Question Four: How did you use Media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout planning and creating our music video and ancilary tasks, I used alot of various media technologies which were all beneficial in different ways. Some of them I had used before but some of them were new to me, but i learned how to use them quite quickly and were great resources.
In each stage of my project I used different types of technology, such as: Google, Yahoo, Youtube, Powerpoint, Final Cut, Photoshop, InDesign, Microsoft word, IMac and many more. All of these technologies helped me along the way to creating the best product I could using all of my recources.
Research and Planning.
When initially starting my planning for my music video and ancillary tasks, I used both of these websites quite alot. I liked to use both of them to get a wider search of what I was looking for. I used them quite alot to research pictures of relevent bands or to find out information about bands from various websites. They are both very good search engines to use as they are both being updated all the time so have the latest information on them. I have used both of these search engines throughout nearly the whole process, to look for different products bands similar to ours have created. I also used these search engines to
look for ideas for our ancilliary tasks on the images tab on both engines.
Youtube was a very big part of our research and planning stage. It was used quite alot when anaylising bands music videos and getting ideas from them. We used youtube videos on the blog to show where we got inspiration from and to discuss how other bands show their brand image in their music videos.
During the planning stage, I used Microsoft office quite alot. I used microsoft word to create powerpoints to find out about who my target audience were and also to find out which was the most popular sub-genre. Microsoft word is very easy to use and we are all farmiliar with it, i created a questionnair very easily, being able to addphotos and change the colour and font of my text. Aswell as using microsoft word, I also used microsoft excel to produce graphs of my findings from the questionnaire, which i found was a very clear way of displaying my findings. Excel lets you choose different types of graphs to display your findings in different ways so that they don't get boring to look at.
I used powerpoint alot during my R & D stages. I created powerpoints to display the top 20 albums of all time and to show brands with similar brand images to the one we wanted to create. Powerpoint is very easy to use, you can add clips, pictures, text and change the colours on each slide. It displays your work in a very organised and fun way and is very easy to understand. Powerpoint is quick and easy to use to display ideas.
I used slideshare to upload powerpoints i had created during my research as it converted powerpoints so that I could upload them onto the group blog. I found slideshare very beneficial to use as it is very simple, it is easy to convert the powerpoint and does it very quicky and efficiently. This is the first time I have used slideshare but i quickly learnt how to use it.
We first used blogger in our research and planning stage but we used it throughout all of our project. Blogger is a free blog site where you can create your own blog to showecase your work. I had never used it before but found it very easy to use and beneficial when showing ideas to the rest of the group. It looks very professional and is organised so you can find the exact post you want to very quickly. You can upload texts, videos, photos to blogger which makes it a very interesting way of displaying your work.
Imac was also a very important resource in our research and development. Imac has softwear such as final cut on it which we created a practice video on, which was very beneficial to us. Imac is excellent to use and is very fast, I picked up how to use final cut quicky and think that is a great tool to be able to use as we used this to edit our final video.
I used this camera for my resarch and planning stage and then for the rest of my project. I used it to take shots of potention actors and actresses that we could use for our music video. This was an excellent tool to use and we could take photos of our candidates and then diccus as a group what we thought. This camera was excellent to use thorughout the whole process, as it took fast shots but at the same time very clear shots.
After we had used this camera, we used a 'fire wire' to upload the photos from the camera onto the computer to postonto our blog. All we had to do was connect it to the camera and the computer and press 'select' and it uploaded all of the photos we wanted. It was very easy to use and a useful tool.
During the later planning stages, we used this college video camera to get trained up onto how we use it and how to film. It was very easy to use and easy to capture footage with, it was also not too technical so we all grasped how to use it very quickly.
We used a tripod as well as the camera in the planning stages so that we knew how to use it to our advantage with a camera. We found out how to attach it to the camera and how to use it so that the camera was still when filming. I found the tripod very easy to use and we used it in the later stages of actually producing our music video. It really helps you to keep the camera still when filming and you can change the height in which you put the camera at which I found very beneficial.
When planning our music video, we had a full lesson in this studio to get farmiliarised with everything. We practiced filming in this studio and using different back drops for different effects. We also used the different lights and different hights and angles to see which we liked the best. I think this was very worthwhile as it means we knew exactly how to use everything, once it came to producing our actual video.
Producing
When actually producing our video, we used a number of new media tecnhologies that we hadn't used previously in the research and development stage. All of the technologies we used in this stage were all crucial in creating our music video.
When producing our video, final cut was definatley the most useful technology we used and we wouldnt of been able to produce our music video without it. We uploaded all of our footage onto the blog and we were free to edit our video in different ways. To import the footage into final cut, we imported them into the browser and then pulled all of the footage we wanted onto the timeline shown in the photo. After we had put all the footage onto our time line, we used the 'razor' tool to cut out all the footage that we didnt want to use as we filmed quiet alot of footage. Once we had done this we had to 'render' the rest of the footage so that we could play it in the viewer.
