Question 1 – How did you use media technologies in the construction & research, planning & evaluation stages?

Research

In each stage of this coursework I relied heavily on media technologies. For the research stage of the project I had to use a lot of media technologies to source and gather the appropriate information. This included the online survey website Survey Monkey. We used Survey Monkey to gather quantitative and qualitative feedback from our target audience on what features they would like to see in our final music video and which forms and conversions they prefer to see in a music video. In our survey we included different forms of response such as multiple choice, ranking points by relevance and text boxes where they could write their own responses. This provided us with information that could easily be collated and used in our planning stage to create a product that would be best received by the audience.

Another type of media technology that we used in our research and planning phase was the internet, more specifically YouTube and Google Images. These two sources allowed us to research and learn about the styles, themes and conventions that are often found in Bastilles music videos, covers & Digipack’s and their own styles. This allowed us in the planning stage to create a more authentic and accurate Bastille video that reflected their current conventions and styles. By doing so we created a video that contained all the necessary features that are included in a Bastille music video such as: costumes styles, camera work, common narrative themes and pacing. The analysis of multiple videos help us greatly in the planning stage as it allowed to identify all of the features previously mentioned and helped us to build a narrative which could contain all of these to produce the most authentic and accurate video possible that represented the views of the band.

As well as Survey Monkey we also performed a focus group for gathering more detailed qualitative feedback. In this focus group we asked 3 people from our target market questions about what they prefer to see in music videos. These included: which do you prefer, more live footage or narrative based videos and how important is it to you that the video is focused on the artists. This resulted in valuable information for the planning stage as it helped us to take what they wanted and what is commonly found in Bastilles videos to create what should be a video they will enjoy. These results were presented in a video form so this had to be recorded in a studio and then later edited which all involved lots of use of media technologies.

Planning

In the planning stage media technology was not needed as much as we were using the information that we gathered in the research stage and were just discussing and making decisions on what we were going to do for our final video from that. However, some media technology was necessary for this stage as we needed to share our ideas and research with each other. To do this we used file sharing cloud based services such as Google Drive for large video files and we also used a Facebook group chat to discuss ideas and share small text based files and images with each other. The group chat was an essential part of this process as it allowed us to easily communicate with each other about the work whenever we wanted too. It was also an essential tool for collaboration as it kept a log of the discussion so when we can to working on it together we could look back in the chat and see the decisions that were previously made.

For the pitch in our planning section we used Prezi (online presentation software) as this provided variety in the way in which we displayed our work. This gave our work a different style and is much more high quality then a PowerPoint Presentation as it has much more complex animations and transitions. However, this did provide some issues as all the Prezi Presentations are stored on the cloud so instead of uploading the presentations to my WordPress blog I had to embed them into the post but due to WordPress requiring a WordPress short code and Prezi not supporting them we had to use a work around. To do this we used a 3rd party website.

As part of the planning stage we had to create a story board. To do this we hand drawn the artwork on storyboard sheets. To enhance the quality of these and to add accurate colour to them we scanned them into the computer using a copier and then edited them in Photoshop. In Photoshop, we used the selection and fill tools to select each individual item in the image and then using the colour picker and fill tools to colour them in. This made them look much more high quality and made them much more compatible with the digital format in which our work must be submitted. If we scanned them in after colouring it would not be as clear. We also selected pastel colours to use when colouring the drawings as this gave them a more realistic look.

Construction

In the construction stage of the production of our music video we relied on and used media technology heavily. For this stage, we had to go out on set multiple times too shoot the necessary video footage and images to go in our video and Digipack. To do this we used a Cannon 600D DSLR camera. We had previously used these cameras in our research for this project in our video focus group. Therefore, we had a basic understand of the camera its self which was helpful as we did not need to work it out. We also needed to decide which type of mount/stand would be the most useful for each shot (limited to what was available at our college). We chose to use the shoulder mount and tripod for our main camera support as this provided stability to the shots and allowed us to easily film in different locations and styles. We had a lot of running shots in our video which I would have liked to have used a Gimble camera mount for this as it would have allowed for smoother video due to the counteracting motion. However, in the final video I think that by using the shoulder mount it added additional character to the video as the movement of the camera added to the frantic nature of the video. For all static tracking shots or still images we used the tripod as this allowed us to keep the camera completely motionless while being able to set it to the required height and angle while still tracking the action.

