Evaluation: QUESTION 3.

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

Research:

The most important and probably the most used technology throughout this advance portfolio project is the internet. The internet is very essential especially for the use of research. Because of the internet we get access to a load of site that are also used very often. Without internet, our research would be very poor.

Google is my default search engine and use it a majority of the time to find out information on the Music Industry, Artists, Programmes that do certain things i.e 'gif creator'. I also use it to look up definitions and spell checking.

Blogger:

Youtube:

Youtube is a website that allows you to post up videos to share worldwide. Youtube has helped us with our planning as well as production as we were able to watch Pixie Lott's music video of 'Cry Me Out'. Watching her music videos gave us ideas for our own, also watching load of other music videos relating to our genre/chosen song has also helped us pick up ideas. The suggestion box on the right side of youtube (when watching a video) shows a list of videos we may be interested in taking into consideration the music video that is currently being watch. So because we searched for Pixie Lott's Cry Me Out, the suggestion box was filled with Pixie Lott related videos.

 As you can see the suggestion box consists of more music from Pixie Lott, but also music from Cher Llyod and Cheryl Cole. This may be because they are all Pop Artists and the music they each produce are very similar. The Suggestion box therefore helps expand our research further. 

Vevo:

Vevo is very similar to YouTube, however they only post up music related videos, and by music i mean music from professional artists. Vevo helps push promotion - helping advertise the artists to a wider audience.

Pixie has her own Vevo channel called 'PixieLottVEVO' this channel consists only of her videos and no one else. Vevo helps our research to the type of artist she is and the type of music she produced over the years. 

Pixie's Website:

Pixie's website is official and purely dedicated to HER. It is filled with all the information and lastest news about her and her music like upcoming gigs and countdowns to her new song releases. The website is shared worldwide so everyone can have access to it. Her website is printed onto all her advertisement products like posters and digipaks.

We used her website during research to see how she is promoted, we learned that her website was a good way of promoting her image and fastest way to know the latest news.

^ When I typed into her website this page came as her intro. The Brit awards is mentioned which is the latest information involving Pixie Lott, as you can see the page is asking us to vote for her.

Vimeo:

Vimeo is like youtube, a video sharing website however with more of a purpose, many schools use this to post up video work. I used the vimeo site to look at previous A2 music videos which also helped me expand my research, I looked at many successful videos as well as the not so much successful ones, doing so has helped me compare the videos and know what to do and what to avoid doing.
Vimeo was used to post up our own music video and other A2 students from our college can have access to see it.

At one point before we were allowed to start producing we had to email the record label of the artist of the song we chosen (Pixie Lott) asking permission to use her song following the Copyright rules.
I emailed her manager however she did not get back to me. As i had let the manager know about this we went ahead and used Pixie's song.





Planning and Production:


I used a number of media technology to help with my planning and production, mainly equipment.

We used a camera to visually record our planning, like when Sophie, Zahra and I went to Camden Town to explore potential locations for our music video, we used my camera to record these locations down.
We also used the camera to record down our production of our music video to give evidence that we filmed/edited.

 With the same purpose as the still camera, we use the flip camera to record down our ideas and production of our music video, we have many videos showing us editing and discussing ideas and evaluating our work i.e during editing we talked about what we edited that day and what we hoped to achieve the following editing day.
The flip recorded mini clips and shows more evidence than a still camera did.

The SD card is a memory card which holds all the photos and videos taken on the gadgets.
The SD usb adapter is especially used for the SD card to transfer the photos/video onto the pc/laptop that does not have a special SD slot and only provides a usb one.

We used our phones to communicate with each other, I would text my group where we should meet up and any ideas suddenly get. I would also call my group when it comes to the day of filming or editing.
I also use my phone to take pictures and video record myself, we also used sophies iPod to play Pixie Lott's music out loud for me to lip sing to. However due to the convergence of an mp3 and a phone creating the iPhone, i also use my iPhone to play the song.
I also use my phones navigation app to find our meeting up locations.

We used the speakers just to boost up the volume level of the song as sometimes the volume isn't loud enough on our iPod/iPhone, especially in crowded places.






The JVC camera plays a very important part in the production part of our coursework. We use this professional piece of equipment to produce our music video.

