Question 1) How does your media product use, develop and/or challenge forms and conventions of real media texts?
This question was done in our group of three.
Sarah, Chloe and Nicole.
Monday, 5 March 2012
Evaluation - Chloe Gregson
INTRODUCTION: To finish my portfolio in Media Studies I am going to evaluate mine, Sarah’s and Nicole’s final product. I am going to answer four questions which have been given to be and I will state 1) how we used, challenged, developed forms and conventions of real media texts 2) how effective the combination of my main products and ancillary texts, 3) what I’ve learnt from my audience feedback and finally 4) how I used media technologies in the construction, research, planning and also evaluation stages.
Question one: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media texts?
Myself and my group planned, wrote, filmed and edited our own personal directors commentary and it will be posted at the top of our blog.
Question two: How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?
Q2-chloe
To do this question I used PowerPoint so that I could make slides to make it more visible and easy to read. I was able to put pictures and arrows on my PowerPoint so that I could back up what I was saying with my products I created over the coursework tasks.View more PowerPoint from smcmediastudies
Question three: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Answering this question, I felt that I should do this on a Prezi as I thought it would present my audience feedback in a different way so that I could place graphs and pictures along with texts and join them together with a path, so it looks smooth and helps break up each section of this question.
Question Four: How did you use Media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the coursework process myself and my group used various media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation process such as: In Design, Photoshop, Final Cut, Google, YouTube, PowerPoint, Microsoft Word and many more programmes.
GOOGLE: I used Google to do my research and planning as I used the search engine on this website to gain information on a lot of things such as how popular my genre is in the music charts and also what label is my chosen artist from. This was a very useful way to find out any key information that I need in relation to my song artist, my own personal artist or basic things for pictures to put online, on my blog.
BLOGGER: As a starting point, we used blogger throughout our coursework process but mainly for our research and planning stage. This website allows you to create your own blog which allows anyone to see your work progression and also to showcase your work. You can upload pictures, links, websites, or just simply text to your blog and I feel that it is a brilliant website to use to showcase your coursework. The reasons for this is that each blog post will be neatly put together which provides the viewers with a presentable website to look at.
YOUTUBE: YouTube was a main part of my research and planning process also, as it was used over and over again so that myself and my group could analyse different music videos and see just what sort of narratives and motives are genre had in their mainstream music videos. We put some of these videos on our blog to show just what we was looking for in our video. We also got a feel of how other artists show their brand image through their videos just by using YouTube. By using this website also, we could look at what sort of location we would want to use and how effective they look on other videos, we did this a few times and finally came up with our wood location, as we found that Example’s – Stay Awake video looked very intriguing upon watching it on YouTube.
iMac: I used an iMac to do my research and planning before making my music video with my group, as it would enable me to look at the programmes I have stated above. Any programme you need, an iMac has. The reasons for using the iMac is simple, it is very easy to use and has a big screen, which will help me view different programmes at the same time as I can split the screen in half.
PHOTOSHOP AND INDESIGN: These programmes were used once we took our pictures with a HD Panasonic Camera. We were able as a group to edit pictures to what we wanted them to be. By using these two also, we could write ontop of our pictures which were very useful when finishing off our released posters and six panels. This photo here is the logo for Photoshop. I chose this picture to put here as out of the two programmes, we used this one most.
WORD: We used Microsoft Word as part of our coursework to write out two different questionnaires. One was for our target audience, to gain an idea on what they were looking for and the other one was for our audience after them watching our finish music video. We was able to use the techniques Word allows you to use like; bold, to make questions stand out, title styles etc.
POWERPOINT: PowerPoint was used after we finished our music video to answer another evaluation question. This very programme allowed us to create and make our own personal charts, graphs and pie charts for our audience feedback and in some cases, research.
EXCEL: Microsoft Excel was used to make graphs, charts, tables and pie charts for our research and planning, evaluation and feedback. I found this an easy task as I have used this programme before for various other lessons, so it was no challenge to set up a bar chart, which was useful as I could delve straight into my tasks given.
PREZI: I used Prezi to answer an evaluation question. This website was used to make a presentation, which is based on PowerPoint. I used the zoom buttons, path buttons, frame buttons, picture buttons which would make this presentation look more professional and show my question three in a much more orderly fashion.
SLIDESHARE: Slideshare was a website I only used once so that I could upload a PowerPoint presentation onto Blogger. This website was helpful as it was only a few quick steps and then my PowerPoint was on a slideshare presentation.