After we shot the video we then had to edit it in post-production. For editing our video, we used Adobe Premier Pro which allowed us to harness the powerful tools contained within it to create the highest possible quality video. When editing our video, we had to first transfer our video off the SD card contained in the camera and onto the Media Studies drive on the college server where we could easily store the large video files and edit off there. Once transferred we could import our clips into the project library window and then into the time line. Here we could lay this over the music, cut any unnecessary video out and place the footage in the correct positions. After that we worked on syncing the cuts of the video with the beat of the music so that none of the transitions were jarring. We did this by cutting or adding footage, applying transitions or effects and using time remapping and scaling to fill any empty space by slightly slowing down footage. This made the structure of the video good but we still needed to work on the actual footage itself. As it was not shot in a studio with perfect lighting and a perfect camera we needed to apply colouring and other effects to the video to

make the video brighter and higher quality but also more even so there was continuity within the shots. This was essential for the video to look consistent as we shot over many

different days with different weather and lighting conditions. If we did not use these effects it would have been obvious and the narrative of the video would have been broken. On most clips, I added a +5 brightness and -5 contrast effect. This helped to bring out the colours in the shot that could not be picked up as the camera we were using was not

extremely high quality. In some of the other shots I used the Lumetri Colour, Hue Saturation Curve tool. This tool allows you to raise the amount of multiple different colours in a clip at the same time by setting points in the colour wheel and then dragging them in or out depending on if you want to increase or decrease the value.

This tool was essential especially in the final clip as the original clip without this effect being applied was virtually unusable due to the terrible lighting and colours. After the effect had been added it looked very good as can be see below.

For our still

images that we used Photoshop to edit, resize and position our images for the Digipack. This is the best software to use as it offers a huge range of powerful tools and effects to improve and enhance the images we had taken as well as allowing us to combine and create new images. The main feature which we used for our image editing was the brightness and contrast feature as well as hue and saturation. This allowed us to make changes to the colouring and brightness in the images which may have been limited by the weather and location or the camera quality. By doing so we could make our images look much higher quality and made them look much better on our Digipack. This allowed us to portray the ‘warmth’ of the song throughout the whole project as we could use these effects to bring out the yellow and oranges in the images. `

At the start of the video we made a montage section made of stock footage of multiple natural disasters, terrorist attacks and politically motivated clips which support Bastilles views. This helped to set the base of the narrative which is the main protagonists hate of the current state of the world he lives in and his desperate search to

find the girl he loves. To create this intro section I had to use YouTube to source the footage and then use an online MP4 downloader to get the clips. After that I then used Adobe After Effects to compose these clips as what I wanted to do with them was too complex to be easily done in Premiere. I wanted to accurately sync this part of the video with the very noticeable beat of the music and by using after effects I could easily match these on the exact frame. I also need to use After Effects over Premier Pro as I required additional effects which are not available in Premiere. I wanted to show that this was being watched on a TV by the Protagonist so I decided to create an old-fashioned TV style (much like what is featured at the start of the Fake It video). To do this I used the Horizontal Venetian Blinds effect. This created narrow horizontal lines above the footage which gave it the effect of an old CRT TV set. I also lowered the brightness of the clips and increased certain colours in some clips to help build the tension and mise-en-scene of the section. This made the clips that were dark more mysterious and dangerous while exaggerating and drawing attention to the big orange explosions in the middle east. This all helped to build the back story to the narrative and pushed Bastilles political agenda. I also cropped the WWCOMMS News banner real and placed that on top of the footage. This gave the video a news theme which is another perspective we were trying to portray in this video. The news and media are so easily manipulated and taken out of context in current society and we believed that there was a message about this in the song. Therefore, by overlaying the banner we have ‘manipulated the media’ as we have taken the footage out of context by making it into a montage while still being a news broadcast.

Evaluation

In the evaluation stage of the coursework I had to use a lot of the same technology from the research stage. To answer the question about audience feedback we created an interview styled video to receive qualitative feedback from viewers. This allowed us to better answer the question in a more interesting format. To do this we had to use a Cannon 600D DSLR

camera to record the video, an 8GB SD card, tripod, lighting and a studio background as well as a microphone to better pick up the audio of the interviewees. Once this had been recorded we imported the footage onto a computer where we could use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the footage down to a short video. I also added an intro title as well as text for each individual question which just helped to make the video easier to understand as there were clear visual markers between each question and answer. Once it had been edited and exported in a H264. Video file at 1080P it was uploaded to Google Drive as this allowed the large file to shared easily over the internet so the member of the group that had control of the YouTube channel could upload it. After that I linked it into a post on my blog where I analysed in on the site. By typing straight into the blog post it was much easier and the post looked much more professional as the video could be present in the post in an embedded format and then have the text just below it. If I had typed this up into a word file I would have had to upload that to SlideShare and embed that into the post separately. This would have looked unprofessional and messy so by doing it this way I believe it was much better.

For this current question, I obviously used Microsoft Office Word. I thought this was appropriate as this was long question requiring lots of text and explanation with a few accompanying pictures. This would not have been a good question to answer in PowerPoint as due to the page formatting and layout it would not have been easy to write such a large amount of words as it would have taken many slides which would have made uploading to my blog awkward.