Without the batteries for the still camera or the jvc camera these gadgets would not be able to function. During filming outside the college perimeter we always bring a spare battery in case the other one runs out of charge. The batteries are never left inserted with the camera and is always taken out after use.






This jvc accessory provides light in dark places impossible for the jvc alone to capture. With this light attached on top of the jvc we can film during the night also (or just in dark places). We used it during filming in Rosies House and also outdoors in Golders Hill park, however those clips we used this light in were not put into the final edit of the music video.

As we are put into groups and the macs are used from all the meida students, we are not allowed to save our work onto the desktop so instead we are giving a hard drive (which has massive memory i.e 100gb) that are numbered by groups, as we are group 34 we are given the video drive labels 34 on it. This video drive is where we store all our videos, screen grabs, video edits, photography and any other media related work we wish to save onto it. This is not allowed to leave the media department perimeter and can only be borrowed to save files onto. We mainly used this piece of equipment during the editing part of our coursework as there is not enough memory to store it onto a usb/sd card. Also the Teachers are allowed to access this equipment whenever they like to see our progress.

We used the Macs in college to use all the programmes and websites. As i own a macbook i also had the advantage of using apple based programmes at home.
Without the macs, producing the work would've been impossible so this gadget is very essential to our coursework.





Programmes:


This is an editing programme especially used for editing, we used this programme to put together our music video rough cut and final edit, we edited within 4 straight days. Complicated to use at first, i got use to the programme and managed to do (in what i felt) a successful job of editing.
The programme is very professional and many major companies involving media use this programme as well.

This is a screen grab of the timeline section of the programme, this is where we click and drag the clips and rearrange them so that a music video gradually forms. As our music video is narrative not many base tracks we used and so the timeline does not consist of many videos. As you can see at the beginning it is pretty crowded as the clips were cut to less then 1 seconds to create that quick 4 second montage of the characters relationship at the beginning of the music video (just before Charlie Jayne sings)

Soundtrack pro is also a professional programme used only to create soundtracks. We used soundtrack pro for the non-diegetic sounds at the beginning of the music video (the birds singing and clock ticking).

I used Adobe PhotoShop during the production of our digipaks and advertisement. This programme is very commonly used when it comes to creating or manipulating imagery. Complicated to use at first I adapted to the format and function very quickly and produced my own digipak and advertisement.

Quark X Press is also an editing programme, very similar to Photoshop however its format is less complicated, the programme is very good for beginners, we used this programme as practice to our digipak, we produced mock up album covers. (I did not use this programme at all as i was very confident in using photoshop, however i did play around with this programme to see whether i found it easier to use)

Presenting Work onto Blogger...

Powerpoint:

• I used powerpoint to present images before screen grabbing them, like the mood boards of the Characters, i used powerpoint to put them all together then cmd + shift + 4 to screen grab them into an image format.
• I also used PP to put together slidshows to present my work, for example the Pitch for the music video.

SlideShare:

I used Slide share to present the Pitch onto blogger as i am not able to do this using PP. Slideshare is an online programe which converts a PP so that it can be embedded onto the blog.

Prezi:

Prezi on Prezi

I used iMovie to edit videos. Videos of me talking about my work, i cut them down to make them shorter to avoided boring the viewer. It is also an easy and interesting way to present videos as you can edit them with special effects and transitions. I used iMovie a lot during documenting our filming and editing days.

I stored all my photos and videos on iPhoto on my mac whenever i do not have access to the hard drive in college. iPhoto is very organised, it puts my images/videos in order of date created, however i can change this around by grouping them into categories and labelling them 'Filming day 1' OR 'editing day 3'

I used the photobooth programme on my mac to record myself talking about media related work.








I found Camtasia on the internet and downloaded it to my mac, it is a screen recording site that records what is going on on screen of my macbook as well as using the built in webcam to video me talking, i used this programme when i was practicing my lip singing, I edited the video on iMovie then shared it on youtube to get an embedded code to put it onto blogger. I only used the 30 day trial as you have to buy this programme.

Evaluating:

I used facebook to post up the rough cut of my music video and final edits of my advertisement and digipak so that i could receive feedback from my friends. I got a lot of feedback giving me comments of improvement as well as compliments.