Evaluation - Activity 4

How did you use new media technologies in research and planning, construction and evaluation stages?

Throughout the making of our music video we

used digital technology in many different ways, such as the methods and equipment used. Below are the stages we went by in making the music video where digital technology was use

d.

Research and Planning

Firstly, digital technology was used by creating our blog. This was necessary as having a website is involved in media. By having a blog we were able to upload all our research and talk about how and what we were doing in order to crate a pop music video. A googlemail account was also created so that we could use the blog and send an email to Lily Allen's record label asking permission to use the song 'Knock Em' Out'.

Before constructing the music video a lot of research in to video and the planning of our own

music video. We look into the history of music videos in general and then took down the typical conventions which help make a music video successful. We gathered this information from the internet and then wrote about it on our blog. Before choosing our song for our own creation of a music video, we went onto youtube and analysed a variety of music videos which contain different conventions and the use of special effects when they were edited.

Before we could construct our music video planning needed to be done. We had to work out what the narrative of the song was and how to include performance. We done this by a group discussion, then made story board containing each shot of the song. However, using story boards doesn't always go to plan. They are there to help with the filming process and give a rough idea to what the music video will look like. Once the storyboards had been drawn up we used a camera and a tripod to film each shot drawn, which as them uploaded to the Apple iMac we are using onto iMovie HD.

On iMovie HD we were able to edit the shots of the story and create a video which would give a rough idea of what the final product would look like. As we needed to incorporate the image of Lily Allen into our music video we used the Internet with websites such as wikipedia and Lily Allen's own website to gather information on her. We also watched some of her previous video to see how we were able to represent her within our music video.

After the final product had been filmed and put together on YouTube, so we were able to put it onto our blog, we hadn't quite finished our coursework. we had to undertake 2 ancillary tasks, which were to make a Digipak for our song and to create a magazine advertisement which would help promote Lily Allen and her song. However, when creating thes

e we had to base it on what he had done for a music video, such as images used. The research and planning for these 2 tasks were similar to the planning and research for the music video. We needed to get the conventions for both and design them to give an idea of what we wanted them to look like.

Below is a image of Sinead designing the Digipak:

Construction

During the construction of our video, we used several different means of digital technology to film our video, this was because of many different factors. Firstly throughout the filming process we used a camera with a tripod and also another small digital camera. This enabled us to be able to produce good shots and a range of different angles. Throughout the filming process we regularly updated our blog putting on all the different processes and evaluating how we could have improved things and what we intended to do next. the blog has helped us highly in the process of our music video as it has logged all of the different processes and has also been useful information for us to return to when looking at different conventions. While editing our music video we used imovie to cut clips, and edit overall. This program helped us a lot in the editing process and although some aspects were still difficult the precise timings that the program shows particuarly helps in the editing process, especially the lip syncing aspects in our music video. In the process of making our music video advertisement and digipak we used photobucket to edit images, add effects and resize images to make them the typical conventions of a normal advertisement or digipak. Photobucket enabled us to create effects and images that we would not have been able to having used such programs as powerpoint or microsoft word.

Below is a image of Ellie editing the music video on iMovie HD using a Apple iMac.

Evaluation

Overall we are happy with our final products, the music video, the digipak, advertisement and blog. We gathered audience feedback by making a short film of other students in our class who answered a series of questions relating to our video, digipak and advertisement. They gave us a variety of feedback, what they liked and what they believe could have been improved. Through digital technology we had good feedback on the variety of shots we had used in our video, and the editing was generally good however some of the lip syncing could have been improved. We feel that this is true also and if we had filmed some more clips and had more footage this would have been possible to change, we have further explained this in our own evaluation film. We received positive feedback to our advertisement and digipak, however something that we feel we could change is the fonts so that they look more similar to one another as the font used in our magazine advertisement is different to the ones used in our digipak. This is something that we could change through photobucket. We also filmed ourselves evaluating all of our product and what we though the strengths and weaknesses were and what could have been improved. We also mention how we used digital technology throughout all stages for our finished products.