Aswell as being to edit on Final cut it also let you colour grade over your footage. I thought this was a very good tool to use and worked very well. It let you pink from a range of different colours and you could increase/decrease the colour to suit you. In the music video, I added over a pink gradient over this viynl playing which really helped to keep the consitant house style that is seen in all of my ancilliaries. It was really easy to do and i feel that it fits in very well.
In final cut, you could add and delete different layers. This was very helpful to us as it meant you could put different footage onto the different layers so that I could focus on one piece of footage at a time. You could also 'lock' different layers when you werent using them to make sure that the footage you were not edited didn't get deleted by accidnet. Once i had found out how to use the different layers, they were a really beneficial tool throughtout the process.
InDesign was a very important softwear to use throughout our production process. I had never used it before but found it very easy to use and i used it to help produce all of the ancillaries. It is a very advance softwear which means that it was quite technical and you could use it to look very professional. It had alot of helpful tools in it which really helped me to make the ancillary tasks look professional and help to keep a consistant house style.
This featured on the right hand side of the screen of InDesign and was used for colour swatches. It has a list of all of the different colours that I had previously used which was beneficial as I knew exactly what colours I had used and didnt have to spend time trying to find them again. Using the colour swatches meant that i could experiment with different colours on the spectrum to make sure i got the colour perfect. Aswell as swatches, this box had a tab called 'layers' on it. This tab was very useful when cutting things out in photographs and moving them to different layers, you could also lock the layers to make sure that they didn't get deleted when they weren't being used.
I found this Bob Dylan cover on the internet and took inspiration from it for our front cd pannel for one of our ancillary tasks. Using InDesign I manged to use a template that I took of google, i managed to add colours and move the different boxes to take resembalance of this Bob Dylan cover. It was quite easy to use and the advanced zoom button on InDesign really helped me to colour the pink in without going over the lines. We really liked this bob dylan cover alot as it shows him being a 'rebel' by the use of smoking and the different shots on the cover. We wanted to re-create this in our own front cover, so i added photos of our actor and actress smoking to create the same effect. It worked very well as i could rotate and change the size of the photos to fit the boxes perfectly.
Photoshop was equally beneficial to use when we were produced our ancilliary tasks. It is also a very advanced programme but I had used it before so I already knew how to use it breify. I easily got the hand of it and got to know the different tools that would help me such as: colour too, size tool, gradient tool and the weight tool. Aswell as these, i used the crop tool to crop the photos to fit into the frame and a sharpener tool for the one of the magazine advertisments to sharpen up the photo at one end, which gave a great effect.
Photoshop was great to use to add colour gradient to a photo. Using photoshop I could tint the photo to whatever colour I wanted from the spectrum. I changed the colour of my photos using these different colour lines to increase/decrease contrast etc. I used this tool too add a brown colour gradient over the photo you can see to show a 'realism' and 'gritty' effect, this worked really well and looked alot better with this added onto it, it helped give off conotations of our bands brand image.
With the colour gradient tool, I also managed to tint this photo with a pink colour over my actress. I decided to do this as this is the colour that i have used on all over my anciliarys so I thought it would be a good idea to feature it in this one. I think it really helps to carry on the consitant house style form all of my other anciliary tasks. I also used photoshop to fade the writting at the top of the photo, this worked really well as it helped the writing to blend into the photo so it looked more professional. I also faded the writting on the girls top to make it look like the writting was really written onto her top, which i thought worked very well.
I used this zooming presentation editor for one of my qustions for my evaluation. I decided to use this as it is a very different way of showing your work and it looks really interesting to watch. I had never used it before but got used to using it. It lets you add text, clips, videos and photos onto a presentation and then lets you edit it. You can zoom in and out very far which helps you display your work in different areas so it looks professional. You can then link up you different sections of texts or photos into a timeline so that the slideshow moves on to exactly what you want it to.
Overall after completeing our music video and ancillary project, I feel that we have been very sucsessful and everyone we have produced has been to a very high standard. I enjoyed created the music video the most as I filmed almost all of the footage for it and it was really good editing this footage in different ways to be creative. Using all of the different media technologies I feel have all be benefical to the creation of our project and even though some have caused problems, we have overcome this and learnt from the mistakes we made. All of our anciliares were produced to a very good standard and even though they all featured different things, the honsistant house style we used help them all to come together and link up. After we had produced our music video, we got our media class to give us audience feedback and all of the feedback we recieved was positive. Everyone said that our work was to a very high standard and that our editing techniques were very creative and different from the editing they had seen in other music videos, which is something that we initially wanted to achieve. The whole of our group brought different skills into the group which helped us to strive in everything that we have produced. I am very happy with our work and think that all of the time we spent researching, planning, filming, producing and editing our work definatley paid off.