HC CAMERA AND HD PANASONIC CAMERA: These two cameras were used thoroughly throughout making our music video and ancillary tasks. We shot our video in the studio and on location using the HC Camera and then with the HD Panasonic Camera we shot all out pictures mainly in the studio, but also on location. We used HD cameras so that we could get the best quality cameras there are to make the video/pictures look professional and well presented.
FINAL CUT: Final cut was a major part of my media coursework, due to this was the programme I used for editing my music video. For the best part of this coursework I used Final Cut. Various different techniques were used throughout using this programme such as; dissolve fade, slow and fast paced editing and also on top of this, slow motion. By using this programme it helped us put each of our films on the timeline at the button of the page and watch them all, once doing this we used the editing tool, and cut various takes out we did not like. Tools which Final Cut have are excellent and they are professional. I was able to zoom closer into some of my film, add layers on top of another part of a shot, add filters to them, and even colour grade some of the shots to make them all appear to be nearly the same so they have the same ethos to them. We used these tools over and over again to make our video look the best it can be. Also on top of this, we used final cut to edit our director’s commentary, we placed our video recording once again on the timeline and this time instead of cutting out things, we placed pictures on the timeline to represent and back up what we are saying in our director’s commentary. At first, this programme was hard to use, but as time went on it became easier and by the time we got half way through editing our video, it became natural to me just like PhotoShop and In Design and Prezi did the first time I used it.
EVALUATION STAGES:
During the whole of the coursework process, I thoroughly enjoyed each stage. I was taught different programmes and used them to perfection, I was also shown new websites to use which I didn’t know of before starting this. If I was to go back and change anything from my music video, I would have edited out the tambourine, colour keyed some of the shots which need just a little bit more doing to them and maybe add some more studio shots to balance out the two different locations. I wouldn’t change anymore because I’m extremely happy with the end result of myself and my groups’ music video and ancillary tasks. Personally I think that our chosen brand image is sustained throughout, which an important part to a new artist is trying to get recognised. Sarah, who kindly offered to be the protagonist, was happy to do anything we suggested in our research and planning, and by doing this we have come out with a strong brand image. We worked together as a team, and worked collectively at the tasks given out to us. I think that reflects in our work.
Thursday, 1 March 2012
Evaluation: Nicole
Question Three: I have created a prezi showing what I have learnt from the audience feedback.
Question Four: How did you use Media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
To complete my media coursework I have used many different kinds of technology. My first task was all the research and planning. The different technologies that I used where 'Google' and 'YouTube'. These two websites were extremely helpful to me when researching all the different types of music videos. Firstly www.google.com is a search engine and I used Google to help me search the different artist that there is about and to look at the many different styles that we could use for our ancillary tasks.
www.youtube.com was also a very useful source when completing the research because this website allows you to watch music videos. This was good because it allowed us to analysis the different videos and sees what we would like our video to be like. We also used YouTube to compare the different music videos, for example we watched a number of videos using a studio then watched some that were filmed at a location then we decided what we wanted our video to turn out like.
I have also used a number of different programs on Microsoft office in my research and planning.Firstly we used 'Microsoft word' when we wrote a letter to her music label 'island' asking for permission for using her track for our video. We have also used 'PowerPoint' to present our results from our audience feedback. I believe that this is a much easier program to used compared to other programs that are used to create presentations such as 'prezi.'
Blogger is a website that we have used all the way through our media project. We have used this from the start to record all our findings and to keep you all updated on a progress. This is a very useful website as you can do such things as adding text and pictures to posting videos off YouTube. This has been helpful because when we were looking at the many different videos and deciding what we would like ours to be like we used blogger to keep a record of these videos.
To film our music video in the studio we used an 'HD camera.' This was good because the quality of the image was alot better than just using a normal video camera and in our video you can tell this through how clear the image is. It also made our video look alot more professional, which is good because our aim was to get the video looking like professional directors had created it.
When we filmed our video on location we used the one of the more basic video cameras. The video cameras are pretty simple to use and although the camera wasn’t HD the quality was still good.
We used a still camera to get shots for our cd case and release poster. The quality of the image that we got was really good because we lit the location and studio well.
We used a tripod when using the video camera and stills camera because if you just hold the camera in your hand you it can sometimes be shaky therefore using the tri-pod made the images look better and more professional. Also the tri-pod was good because you can adjust the height and angle of it to get different shots.
When we had collected all of footage and images it was time to start editing it and create the video. Firstly to create our music video we used a program called 'final cut' which allows you to do many things to the footage including cutting different clips and mixing them together and editing the colours and contrast of the video.
