How did you use media technologies in the
- 2. The computers at school have also been vital to my music video production as I completed all of my editing for the music video, as well as much of my research and planning using the internet. The computer was running Windows 7, which allowed me to complete my work with out any lagging problems or program crashing. The internet was great to research, however I did find the small problem of some websites being blocked on the school’s server such as YouTube which would have helped a lot more if I was able to access these sites.
- 3. My camera was my choice to film my music video footage on due to HD capturing as well as full accessibility to the camera whenever I needed to use it. I didn’t use many effects on the raw footage because this would be easier to complete post production. I got on very well using the Canon, however oneproblem that did occur was quick movements made it hard to focus.
- 4. I also used television and film to inspire from when making my music video. I had found multiple television adverts which uses good effects which were a possibility for me to use in my music video. Television also gave me a good idea of what my target audience would be listening to thanks to music channels where many RnB songs with their videos were playing where I could use ideas from. Film also helped me because I had a few RnB/hip-hop style films such as ‘Step up’ which had some shots where the performances were taking place which I used for inspiration, as well as a lot of mise en scene such as costume, lighting and scenery which I used within my music video. All of these pieces of research and planning were very useful to my project of creating an RnB music video because they all directly effected the genre of RnB and gave me great ideas for how my music video could look like, and just to generally get me into the RnB spirit and attitudes which many RnB artists portray through the music videos of RnB.
- 5. My personal MacBook was particularly useful for the ancillary tasks because I was able to download fonts and other parts which created a large part of my posters and digipak. My MacBook also had access to Adobe Photoshop which is what my ancillary tasks were created in. I was also able to keep my blog up to date through the internet on my MacBook which also gave me mobility as my MacBook could be transported between school and home and I was able to fit in time to blog much more easily. My MacBook was also used for general research into my genre and other music videos which would contribute to the success of my overall project.
- 7. ITunes was very useful in the research and planning section of my blogging where I needed to find inspiration for other artists, from song names, feedback from fans, CD covers, pricing, record labels, and general style of the artist which I would use to influence my decisions about my final products for my artist ‘Alyssa’. ITunes was ideal for this because all the mainstream RnB artists had music and sometimes even a specially created page on ITunes which contained a lot of information which was key to creating a successful artist package of my own.
- 8. Photoshop was particularly useful for my ancillary tasks where I made a poster/magazine advert and a digi-pak, which are all very visual yet the designs are very two dimensional and required photograph editing. Due to my other course subject being photography, I am very used to Photoshop and all the controls and effects making Photoshop the best and most professional option to edit my photographs into the magazine advert as well as the digi-pak. The ability to change the fonts and the smaller details which needed fine tuning to be the best it could be were simple for Photoshop to manage. Overall, Photoshop has been very effective for the level of creativity that I wanted to be captured within my ancillary tasks as well as the overall compatibility for each of my tasks to interlink together.
- 9. Premiere Pro was the best option for me to edit my music video together because it had the most capability in terms of effects and general fine editing facilities. Last year’s project, we used iMovie, however this time, I felt that I wanted to challenge myself which meant using more professional editing software which I felt would benefit the final result of my music video due to the new capabilities which the software allowed me to do.
- 10. Microsoft word was also extremely helpful throughout the whole process for making notes, writing out blog posts whilst offline, planning my shot lists and shooting plans and many other stages where I needed to jot a note down and save it. I could also access these documents from anywhere due to saving the files on the shared section meaning I could access the files from home, or any other computer rather than just at school. The ease of copy and pasting images also helped me easily transport images to and from school by saving them into a word document.
- 11. I also used Microsoft PowerPoint for a lot of research, note taking and inspirational presentations which I could use when designing my products. For example, the blog post I created which showed a range of existing CD covers from RnB artists was created in this program and screenshot to create the actual image file. The program was perfect to allow me to move the images around to exactly where I wanted as well as resizing them to fit well on screen. I also made a slideshow PowerPoint presentation for my record label research where I made a slide of information on a range of different record labels in order for me to collectively analyze the information which I had researched and picked out of useless information for me to choose the ideal record label for my artist. This was a perfect way to allow me to narrow down my choices and was easy to slideshare straight onto my blog with no hitches.
- 12. I have used blogger throughout my media project to document my progress and research to make it easier for me to refer back. I have found blogger very easy to use throughout the pre- production, production stages as well as the post production because of the functions which easily allows you to see your progress through the blog posts which resembles a timeline of events. Blogger also allows you to add multimedia to posts such as YouTube and photographs which helped me to visually demonstrate my ideas and thoughts rather than plain descriptions. Overall, Blogger has been
- 13. Throughout the whole process of producing my music video, I have used YouTube constantly for referrals, inspiration and research. To begin with, I used YouTube to decide on what genre of music I thought I would like to make a corresponding music video to, where I first found the RnB genre very interesting. YouTube helped me to explore many different existing RnB music videos in order to gather ideas for my own. I also found YouTube very useful for the comments where members of the public expressed their opinions on different RnB music videos and especially what they think works well, and what is not as good. This was early stages of market research, but for other music videos and learning from the criticism of others. Another aspect of YouTube which was particularly useful was the availability to check out any music video and to also be able to take many screen captures for further analysis of the proxemics and many other features such as Mise en Scene which enabled me to realise what my music video is required to look like.