Throughout the completion of our media products,
we have used a range of technologies to produce
both our main task and ancillaries.
Many of the technologies were hardware based
such as the cameras or the computer,
however many were software based programs such as
final cut and photo shop.
Construction
During the construction process we used a cannon video camera to collect the footage used in our main task. We were trained to use these cameras before we went out to collect our footage however still decided to play it safe and use the automatic modes for the majority of the shots. we assumed this would be easier as a lot of our shots were captured at night or in a club and found that trying to adjust focus and contrast in situations such as these was rather difficult. The model of the video camera is Cannon's MD255. The camera unfortunately was not HD however still performed very well.
In terms of software, we used final cut to produce our main tasks. We found a lot of the facilities on this program very helpful such as color correction and ability to split screen. We were running the software through an intel core 2 duo imac. The software technology was very helpful as using the timeline made it easy to organise our footage and also edit when it came to that stage. After recording the audio for our directors commentary, we chose to edit the audio in final cut as opposed to software such as garage band or logic as we would be later adding the video to the commentary.
During the filming of the main task, we used the green screen and also lighting equipment. Our initial idea was to green screen our male protagonist running on the record player to show him trying to counter act the drugs and alcohol and break free from that aspect of his life. However, this was difficult to achieve as gaining footage of a lively object that is permanently moving is hard to later cut and edit.
We have created an account on blogger.com to keep people up to date on our progress. It contains images, videos and pieces of text that we have created to help us to keep on top of each segment of the production. Some of what our blog was carried out at home, however, much of it we did together as a group at college.
Research and Planning
During the research and planning stage we used a lot of software such as google images to get inspiration from existing artists and also sites such as youtube to try and gain ideas that we could incorporate into our own video. To produce the tales and charts, we used excel and to produce the questionnaires we used a word processor that was available on the mac's at college.
We found youtube especially helpful as we used the embed feature regularly to take the videos which inspired us to put on the blog. We also found it's extensive variety of video's very helpful in terms of always finding what we needed.
During the planning stage, we were trained on how to use certain softwares such as final cut and photoshop to try and make life easier when it came to working with the real footage and images we would be using in our final project.
Evaluation
The evaluation stage was an entirely individual task apart from question one which was the directors commentary.
In order to create question two and three, I have used power point. I am running power point off my own computer at home which is an imac using osx10, however I have found a version of Microsoft office which can be used on mac.
I found it difficult to use the internet program pressie. I did attempt to use it, however, their were numerous log in problems and also I returned to my work after leaving it overnight under the impression that it had saved to discover that it hadn't. In the end, I ended up using power point for both of the questions. I have used different background for each question to make them easier to differentiate between.
To upload each power point, I have used scribd which is an internet based site which allows people to upload presentations and word documents to the internet. the website was given to us by our teacher, however, along with pressie, it has presented small problems.
To conclude, a lot of technology has gone into this project, ranging from computer hardware and software, green screening, lighting systems and camera's both stills and video.
Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of read media texts?Within the answer to question one, we answered, as a group,'In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the conventions of real media texts?'
Conventions of real media products: CD Album (ancillary one):For our 4 panels we made sure that our brand image was visible throughout the album and made sure that it appealed to our target audience just like our music video. For the album, we analysed many real media examples that were in the rock and roll genre. We looked at albums from bands such as 'The Rolling Stones', 'Bob Dylan' and 'Oasis'. These bands sum up our brand image and they combine the rock and roll genre with the indie genre just like we did with our product. When we were researching and planning our panels. We looked at The Rolling Stones as they influenced our product a lot.
This front cover of the 'Beggers Banguet' album was very much like our brand image of having fun and not caring about the consequences. Also, the colour use is very successful and links very well to the rest of the album. The red against the yellow background makes it stand out and catches the audiences eye. This album cover, also, shows the brand image of 'The Rolling Stones' as they are all about having fun, enjoying life, drugs, sex and drinking. This links very well to our brand image and to the audience 'The Rolling Stones' aspire to appeal to and they do this successfully.
This collage of Bob Dylan appealed to us and gave us our idea for our front cover. This would appeal to Bob Dylan's audience as it clearly shows the brand image and the type of audience he appeals to. Also, the black and white images are easy on the eye but different to other media products and this makes it stand out against the rest. Bob Dylan knew the ages and types of people he wanted to appeal to and I think he successful did this and his brand image appeals to the wider audience as well. This is a sign of a good marketing and brand image as they didn't exclude half of the population with the type of target audiences. Within our CD Album, we planned this carefully as we wanted our brand image to be visible throughout and there to be a link between our video and panels to make our audience connect the two together. The main part of our CD album was the front cover as this had to grab the readers attention.