To edit our pictures that we had taken we used a program called 'Photoshop.' This program allowed us to make the images brighter and adjust the colour if needed to. Also if you wanted you are able to do things like changed the image to black and white but we didn’t do this, as it didn’t fit with our artist.
Then finally to complete the ancillary task we used a program called 'InDesign' which allows you to put images that we edit using Photoshop onto templates such as the compact disc cover.
Question Four: How did you use Media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
To complete my media coursework I have used many different kinds of technology. My first task was all the research and planning. The different technologies that I used where 'Google' and 'YouTube'. These two websites were extremely helpful to me when researching all the different types of music videos. Firstly www.google.com is a search engine and I used Google to help me search the different artist that there is about and to look at the many different styles that we could use for our ancillary tasks.
www.youtube.com was also a very useful source when completing the research because this website allows you to watch music videos. This was good because it allowed us to analysis the different videos and sees what we would like our video to be like. We also used YouTube to compare the different music videos, for example we watched a number of videos using a studio then watched some that were filmed at a location then we decided what we wanted our video to turn out like.
I have also used a number of different programs on Microsoft office in my research and planning.Firstly we used 'Microsoft word' when we wrote a letter to her music label 'island' asking for permission for using her track for our video. We have also used 'PowerPoint' to present our results from our audience feedback. I believe that this is a much easier program to used compared to other programs that are used to create presentations such as 'prezi.'
Blogger is a website that we have used all the way through our media project. We have used this from the start to record all our findings and to keep you all updated on a progress. This is a very useful website as you can do such things as adding text and pictures to posting videos off YouTube. This has been helpful because when we were looking at the many different videos and deciding what we would like ours to be like we used blogger to keep a record of these videos.
To film our music video in the studio we used an 'HD camera.' This was good because the quality of the image was alot better than just using a normal video camera and in our video you can tell this through how clear the image is. It also made our video look alot more professional, which is good because our aim was to get the video looking like professional directors had created it.
When we filmed our video on location we used the one of the more basic video cameras. The video cameras are pretty simple to use and although the camera wasn’t HD the quality was still good.
We used a still camera to get shots for our cd case and release poster. The quality of the image that we got was really good because we lit the location and studio well.
We used a tripod when using the video camera and stills camera because if you just hold the camera in your hand you it can sometimes be shaky therefore using the tri-pod made the images look better and more professional. Also the tri-pod was good because you can adjust the height and angle of it to get different shots.
When we had collected all of footage and images it was time to start editing it and create the video. Firstly to create our music video we used a program called 'final cut' which allows you to do many things to the footage including cutting different clips and mixing them together and editing the colours and contrast of the video.
To edit our pictures that we had taken we used a program called 'Photoshop.' This program allowed us to make the images brighter and adjust the colour if needed to. Also if you wanted you are able to do things like changed the image to black and white but we didn’t do this, as it didn’t fit with our artist.
Then finally to complete the ancillary task we used a program called 'InDesign' which allows you to put images that we edit using Photoshop onto templates such as the compact disc cover.
Sunday, 26 February 2012
Evaluation - Sarah Turner
EVALUATION.
To finish my advanced portfolio in Media i need to evaluate and anaylise my groups final product. To do this i have been given four questions to answer that will show how we used, developed or challenge forms and conventions of real media texts, how effective the combination of our main products and ancillary texts was, what we learnt from our audience feedback and how we used media technologies in the construction, research, planning and the evaluation stages of the portfolio.
Question one is a director's commentary that was done by all three of us in the group and you can see this in the top post.
Question two was done in a prestentation format on microsoft powerpoint so i could talk all about brands, my artists brand image and how the brand image is shown through our main video and then through our ancillary texts.
Question 3 was done on a zooming presentation site called Prezi, i used this to use a varitey of media technologies to present my answers creatively.
Ouestion 4) How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
YouTube was also a massive help in the R&P stage as all the music video inspirations where found there. YouTube was so easy to use and to embed codes onto our blog when needed only took a couple of seconds to do. YouTube was also used to upload our final product on and from there, we could embed the code onto other sites such as; Blogger, Twitter and Facebook. We also uploaded a audience feedback video to YouTube to be able to out onto our blog.
MICROSOFT OFFICE;
CONSTRUCTION STAGES;
FINAL CUT;
EVALUATION STAGES;
In the evaluations stages of the portfolio, i used a variaty of media technologies to present my answers creatively, the first question is done as a director's commentry done by the whole group, for this we had to use microsoft word to produce a script we we're going to read out, we also had to use youtube to screen shot the real media texts we had looked at and also to screenshot shots from our own video, we then had to use a camera to record us reading out or commentary and then finally using final cut to edit it all together.