- 14. Amazon was also very useful for referencing songs, albums, release dates and general information on each CD such as record companies especially for my pre-production research. The CD covers were also easily available for me to copy for researching existing products of cd covers and comparing the features which I liked and this made it easier for me to see all of the cd covers together in the form of a moodboard which helped me visualise. Amazon also had information on record companies, and track listings which all helped me to understand the industry better and helped my research.
- 15. Google was really great throughout my process of making the music video, especially the research and planning stages where I relied on Google a lot to find me interesting ideas through different search criteria. I used Google images a lot when researching different album covers, digipak ideas and magazine advert examples which I could inspire from in order to create my own products. Google images was ideal for this job because of the range of images it found, however a lot of the time, the images were not relevant which was irritating. To navigate between websites I may have found with inspirational sources which was ideal. Overall, the majority of my research into existing artists, existing digipak products, magazine articles which have been published and record label research all included the initial ‘Google search’ which allowed me to find what I wanted to find out related to what I needed.
- 16. Prezi was used within my music video production for an evaluation question. Prezi is a new presentation format which allows you to show a presentation in an alternative way rather than a PowerPoint which is more dynamic with the movement and transitions. I also loved the way Prezi effortless allowed you to include media such as embedding YouTube videos and images as part of the presentation which just makes the presentation that little bit more interactive where I was making a point and this meant I could visually demonstrate what I was meaning. Overall, Prezi is a great alternative way to present work over a blog.
- 17. Due to YouTube and a lot of other video sites being blocked on the school server, I came across Vimeo, a website which allows members of the public to upload videos, much like YouTube. Vimeo was better than YouTube in some ways because it had more ‘Home made’ videos and a lot of fan videos which was sometimes quite interesting to see how somebody else hears the song and translates it into a video. I found a lot of the official music videos for many RnB artists which also was good because I was unable to use my usual first choice for finding music videos, YouTube. Overall, Vimeo was a good alternative to music video research, however I do still prefer the wide variety of choice YouTube would have allowed me to have, never the less, Vimeo still allowed me to find music videos through the school internet effectively.
- 18. To make my digipak with an effective sizing guide, I came across a website offering free high quality PDF templates for a variety of different digipak, some with 4 panels, some with six and so on. These were very useful because all was necessary to do, was to save them to my documents, and import it into Photoshop which I could create my digipak panels around the template meaning that the sizing guide would be ideal and perfect for printing.
- 19. Slideshare is a website which allows you to upload slideshows, word documents and other types of document, so you can easily share the content with other people as well as access to embed the content to a blog which was more than ideal for what I required. I uploaded a few blog posts using slideshare because it was so easy to do and looked clean and tidily presented well on the post, however still enabled me to express the information I needed for the blog.
- 20. I used Yahoo Answers for market research for when I was deciding upon names for the artist I was going to create. I posted the question of suggesting decent RnB style names for a pretend artist and I had many responses of suggestions which other people have suggested. I also asked the question about lyrics, and what the public believed that the lyrics were saying. This would help me understand some possible visuals to go along with my song track to make a good music video. The answers were almost instant, and a lot of them were sound information rather than useless information which I could not use. Another question had previously been asked very similar to my artist name question which I was able to use as inspiration as well which was good.
- 21. Tesco entertainment was also used within my research stages for inspiration about how the CD’s from existing artists are promoted within the industry. This was very interesting as although we as consumers see this marketing all the time, when thinking from a marketing point of view, a lot of the time it is effortless and perfectly slotted in to websites to make us believe that the album is much better than it appears. Tesco had a great range of CD’s which were produced by mass RnB artists which I could also use to see how they promote the new CD’s.
- 22. Urban fonts was great for me to use when coming to creating my ancillary tasks because the standardised fonts which come with computers were not best suited to an RnB CD cover or poster. This font website specialised in ‘Urban and street’ fonts which were all perfect for my tasks, however some of the graffiti fonts were perfect. The fonts were easy to download and install, then I began playing around to make my logo for Alyssa, as well as the poster and CD Cover which would also include my logo.
- 23. YouTube to MP3 is a converter which saves just the audio of a YouTube clip to a MP3 file. This was particularly useful because to be able to make the music video, I needed the music track for my actress to mime to for accuracy, and ease for syncing the music video footage to the audio track. I found YouTube to MP3 to be a very easy way of grabbing the tunes which I required to use for my music video, keeping the same sound quality throughout the downloading process.
- 24. I particularly used Wikipedia for my record label research where I visited a range of pages for RnB artists which I would like to base my artist on, and researched into what record label they used, how successful they were in terms of sales and general background history of the artists and the way they promote themselves to sell more records. Wikipedia was perfect for this information because they include all record labels and the information page about each record label that an artist has used, and for what album which really gave me a good idea of the style of music each of the record labels liked to specialise in.