In our front cover, we used typical conventions of the rock and roll genre as this is the genre of our products. The images were very important as they needed to appeal to our audience. I think they challenged typical conventions as the use of cigarettes is normally more subtle but we have them on show and used throughout. The colours were very important as we made sure the house style was the same throughout as this would make the product familiar with our audience. The black background was the last thing we decided to do as we weren't sure whether to have a white background. However, I feel that the black background fits very well with the style of our whole product. The use of the colour pink was very important and necessary as this was one of the main conventions in our products as colour is very important as it appeals to the audience and attracts their eye. This pink was carried through the whole of the album:
These panels go inside the album. They continue the brand image throughout and appeal to our target audience. For these images we used the typical cinematography conventions of the rock and roll indie genre. There are many uses of close ups in the video and in the ancillary tasks as they make the audience feel involved, which is what we were going for.
This is the back panel. Out of all the panels, our target audience said this appealed to them the most as it clearly defines our brand image of breaking the rules, having fun, drugs, cigarettes etc as the 'no smoking' sign shows that we are breaking the rules. Also, our audience liked how the song names stood out against the black and white background as they stated how the colour helped them link our products together.
Conventions of real media products: Magazine Advert (ancillary two):When we were planning our magazine adverts, we looked at adverts from Oasis as they have influenced our media products.
Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?
This magazine advert was very successful and it gave me the idea for the portrait advert as I liked the cinematography and the facial expressions that attracted my eye and did the same to our target audience. The simple colours of blue and black are simple but effective as they stand out and fit the brand image and style of Oasis.
For our magazine adverts, we decided to do a typical magazine advert but then break the typical conventions with our second one.
This is the magazine advert that followed the typical conventions of our chosen genre. The image clearly shows how she fits the 'stereotype' of audiences that watch and listen to the rock and roll indie genre. As you can see, we made this advert with a tint of pink to connect our products together. I think this worked really well as it is different to our other products and appeals to the audience. The way the writing has 'blended' into the background to a very useful and successful effect.
This magazine advert challenged the typical conventions of a magazine advert as it is landscape and audiences don't see many landscape adverts. I think this was very successful as when we got audience feedback, they stated that it appealed to them as it was different to a typical advert. The image clearly shows our brand image and how they are all linked together with the drug use convention of the rock and roll and indie genre that we connected together.
Question 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Question 4: How did you use Media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the stages of our media project, I used many media technologies that were used in many of the different stages that we had to go through to get our final project of our music video and ancillary tasks. In each of the stages we used technologies such as, Google, YouTube, PowerPoint, Microsoft word, iMac, video camera, final cut, photo shop and InDesign. All of these technologies were very important in our project and they helped us create the best project possible.
When we first started our project and were researching many different music videos, bands and CD albums and magazine adverts when we created our ancillary’s. We used google and google images often.
We researched many different bands through Google and this is a very successful media technique to use as it has the up-to-date information on bands and their information which was very useful for our research project.
This is the PowerPoint that I did for question two of my evaluation. PowerPoint is really easy to use and it is perfect for analysing or creating an answer that has to be annotated as the arrows are very easy to place into the PowerPoint. Also, it is very easy to change the background design and the font, colour, size and position of the writing. This is what makes PowerPoint so easy to work with as it isn’t over complicated and I use it many times without a problem.
Once we had found the information that we needed, to complete the research, we needed images to help explain what we had written. We used Google images as we could find, very easily, the images we needed and it is a very easy media technique to use.
As we continued our research into the bands that influenced our music video, we used YouTube many times to find the videos that we knew were part of our genre and would help us when we planned our music video and ancillary’s.
I used YouTube many times throughout the project, not just at the research and planning stage as it was needed at the evaluation stage for question one when we were finding the videos that we had to talk about as they had influenced our media project. When we were searching the music videos that influenced us, it was sometimes hard to find the right one so we had to expand what we put in the search window. YouTube is very easy to use and find your way around. I use it often and there are never any problems with it.
As there was lots of research that had to be done at the beginning of our project, we had to put our questionnaires onto our blog to show that we had done target research. To do this, we used Scribd to convert the Microsoft word documents so they would be able to be put on our blog. Once they had converted, I copied and pasted the embedded code onto the blog post. This was very simple to use and it didn’t take too long for the Microsoft word documents to be converted.
Throughout the project and especially when we were researching, we wrote down many notes and produced our questionnaires on word.
