Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

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

During the process of this course I have used many different media technologies wherever suitable to help me plan and create my media products. Firstly I used technology to aid me in my research of existing artists, I did this using the internet and used video streaming websites like Youtube.com to watch existing bands music video to gleam inspiration and look at conventions. I used the internet and books to research about theorists like Goodwin who devised Goodwin’s 6 points, website such as Google and Wikipedia were useful for finding factual information like this. I also used Google Image searches to find pictures of existing digipaks and magazine adverts to look at and analyse and well as looking at ones that I own.

First Discovering the band was done online through websites like unsigned.com and myspace.co.uk, without websites like these finding and unsigned band to use would have been very difficult and I would have been reliant of finding a band that I actually knew people in who wrote their own songs. But thanks to these technologies I could use a band from anywhere across the world.

In terms of filming I used a Sony Handycam hdr-cx115e, handheld, HD hard drive camcorder. This camera is high-definition and although the footage was edited in standard definition the quality of footage was still surprisingly good to say this is a high street available camera. The video had quite a nice home-video low-fi look to it which suited the indie ethos of the video well. I used this camera in conjunction with multiple tripods to steady the shots and allow smooth tilt and pans. In the industry much higher quality camera would be used and could be used with dollies or steadycam. Cameras like the Handycam mean that small bands are finding it increasingly easier to film their own low budget music videos.

I edited all the footage on the school’s apple iMacs using the built in iMovie software, the iMovie software is fairly simple to use if not quite clumsy at times. Althought he footage was filmed in HD, I believe the clips were converted to standard definition when they were imported into the software, hence the grainy quality I mentioned previously. Although iMacs are the industry standard in media, most of the time the software used is Final Cut Pro, not iMovie. Technologies that I used in iMovie include the preset clip filters that you can apply such as the black and white filter that I applied to the first half of my video and then removed for the second part. I also used the software to speed up and slow down clips, use preset transitions like fade to black and cross-fade, as well as crop some pieces of footage to get rid of something unwanted on the edge of the frame.

My cover images were shot using a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ10 point and shoot camera. This camera is 12megapixel and has 12x optical zoom. This camera produces good quality photos and for the sizes I need the photo were easily of a high enough quality.

I edited the photos and graphics using Photoshop Elements which is very good software, if not a little complicated to used until you get used to it. For the covers I produced and the advert I think the outcome looks rather professional. I used features of this application such as the built in texturing tool where I simply had to choose the parameters of the texture and it would render it for me.
Another big piece of technology again a website on the internet is Google Blogger that I have used to record, and plan my progress throughout this course and at the same time used it to present my coursework entry.
Had this been a professionally released video it would definitely be uploaded onto YouTube and Vevo on the record labels official protected channel to reach a much wider audience as well as being played on music television channels like MTV. The internet and social media websites like Twitter and Facebook would be a very good way of advertising and spreading the word about my album release and I think sites like these play a hug part in the music/media industry in the modern world.