TJ - Evaluation Draft Question 4.

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

By using Blogger.com, we have contained our research, planning and evaluation on a collaborative blog. Embedding clips from Youtube to make our blog more professional and easier to read.

RESEARCH
Survey monkey - for our research we had to start with audience research and we accomplished this by using a website called ‘surveymonkey’. This enabled us to create our own questionnaire to send to our target audience and retrieve feedback from our initial ideas.
Test shots – by trying and testing various shots, we were able to discover what were the most effective for our music video. We did these on a trip to Brighton sea front where there were loads of different areas and locations to film in.


PLANNING
Slide boom – we used slide boom to upload our PowerPoint presentation to our blog.
Animatic – by drawing out each shot and filming them, we were able to create an Animatic which was used as a template so we knew how long our video would be and which shots worked the best.
Location shots – by practising and attempting shots in our location, we found suitable places on the rail track to shoot.
Blogger - by responding and keeping in touch through Blogger, we were able to gain knowledge of each others strengths..

CONSTUCTION
Photoshop – digipaks and advert using Photoshop and its many abilities to create a digipak, we added layers and images to create several different formats in development for our final piece.
Within this program, there are ways to create a professional picture easily. These include; changing the contrast, blurring the image, fading the image into another layer and even cutting and replacing bits from the original image which we did for the band photos on the digipak and advert. We used 'Old English' text for the titles as it is goth like and fits in well with the forms and conventions of the genre. This creates a brand image across the digipak and advert.

Premiere – this was the main, lengthy process of our whole project. This is due to the many different editing techniques and effects which were used. For Example -

• The crop tool to create the ghosting girl effect and overlapping each of the shots. Adding with it, the ghosting effect on the program to make it lag behind.


• And the black and white effect for the old style, as well as the film grain video we changed the opacity to layer over the top of the narrative parts to create the authentic effect of the film.


• And finally image control, to darken and change the contrast of the CU shots and performance to add to the mise-en-scene and feel for the genre.
  


• There is a main timeline, which makes it easy to drag, drop, cut and place your desired video clips in order. This helped us construct Dyer’s first person mode of address in places where we thought would be most effective.
  The shot size and zooming was also edited into the video at this stage, creating some movement which we weren’t able to film.


• The cutting rate was increased as well to conform to the rock genre conventions and the time lapse of the drummer was made to add to this.


• A problem we had was synching the lyrics and instruments. For example, some of the shots had the drummer not playing, when in the track it was a drum solo. So this created a small challenge for us.
  
  
  EVALUATION
  
  Youtube – By uploading our final edit to Youtube, we could find out peoples responses and comments. This is an example of using Web 2.0 to one of its full advantages.
  Survey monkey – using surveymonkey again, we were able to see if we had achieved our main goal successfully and conforming to the forms and conventions of rock videos.
  Premiere – we used premiere again to create a short multimedia video to produce the evaluation, with clips and screenshots to explain the points further.