Microsoft Word is very easy to use and as we all use it nearly every day, it was easy for us to produce our notes, research and questionnaires quickly which meant we could focus more on the construction of our video and ancillary tasks.
Whilst I was using words, I changed the fonts, colour, size, boldness and whether the information needed to be in bullet points or not. All of this was very easy to find at the top of the screen and this made our research and planning easy when we were deciding what to do by typing it out onto word.
Throughout the research part of our project, I used Slideshare to convert the Power Points that I created when researching different albums and singles of bands that were in the indie rock and roll genre. It was very to use Slideshare as all I had to do was find the file in ‘My Documents’, click Upload and then wait around 2 minutes for the file to convert. Then to put the Power Point on my blog, I just copied and pasted the embedded code. It is very easy and I would use Slideshare when I need to convert a power point.
This is the PowerPoint that I did for question two of my evaluation. PowerPoint is really easy to use and it is perfect for analysing or creating an answer that has to be annotated as the arrows are very easy to place into the PowerPoint. Also, it is very easy to change the background design and the font, colour, size and position of the writing. This is what makes PowerPoint so easy to work with as it isn’t over complicated and I use it many times without a problem.
Once we had researched our target audience and the bands that fit our genre of indie rock and roll. We moved onto planning. This is a very important stage in our project as we planned our video and ancillary’s. Throughout this section, we used a mixture of media techniques to produce the best music video and ancillary tasks we could.
Blogger was used throughout the project. It was very important that we uploaded all our planning onto the blog. It was very easy to upload images, PowerPoint’s, word documents and videos from YouTube as I am so used to using blogger now that I find it easy.
Google Images was important when we were planning our ancillary tasks as we had to search CD albums and magazine adverts for our genre. These were very easy to find and they were very useful.
When we were planning our music video, using an IMac was very important as it had the media software of Final Cut. We used Final Cut in our planning to create a practice video. We wouldn’t have been able to do this without the IMac. They are very easy to use and easy to work my way around.
I used scribd again in our planning as I created more questionnaires for our audience to answer. For the questionnaires to be able to be put on the blog, I had to convert it first. I also used scribd as part of the planning was drawing out the music video onto screen shot paper. This is important planning which really needed to be uploaded onto the blog which is why I used scribd in the planning.
Once we started our planning, we used YouTube to watch music videos that appealed to us and our target audience. I used YouTube as we were able to find bands and videos that influenced us and we made sure that we watched them many times in order for us to understand their brand image.
I used this camera often when we were planning our music video and ancillary’s, as we had to take still pictures for the front cover, panels and magazine advert. It was important that we took many pictures for our ancillary’s to get our brand image across the whole of our project.
We also used this camera when we were planning our music video and the characters we were going to use. We took still images of potential people that could be used as our characters. This was successful and useful as it made sure that we got the right person for our genre.
Also, when we were learning how to use the lighting in the studio and when we were editing our music video. We took images of our group doing this to show evidence that we can use the correct equipment and can use it successfully.
These cameras are really easy to use and easy to understand the buttons on the back of the camera. We used this camera because of this and we knew the pictures would be good and would work well with the ancillary’s.
We used a fire wire to copy the pictures over from the camera and onto the IMac so we could use them.
All we had to do was put the correct side of the fire wire into the camera, place the other side into the back of the iMac, turn the camera on and press ‘select’ to copy to PC. This was very easy to do and successful as all the images were now placed onto the iMac and ready to use.
We used Yahoo Email in our planning when we got permission from ‘Twisted Wheel’ to use their song ‘Bad Candy’ for our music video.
It was important that we used this to show that the music wasn’t copyright. It was very easy to use and understand and we took a print screen and used scribd to put the email on the blog to show that we have permission.
Once we got to the planning stage, we started to use the video camera to learn how to use it in time for when we started to film. The whole group had training on how to use the video cameras and the tripods.
I found them easy to use once I got the basics on how to change the settings and how to set up the tripod. Before we started to produce our music video, we drew our ideas out and filmed each section for around 5 seconds using the tripod, camera and the battery and tape.
We then uploaded the footage onto the iMac through a fire wire and started to use final cut to edit it and put our ideas together.
When we were planning our music video and ancillary’s, we had lessons in the studio about how to use the lighting and to position them correctly.
The studio took a while to get used to; it was difficult to get the lighting correct to make sure there weren’t any shadows around our characters.
Whilst in the studio, we used the lights and reflectors to make sure we got the positions correct and made sure we knew fully how to use the green screen as we would be using it on our own when we are filming.
Learning how to use the green screen successfully is very important for our music video because in our planning, we decided to use the green screen to show the skills we had as a group and individually. I found the green screen quite easy to use once I had worked out how to get the lighting correct and in the right positions.
