How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
YouTube has played a significant role in my research and planning throughout the course. It was very useful as I was able to search for existing music videos in order to look at the conventions of the different genres but also to get some inspiration for our music video. The different ideas I've had for our originated mainly from the videos I've seen from this website.
Dailymotion was another website I've used in order to watch existing media products as not everything is available on YouTube.
Furthermore, I've also used Vimeo. A website used by our college to upload our work. It has allowed me to look at previous students work and to evaluate them / get some more ideas.
Google Maps is another website which has helped me a lot during the research stage as it enabled me to look at the different locations we could use. Its Street View feature was also very useful, especially when it came to planning our shots we were planning to film Brighton. We couldn't go there before the filming, so this feature was very handy.
During the process of actually filming our video, we had the chance to use state-of-the-art equipments.
When we've finalised our idea, we had to present it to the class. To do so, we have used a Prezzi, which is an online presentation editor.
We were all already familiar with this camera as we have all used it to film our thrillers last year. It was very easy for me to get back to using this camera and it was actually a pleasure to use.
When we came back from Brighton, we have realised that we've taken a lot of pictures and that simply importing them onto a blog post wasn't suitable. We have found this service, which allowed us to make slide shows. It was a nicer way for us to show all the pictures that we've taken during that day!
As well as using a video camera, we have also used a still camera in order to record our progress during the filming but mainly to be able to take professional pictures of our performer to use in our digipak.
During the editing process, we have used Final Cut Pro. Again, we were all very familiar with this program although some people in my group have found it challenging to use.
When we had to make our ancillary products, chosing the right picture was crucial. With a picture comes colour, and it may be sometimes difficult to pick the right colours for the elements that will feature on top of the photograph (Text, ...). Colour Designer allowed me to see which colours would go with the light blue of the sea shell.
In order to create my ancillary work, I had to carefully chose a font that would suit with the image of the artist I wanted to communicate. This website has allowed me to browse through thousands of fonts and to pick the right one, after narrowing my selection to a few.
When it was to the actual making of my ancillary products, I've used Photoshop. I was already familiar with this program as I've used it many times in the past. There are so many tools that this program features that have proven to be useful during this stage, but I think that the main one is the layers. The fact that this program layers everything you do (Text, images, shapes...) is really handy. I've also used its colour correction feature in order to enhance the colours of the photographs I've used.
As you are aware, my advertisement features a QR code. I've made this using this website, which features a QR code generator. You can specify the link where the code will take you and it automatically generates an image. Very useful!
Another generator I've used, is a gid generator. This is how I've created all the gifs that I've embedded on this blog. Once all the stills are ready (screenshots of a video, every second) you sent them to this website using the form and it automatically generates an animated gif for you.
Finally, Blogger played an important role in this task. Blogger is a powerful blogging editor which allows you to post whatever you want (text, videos, gifs, images, embedded html code...). This was used to share, with you, my progress throughout this task.
