Evaluation Question 4

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

Constuction Stage:
Like my AS studies I again used iMovie for the purpose of creating and editing my music video - from its rough cuts to the final product.
I used a range of of techniques to produce an interesting and stereotypical video for the unsigned band I chose, techniques such as;

-Speeding up and slowing down shots: I mainly slowed down shots as the song itself was sad and reminiscent, the speed of the shot when slowed down helped to make it more dramatic and emotional overall. I often sped up band shots so as the playing of the instruments was in sync with the music, I had to be careful not to speed them up too much or else it would look really unbelievable.



-Filters: As mentioned in my blog I used the filters, "Dream", "Bleach Bypass" and "Romantic" to represent different emotions felt in the song - portrayed by the lyrics. I used the "Dream" and "Romantic" filters to show (retrospectively) good memories between the couple that the singer still desperately clings to, whereas the "Bleach Bypass" was used upon present day clips to remove colour from the shots and demonstrate a lack of emotion.
I also used a filter that mirrored my clips to the original, this I chose to use so as to suggest a wider variety of clips rather than repeating them.



-Transitions: At certain points within my video I used two transitions - "Zoom" and "Cross Blur". I found the "Zoom" transition handy in quickening the change between shots, particularly when the pace of the song also quickened, in this sense I felt it fitted really well within the video even though transitions are not typical of music videos. I used "Cross Blur" to represent a change from present day shots to retrospective memories, combined with the filters used above I found this transition really effective in demonstrating this.



I of course also used an digital camera with an SD card, I found this very easy to film with and even easier when it came to uploading my footage. The only problem I found was that the cameras could not film portrait way, when I came to flipping this image round in iMovie it often slimmed the image down and it lost the quality, which was not what I wanted.

Research:
During my research stages I frequented many internet websites such as;

-MySpace: This was where I came across my chosen band "The Arrival", I found this site very useful in finding a range of unsigned artists. I was also able to listen to the tracks by my chosen artist on this website, this helped me to choose my favourite song and the one I felt most inclined to create a video for.
(To find the lyrics to my song I had to use an external music site, luckily I did not have to write them down by ear like some in my class!)

-YouTube: Here I started watching videos from the music video directors I was going to study (Jonze, Gondry, Cunningham) and chose three videos I liked best to evaluate.
YouTube was also very handy to find music videos done for other bands of similar style, I used a few of these as inspiration for my own.

-Wikipedia: This website helped greatly in my understanding of the four theories I have done (Voyeurism, Auteur, Godwin, Dyer) and therefore I could keep these in mind when creating my own video and then go on to explain where these theories came into use.
In my video evaluation posts I found Wikipedia useful in my understanding of the context of these videos and the influences the director had, this therefore helped in my evaluation of said videos.

-I also used many sites to find inspirational pictures for my digipak (Cover, Back, Inserts, Magazine Advert) which helped me arrange my band when it came to photgraphing them.

Planning:

Through my planning stages I again used iMovie, this time to create an animatic that would demonstrate the plan for my music video. I found this a good software to form the basis of my ideas and it also helped to order them.

Blogger itself helped me to order my thoughts and filming schedules so as I knew what I was doing, when and why.

Photoshop and iPhoto greatly helped me in designing and planning out my album covers and magazine advert, messing around with the effects on these softwares inspired me (along with other examples of albums) to design them the way I did.

Evaluation:

In my evaluation stages I did not really use any new media technologies to help as I used previous planning and research pages to explain why I chose things and what purpose they served in the music video world.
However to answer my evaluation question 2 I filmed my repsonse upon a digital camera and edited it in iMovie so as it made more sense and showed what I was describing upon my video.