Throughout the project, final cut was very important in editing our music video. For planning our music video, we edited the stills we took of our planned music video and edited them together. To do this, we imported them into the Brower and then pulled them onto the timeline. Once they were on the timeline, we used the razer blade tool to cut our any sections that we didn’t need and we had to render it many times before we could view the practice music video. We only used the basic tools to put our practice music video together just to get the feel of final cut. After this practice, I found it easy to use final cut and got used to the different tools that had to be used.I became the main editor and spent many lessons and work shop time editing our music video.
These were the layers in which our music video was on! We created many layers so we could edit correctly and not accidentally delete any footage that are in our videos.
We learnt that we could 'lock' different layers once we were happy with the footage that we had already edited.
Also, within our planning section, we used PhotoShop many times to edit the stills we gathered for our ancillary tasks. PhotoShop is very straight forward and quite easy to use once you know how to use it.
When I was using PhotoShop, I used the gradient tool, the weight tool, font, colour, size and position tool. These tools are all easy to use and I found editing the images wasn't that hard. I also used the crop tool and the sharpen tool to sharpen the edges of the images to make them less pixilated as some of the images were.
These are the tools that were used throughout the media project. We used the crop tool many times to get the shape of the images to how we wanted them.
This was how we changed the colour of our posters and CD album. It was very easy to used as we just tinted the colour to how we wanted them and made sure that they fitted in with the house style of our projects. This didn't take long to do as it was very easy to use and understand.
Once we made the colour how we wanted it and it met the house style, we positioned the font how we wanted them and then exported the poster to a JPEG in order for me to upload it to blogger.
The construction stage is where all the planning and research come together to create our music video and ancillary tasks. We produced a music video and a CD album, which consisted of four panels and we also created two magazine advertisements. Throughout this stage, we stuck to using Final Cut, PhotoShop, InDesign, Video Camera and Still Cameras.
Final Cut was a very important part to this stage of the project. We used many of the tools but often had to ask for help and we didn't understand all of them. To cut down the footage of our characters, we used the razor blade tool. To activate this, I pressed 'B', once we found the part we wanted to delete, I clicked once, then went to the end of the section I wanted to delete and clicked on the timeline again. This broke the footage up and was easy for me to press 'back space' and it was deleted. I then pressed 'A' to deactivate the tool.
As we continued to use final cut, we made sure we locked the audio tracks so that none of the song was accidentally deleted. This made it easier for me to delete parts of our footage and add any in to the timeline which could disrupt the timings of the footage that was already in place. The main editing we did was making our footage into split screens. We decided to do this after we watched the video, 'Time For Heroes' by 'The Libertines'.
Throughout our project, blogger is very important for our research, planning, construction and evaluation. Our whole project is on blogger as it is how the examiner marks us on the work we have done individually and within our group. Blogger is easy to use, after you have set up the page. It is very easy to create new posts. It is straight and forward when I want to upload images and videos. The only problem I found with blogger is, it takes a while for a big post to upload and it also makes the blog look untidy when the videos don’t fit inside the box. Apart from these little errors, I find blogger easy to use and it is suitable for our media project.
I used all of these media techniques on the IMac which we use in college within the media rooms. I find Macs very easy to use and they were very useful when it came to our planning and construction as they have Photoshop, Final Cut and InDesign installed on them.
We decided to take the split screen idea from this video as it appealed to us and our genre of music. As we had planned, we were creating a video that was showing the nights out of two people but they end up together at the end. We thought it would be perfect to use split screens for this and this video helped us decide to use them and how they worked effectively.
Also, within final cut, we used the colour corrector to change the end of our video to black and white and to change the colour of the vinyl and guitar to the pinky/purple colour that was running through our brand image. It was very easy to use this tool, all I did was look in the Browser, clicked on colour corrector and dragged it onto the part of the footage that I wanted to change. I then rendered it by pressing 'cmd and R' on the iMac we were using. Once this had rendered, I double clicked on the footage and opened the colour tool. Here, we moved the tool around and the colour ball until we got the correct colour, we could tell we had the right colour as I was watching the Viewer window where I could see the colour changing. Once we had the correct colour, we clicked apply and then rendered the footage again. This made sure that our changed had been made and from this, we changed some of the footage to black and white and some to pinky/purple.
As we continued with our music video and ancillary tasks, we used a mixture of video cameras and still cameras to collect our footage and images for our ancillary's.
We took this image with a still camera, they are very good quality and were very easy to use. This image is the back panel image for our CD but we opened it in PhotoShop and decided to crop it and change the colour to black and white. This worked very well as the image fitted very well with the rest of our panels and music video which was important as it all had to link together.
