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.
No comments:
Post a Comment