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

I used www.blogger.com to upload my posts and step-by-step guide of my planning and music video through to the evaluation. This is an easy way to upload and show everything I have done. I embedded youtube videos also on my blog as a way to show my work and have an easy way to access it. I have also added images to my blog of music video’s I have analyzed such as Destiny’s child Survivor video and I also uploaded images of our idea’s for the music video such as glow sticks and images of make up ideas. To edit my video I used ‘Final Cut’ to make it the best quality I could. I used effects such as speeding some clips up in my video so it was in time with the tempo of it. This screen grab in the middle shows how I did this by going to modify and to speed and then I could change the speed of the clip and play about with it until it was right on the beat. The left hand picture shows this. To edit my music video more clearly and without confusion and moving the bits I had already edited, I could lock each layer that I didn’t want to touch or was finished. This enabled me to work on the other bits of the sequence and video and play around with effects and timing without disrupting the whole video. I found this very beneficial as I changed the video and editing of it a number of times before I got it how I wanted it to look. This also delayed it being time consuming as if I did something wrong I could just delete the section I didn’t want instead of deleting or editing the whole video from the beginning. The right hand picture shows this. The highlighted dark green is the layer that I locked as it was the song.

To make the editing of my video easier and more precise, I used pink markers to link up both song and section of my video so they flow together. This is because my lip syncing on my video sometimes didn’t match up in time with the song itself, and to make it in sync I used pink markers to firstly place them at the line of the song I wanted it to sync at and then I used another one to place it at the same line of the song that the character was singing at the time. This enabled me to link them both together, but also keep my video in time and beat with the music and look professional. However this was sometimes hard to do as I couldn’t make out precise words that the characters

were singing, so to overcome this, I added other sections of my video over the top of the lyrics. This then made my video less boring but still could see the characters singing at the lines and words where I could make out what they were saying to make my video look as professional as I could. To the left are the pink markers that I used throughout my video. To choose the sections of my footage I wanted to edit and be in the final video, I used in and out markers to select this. The middle picture shows the selection that I chose for the particular clip. This was also a helpful tool, as I didn’t have to sit and watch twelve minutes of footage every time I wanted to edit a new piece of footage into my video. The in and out markers made it easier for me to quickly choose the bits I wanted and I could extend them or shorten the clip to whatever I felt was right for the particular part of the song. The right hand image shows the tools that I was able to use throughout my time of editing my video. There was a crop tool (2nd from the bottom) for example to cut parts of the background of my video out to make it zoomed in on certain parts of my video to either give effect or show the ‘bruises’ on the two girls. These tools were easy to use and could make my video editing better for its final look.

I added some effects to my video to make it more interesting to watch. I used black and white at the beginning and throughout the video of the flash backs of the two girls in their houses, to give the viewer the intention of it being in the past and how the storyline of the music video progressed. I liked this effect as it gave the song a meaning as well as a story. I also used video transitions as seen in the left hand picture to dissolve the song at the beginning to also add to the tinting effect of it being in black and white to make it look like it’s the character thinking back to her past and that’s how the story of the song begins. The three images below shows how I added the tinting effects and the dissolve effect. The right hand image shows that I could use the tint effect but also could change it to how dark or light I wanted it and whether I wanted it to be contrasted etc… I preferred the programme ‘final cut’ to the programme I used last year for my coursework piece ‘I movie’ as I found it to have a lot more options for me to use.

However it wasn’t as reliable as ‘I movie’ as often it did crash when rendering my video and this cost time.

For my digi pack and advertisement, I used the programme ‘Photoshop’. This enabled me to select different layers to my work and add and delete those that were appropriate or not etc… I used different effects on both pieces of work to try and make it stand out to normal digipacks and CD advertisements by using bright colours that went with each other. I could use and play about with different tools on Photoshop, as on my digipack I smudged together the images of each character on the right hand side so make them co-inside with the front of it. The below image is the finished front version of my Digipack. The left hand picture shows the smudge tool I used and the far right hand image shows the other tools I used to edit both pieces of work so I could try and make it to the highest and best standard I could. On photoshop, I could lock each layer if I wanted to work on one particular one. For example the text ‘raindrops’ is curved, so to make it curved I could lock the layer so I wasn’t disturbing the other things I had already done on the page making it stable and so I could work with one layer at a time to get it to the standard that I wanted. The below image shows that I have the background layer locked for my advertisement, this is so I could add layer 1 to layer two to make them join together to make the background of my advertisement.

To evaluate my music video I chose different ways to do so. I used www.prezi.com to answer question 1. Prezi is basically a web version of Microsoft PowerPoint, with more options to edit and present your work. The below image shows the wheel that you use to edit your writing or images etc… You can use ‘paths’

to move from one place to another throughout your presentation which enables you to go back to a bit of text or image that you would like to read again etc… The middle image shows the path that I made for question one and as you can see the paths go all over the screen making it interesting as when you view the show they move from one place to another. The wheel that you use to navigate your way round the prezi, gives you options like on Powerpoint to insert images and video clips around your presentation; giving you the option to place them where ever is best and suits you. I used images on my prezi, to explain what I was talking about and to give the viewer a picture to go with the words, and also to keep them interested. To see what you were doing when creating the prezi, the right hand side picture shows that you could zoom in or out of whatever piece of text or image you were editing and also go back to your home screen with a click of a button. This is efficient and helped me as I could see clearly where to put the images and video link I created without trying to guess where to put them. This is also better then Powerpoint, as with that you have to insert new slides every time you want a new piece of text etc…

To change the colour of my fonts and theme of my prezi, I could customize it to the style that I wanted. The screen grabs below show that I could go step by step and go through each title and choose different colours for them separately. This again gave me the opportunity to customize my prezi and make it my own.

Overall, I think that using prezi, gave my evaluation question a chance to be original with the layout used and styles etc… Also to evaluate my music video I created a PowerPoint for question 2 and uploaded it onto my blog via www.slideshare.com . This enabled me to create a powerpoint, add images and text etc… but then also to upload it easily to my blog. Slideshare is a free website where you can upload any powerpoints that are made by creating your own account and accessing it. This I found was helpful as I didn’t have the fuss of trying to upload a link or file to access my presentation through blogger.

Overall, I have used a variety of software equipment for both my planning making and advertising my project, also evaluating it. I think this has gave me an opportunity to express my ideas and brought out my own unique personal preferences when coming to styles, colours and individuality through images and how I incorporated my video and narrative to my song choice.