For our ancillary's, PhotoShop and InDesign were the media techniques we need the most. We got a lot of influence from many other indie bands that appealed to our target audience. For example, this is one of Bod Dylan's album cover. We liked this album cover a lot as it is very much our brand image of smoking, drugs, having fun and not having a care in the world. The black images also stand out against the white background and this is a very successful marketing technique as it grabs the audiences eye as they wonder what is going on in the pictures which make them pick up the album. This is what we were hoping our album cover would do and that it would link to the rest of our project. I feel it did this very well.
This is our front cover for our album. We took all these images with a stills camera and once we had uploaded them onto iMac, we opened them in PhotoShop and started to edit them. All the images were cropped using the tool on the left hand side of the screen and we often had to zoom in to make sure we didn't crop too much off one side than the other. Also, to have our whole project linked, we decide to colour correct the image and make them pinky/purple. This was very easy to do as we just made them black and white and added a tint of colour until we got the colour we wanted. The only problem we found with colour correcting these images was that, we couldn't get them all the came colour and often had to go back and forth from the earlier images to make sure they matched. We changed the colour of all our panels and magazine adverts to appeal to our target audience and make our project recognisable as a brand. The background of our front cover, we were going to make it white to start with when we planned it but we though that the images will stand out more and it will look more linked in with our music video if the background is black and that is part of our colour image.
Once we had changed all the colours of the images. We opened InDesign and put our front cover, right panel, left panel and back panel together. As I have used InDesign before, I find it very easy to use and it is a very good software to use to produce albums and magazine adverts. Within InDesign, we placed all the images we needed for our front cover and sized them down while making sure they fitted into the squares, as some of them were at awkward angles, we zoomed close in on the images and cropped them on angles and rotated them around to fit in. This didn't take long as the colour correction had already taken place and we just had to place the images in.
On InDesign, to get the same colour throughout our products. I used the Colour Picker to find the correct colour and then clicked 'Add RGB Swatch' which meant that the colour was accessible when ever I opened InDesign to edit the images for our CD album and posters.
On the right hand side was the swatches where I placed the many different shades of pink that I found the right one. This also meant that I could experiment with the colours until the house style matched with the rest of the products.
When we created our CD panels, we had to change the layout to a compact disc to make the images fit and be as much like a real album as they could be. With our magazine adverts, once we had colour corrected them in PhotoShop, we made the landscape advert black and white with just the writing in pink and black to stand out against the background. We used landscape and keep the colours very simple as this would attract the audience and also follows our brand image of experimenting and being different. The magazine adverts didn't take long to produce as we did most of the work in PhotoShop when we blurred the top corners to give the effect of drugs onto the advert. This shows a clear link to our brand image and our audience would automatically recognise the advert with our music video and album. The second magazine advert is more traditional with it being portrait. However, we have pushed the normal conventions with the colour change and the image that is central on it. To be able to fit this image into the framing for this magazine advert, we had to crop some of her arm off on PhotoShop but I don't think this really effects the result of this advert. The colour correction of changing it from black and white to pinky/purple worked very well as it clearly shows the brand image colour all the way through our products. Also, once we had changed the colour, we noticed that the writing stood out a bit too much and we wanted it to blend in with the image but also grab the readers attention. I think we managed this successfully as we made the writing blend into the top and the background. It makes it look like the writing is on the top which is what we were going for. When we asked our audience what they thought about our ancillary's, many came back with how much they liked the front cover and this magazine advert as they think they showed the brand image off nicely without pushing it too far. They also stated that they would notice our adverts and album and look at it as the images are interesting and it is different to any albums and advert they have seen lately. Also, we were told many times how watchable our video is over and over again. This showed us how successful our brand image was and the cinematography, editing, mise en scene and colour have been in this part of the project.
Within the evaluation, not many media techniques have been used apart from blogger, Microsoft word, google, youtube, prezi, powerpoint, final cut and slideshare. I used all of these again as they are very reliable and were the media techniques I needed to complete the evaluation.
As part of our evaluation, we had to answer one of the questions using Prezi. This was knew to me as I have never used this media technique before.
I used prezi to answer the question on our audience feedback. After I learnt how to use Prezi, I found it easy to use and navigate around. It was easy to write and you just click on the background. Placing images and videos was very easy to do as well. It was very straight forward as I just opened the image and placed it on the page. To get it in the right place, I clicked on the image and a wheel instruction came up, this was easy to use as the middle part was where I moved the image around to where I wanted it. The outside part was where I changed the size of the image. This worked very well for the images, text and videos as it meant I could design it all myself.
The only problem I had with prezi was, when i wanted to place charts and graphs within my answer to help explain what I have just written, I wasn't able to place them in. I tried changing the charts to .JPG but I couldn't which meant that I wasn't able to upload the charts and graphs to show the answers we gathered from our audience questionnaires.
