second effect was included because it highlighted a particular pivotal scene within the narrative of our video. When we made the digipak and magazine advert we used photoshop and powerpoint to crop the images and add filters to make them look and resemble actual digipaks and magazine adverts. 

Evaluation 

Once our final music video was edited and complete we uploaded it onto youtube and got our friends, fellow classmates and family to look at the video and asked them for their feedback. The comments allowed us to see what aspect of our music video were successful in the eyes of the audience and public. The video is easily accessible to anyone and anyone can leave comments. With all my evaluation questions I used different forms of technologies to present my ideas in a creative and diverse way making it interactive. For my first evaluation question I posted a blog text which included images as an aide to answer the question. For my second evaluation question I used powerpoint. In using powerpoint it allowed to vary the form of presentation instead of a blog post. I was ale to present my answer by breaking it down and using different slides under headings which I believe helped to answer the question itself. My third evaluation was another blog post much rather like first question. Finally my las evaluation question is also a blog post. However within this blog post I have used a range of different formats, including a prezi embedded into the post but it also includes a range of images in aiding to present my answer.