For question two, all three of us had to do a seperate answer so i used a presentation format using microsoft powerpoint, i used this as it was the easiest way to present my answer, as i wanted to add the use of pictures to show the ancillary texts we had done and also to show some shots from our final product and to show shots from the real media texts that had helped us to make our video.
For question three, again this was done seperatly and i used prezi. This was a zooming presentaion programme that allows you to, like powerpoint create a presentation but with prezi you can use the effect of zoom and movement to add creativity to it.
And finally for question four i used a blog post as this question required more writing than pictures, although i did include picture to show what i was talking about.
I felt it was important to use all these different media technologies and i wanted to show that i could use them and show off my extensive use of ict and to help me achieve the highest mark possible.
To finish my advanced portfolio in Media i need to evaluate and anaylise my groups final product. To do this i have been given four questions to answer that will show how we used, developed or challenge forms and conventions of real media texts, how effective the combination of our main products and ancillary texts was, what we learnt from our audience feedback and how we used media technologies in the construction, research, planning and the evaluation stages of the portfolio.
Question one is a director's commentary that was done by all three of us in the group and you can see this in the top post.
Question two was done in a prestentation format on microsoft powerpoint so i could talk all about brands, my artists brand image and how the brand image is shown through our main video and then through our ancillary texts.
Question 3 was done on a zooming presentation site called Prezi, i used this to use a varitey of media technologies to present my answers creatively.
Ouestion 4) How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
RESEARCH AND PLANNING STAGES;
The very first thing we needed to do were research all real media texts, we needed to do this to find out what type of video we wanted to do and also how could maybe break away from the typical music video conventions. To do this we needed to use many media technologies and we needed to use them to the best of our ability.
The first media technology used was blogger. We set this up to post everything we wanted in our video and to show what type of real media texts we had looked at to get inspiration.
Blogger was used the most throughout the entire project. We first made our blog at the very beginning of it and we posted on everything we found that related to a certain part of the project. Examples of this are, the research on brand image, the planning of mise en scene, cinematography and editing, and the final product were all posted on their along with many more important factors of it. Blogger was easy to use and assessable from all different computers which meant we could blog when were at home, or at college. As research and planning is a massive element to the project we needed to get as much information on our blog as possible and I feel as group we managed to do this and do it fairly, so no-one was posting too much or too little.
The second most important media technology used was google. Google is a internet search engine used worldwide, it was a massive part of research and planning as it helped us find images we needed to talk about on our blog, it also helped us find out about certain artists we wanted to talk about. For example, Florance and the machine, Laura Marling and Eliza Dolittle. Google was easy to use and never seemed to cause any major problems while we were using it and the picture that we had saved from there always showed up.
YouTube was also a massive help in the R&P stage as all the music video inspirations where found there. YouTube was so easy to use and to embed codes onto our blog when needed only took a couple of seconds to do. YouTube was also used to upload our final product on and from there, we could embed the code onto other sites such as; Blogger, Twitter and Facebook. We also uploaded a audience feedback video to YouTube to be able to out onto our blog.MICROSOFT OFFICE;
Microsoft office was a massive part of the research and planning stages, the technologies used most were; word, powerpoint and excel.
Microsoft word was used a lot through the R&P stages as we used it to write out posts that were on our blogs so that we wouldn’t lose them, and if they got deleted for one reason or another we could easily post them back on again without having to write it all again.
PowerPoint again, was another important element in R&P as it was used to make powerpoints of brand image, audience feedback and conventions of the music genre. These were all uploaded onto blogger as a source of research.
Excel was used more in the evaluation process of the project, as it was used to make different charts to explain our audience feedback. Charts used were; pie charts, bar charts and line graphs.
CONSTRUCTION STAGES;
We used two different cameras in the construction process. For the studio and green screen shots we used the professional HD camera, so our shots were very clear and looked really well. The camera we used for our location shots wasn’t a HD one so the quality went down on them, but never the less the shots still worked and still looked very good. As I didn’t take part in much of the filming myself, I wouldn’t know if it was easy to use but my group didn’t seem to show any difficulty when they were filming.
Green screening some of our shots was really important as, we wanted to stick to some conventions of a music video and this meant having studio shots within our video. Our idea was to have a bright white background behind our artist in the shots so we decided to shoot on the green screen and add the background in final cut. We learnt how to light the green screen properly so that when it came to editing and chromer keying it, it wouldn’t have any green lines around the outline of the body. This wasn’t easy and something we all found quite difficult to do and as we found out in the editing process we didn’t light it as best as we could.
