Evaluation Question 4

4) How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and Evaluation stages? Since the beginning of the study of the subject, we have been introduced into a new way of recording work. Instead of writing wording onto a conventional piece of paper, we’ve typed our notes and research onto http://www.blogger.com a site which is usually used for blogging. All notes for research are input into this site and saved. It contributes to our overall coursework marks. These blogs allow teachers to comment on the posts that have been created and can then be edited by the user. These posts can also be edited at anytime during the year. When researching the internet as a whole has been a beneficial factor in itself, proving to be the main aid when looking into certain aspects of the project. When looking for a band to create a video for a numerous amount of sights were looked into, however after separating from a group I decided to chose a reliable artist. When looking into the artist’s genre I used sources that linked to related artists and artist’s whom my artist (Mayenna Plastow-Smed) aspired to. Using the site Youtube was great for looking at similar artist’s music video’s before analyzing them, pointing out key features that the genre of Folk had when influencing video’s. When looking into genre, the internet offered information about certain festivals which have help progress the genre. One example of a festival would be “Newport festival” which discovered many significant folk artists, a prime example being ‘Joan Baez’ who at the time was support to ‘Bob Dylan’. Clips from Youtube enabled me to gain a better understanding of what music videos utilise within the genre. Main aspects include performance based shots those mainly being close-ups, the idea of nature with scenic landscapes. All clips I have used on my blog were taken from http://www.youtube.com/ . Drafts and sketches of possible ideas from storyboarding for instance are scanned onto our blogs to assist with our planning by uploading the scanned images to our blogs. When shooting the raw footage for our projects we used Nikon digital cameras. These enabled us to first capture the motion before reviewing it on the screen to see if a suitable sequence of footage had come out well. Tri-pods used for the camera enabled us to capture a smoother image and capture different angled shots to give variation to the footage itself. Once all footage had been shot, it came down to the edit. The editing was done on the program ‘Adobe Premiere Elements’. This software allowed us to upload the footage and organise it into a suitable narrative structure that related to the original, drawn-up plans. This program allowed us to use many effects that were offered to edit our videos. These included a host of transitions that made the video more interesting. Transitions used included ‘fade to black’ and ‘cross-dissolve’. Fonts from the internet site http://www.dafont.com/ to find a suitable font for the digi-pak that had to be created from scratch. Screenshots from my created music video were used as 4 panels. These were edited on Photoshop, an image editing program. Fonts can easily be added to impose effects on the image. The images I used for the panels were edited with a simple effect, which was the change of light contrast and brightness. Ideas for my print productions came from research into similar artists front covers, looking into what the main features were. From the research I could deliberate what aspects feature often. These include the artist as the main focus, aspects of folk (drawing/sketches), wildlife/ nature. Which I believe has been captured in my images. When creating the promotion poster I looked into how acts are advertised within certain magazines. Despite mainstream magazines like the ‘NME’ promoting more common artists, they occasional feature small, unsigned artists. When producing a poster is key that the artist is the main feature of the image, a centre piece for what is their promotion image. Inspiration for my poster came from using a design like this. Using the artist as the main image with a supporting image of the front panel digi-pak cover so that the album artwork is recognisable to the audience for whom it may appeal to ("the ideal audience").