Also, with our evaluation, we used final cut again. We used this to edit our directors commentary about our music video and ancillary tasks. When we were editing the commentary, we found it easier than before as we already know how to use the tools in final cut from our music video. This was useful as it meant we could do this quickly. As part of our directors commentary, we imported a video from youtube into final cut. To do this, we found a converter website for youtube videos to MP4's. Then we copied the UCL and waited for the video to be converted. Once this had worked, we placed the video into the brower of final cut and dragged it onto the time line. We decided to do this as it was a video that shows where our ideas came from for our video and brand image.
As this question had to be a blog post. I typed the answers onto Microsoft Word first. I did this to ensure that I didn't lose any of my answers if I had just typed it straight onto blogger as it is known for sometimes being unreliable. This has happened to me a couple of times and this is know why I type everything up onto Word first and then copy and paste the images and writing over.
Overall, throughout the project I felt that it was successful and I made the products I desired to do. The music video took the longest to create as there was a lot of editing to do and a lot of footage to collect but I felt that we did this to the best of our ability. Using Final Cut, Photoshop and InDesign throughout the project was easy to do. I felt that the CD Album and magazine adverts were very successful to continuing our brand image and kept the style of our band throughout which would appeal to our audiences and this was successful. We knew this had worked from the audience feedback we collected as many of our fellow media students commented on how the brand image was visible all the way through and that our music video appealed to them greatly as they would multi-watch the video. In keeping with the time management and the deadlines. I feel that we pushed the deadlines a little as there was a rush at the end of the project to make sure everything was done on time. However, I don't think this effected our project at all as every product was created to the best of our abilities and we worked well together as a group. When the footage was being collected, this time management was successful as we had all the footage in time to edited successfully. To conclude, I think our products are very successful to the showing of our brand image throughout and it appealed to the correct audience which is what we were aiming for.
throughout nearly the whole process, to look for different products bands similar to ours have created. I also used these search engines to 
We first used blogger in our research and planning stage but we used it throughout all of our project. Blogger is a free blog site where you can create your own blog to showecase your work. I had never used it before but found it very easy to use and beneficial when showing ideas to the rest of the group. It looks very professional and is organised so you can find the exact post you want to very quickly. You can upload texts, videos, photos to blogger which makes it a very interesting way of displaying your work. 
Photoshop was equally beneficial to use when we were produced our ancilliary tasks. It is also a very advanced programme but I had used it before so I already knew how to use it breify. I easily got the hand of it and got to know the different tools that would help me such as: colour too, size tool, gradient tool and the weight tool. Aswell as these, i used the crop tool to crop the photos to fit into the frame and a sharpener tool for the one of the magazine advertisments to sharpen up the photo at one end, which gave a great effect. 
Photoshop was great to use to add colour gradient to a photo. Using photoshop I could tint the photo to whatever colour I wanted from the spectrum. I changed the colour of my photos using these different colour lines to increase/decrease contrast etc. I used this tool too add a brown colour gradient over the photo you can see to show a 'realism' and 'gritty' effect, this worked really well and looked alot better with this added onto it, it helped give off conotations of our bands brand image. 
Aswell as being to edit on Final cut it also let you colour grade over your footage. I thought this was a very good tool to use and worked very well. It let you pink from a range of different colours and you could increase/decrease the colour to suit you. In the music video, I added over a pink gradient over this viynl playing which really helped to keep the consitant house style that is seen in all of my ancilliaries. It was really easy to do and i feel that it fits in very well.
In final cut, you could add and delete different layers. This was very helpful to us as it meant you could put different footage onto the different layers so that I could focus on one piece of footage at a time. You could also 'lock' different layers when you werent using them to make sure that the footage you were not edited didn't get deleted by accidnet. Once i had found out how to use the different layers, they were a really beneficial tool throughtout the process. 
Photoshop was equally beneficial to use when we were produced our ancilliary tasks. It is also a very advanced programme but I had used it before so I already knew how to use it breify. I easily got the hand of it and got to know the different tools that would help me such as: colour too, size tool, gradient tool and the weight tool. Aswell as these, i used the crop tool to crop the photos to fit into the frame and a sharpener tool for the one of the magazine advertisments to sharpen up the photo at one end, which gave a great effect. 
Photoshop was great to use to add colour gradient to a photo. Using photoshop I could tint the photo to whatever colour I wanted from the spectrum. I changed the colour of my photos using these different colour lines to increase/decrease contrast etc. I used this tool too add a brown colour gradient over the photo you can see to show a 'realism' and 'gritty' effect, this worked really well and looked alot better with this added onto it, it helped give off conotations of our bands brand image. 