Halfway through editing our video we noticed that we didn’t have enough studio shots and that the location was getting a little boring. This is when we decided to shot some shots on the white studio backdrop, we found this much each to light and when it came to editing we also found it easier to make into a bright white background.
FINAL CUT;
To make our final product we needed to use final cut pro to edit all our shots together. I personally wanted to take on the main role of editing, so I let the rest of the group take on the other roles of filming ect. Editing was a hard factor of the project as everything relies on what you do and how you do it. For example some cuts, if not put together properly would have been noticed in the final viewing. Also some effects, if they didn’t look right would of effected the whole video. Apart from this, editing was my favourite part of the entire project and me and my group were happy of how our video finished.
In final cut it allowed you to colour grade some shots to make them either brighter or duller. We used both of these effects and brightened up the shots of the artist in the studio, the need to do this was too add an angelic look to our quirky artist, it shows the difference between the good and the bad. The good being the artist and the bad being the animals. The bright white was used at the beginning of the video and at the end, it gave the audience a clear message on what was happening.
We also used to colour grade tool to dull out the shots of the animals in the woods, as said before the animals were seen as the villains in the narrative so we needed a way to show this through the editing. I found using the colour grade tool easy to use and i didn't have any major problems with it, this made the editing stage even more enjoyable as it wasn't causing me or my group any stress.
Also in final cut, you could add different layers onto your project.
This worked well as we over lapped the shots of artist stood still and artist swishing her hair, this was too add the effect of confusion to our video. As our main aim was to stop the audience from getting bored we wanted to keep them thinking about the video all the way through until the end were there is a clear end and you eventually find out what the video is about.
We also used it to over lap a shot of the artists feet running and a shot of the artist herself running. This was too again add the effect of confusion to our video and also give the audience an idea of who was running.
As the shot of the artists feet running was so fast, i found it difficult to get a screen shot of it clearly but on the video you can see it. Also the shot of the artist herself running was a long shot and again hard to make out on the screenshot.
Overall, i found using final cut easy and i didn't come across any major problems. However the only thing i found was the rendering of the video, as the video we produced was a rather experimental one we needed to see every little bit done but if you rendered the video not only would it take a long time, as soon as you move a small section you would have to render it again. A part from this, the whole editing process was one of my favourite and i enjoyed trying out all the different elements it had to offer.
EVALUATION STAGES;
In the evaluations stages of the portfolio, i used a variaty of media technologies to present my answers creatively, the first question is done as a director's commentry done by the whole group, for this we had to use microsoft word to produce a script we we're going to read out, we also had to use youtube to screen shot the real media texts we had looked at and also to screenshot shots from our own video, we then had to use a camera to record us reading out or commentary and then finally using final cut to edit it all together.
For question two, all three of us had to do a seperate answer so i used a presentation format using microsoft powerpoint, i used this as it was the easiest way to present my answer, as i wanted to add the use of pictures to show the ancillary texts we had done and also to show some shots from our final product and to show shots from the real media texts that had helped us to make our video.
For question three, again this was done seperatly and i used prezi. This was a zooming presentaion programme that allows you to, like powerpoint create a presentation but with prezi you can use the effect of zoom and movement to add creativity to it.
And finally for question four i used a blog post as this question required more writing than pictures, although i did include picture to show what i was talking about.
I felt it was important to use all these different media technologies and i wanted to show that i could use them and show off my extensive use of ict and to help me achieve the highest mark possible.
Monday, 20 February 2012
Thursday, 16 February 2012
Evaluation Feedback - Sarah
Question 2: Doesn't seem to be working!
Question 3: Good detail on how you used Final Cut - do this for all the technology used.
Remember this is an evaluation - so evaluate all the technology - good and bad things about it - easy to use? difficult? Created problems or worked well all the time?
Did you have to improve you skills - did you feel more confident using it over time?
Remember to look at the good example evaluations on the Advanced portfolio blog to get an idea of what you need to aim towards!
Miss McNulty
Question 3: Good detail on how you used Final Cut - do this for all the technology used.
Remember this is an evaluation - so evaluate all the technology - good and bad things about it - easy to use? difficult? Created problems or worked well all the time?
Did you have to improve you skills - did you feel more confident using it over time?
Remember to look at the good example evaluations on the Advanced portfolio blog to get an idea of what you need to aim towards!
Miss McNulty
Sunday, 22 January 2012
Fonts
Before creating our prints, we had to find a font which would match our protagonist. We was able to find a font by using this website. www.dafont.com
(find out the name of the font and get a picture of it)
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