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

Research and planning

Apart from our regular group meetings in school, we also used a number of other ways to communicate to share information and ideas with each other throughout the project. We created Blackberry Messenger chat on our smart phones in order to have quick and easy access to each other to discuss any ideas or issues we had about the video or blog. This also allowed us to share photos and voice notes to each other for free.

     Another way we contacted each other was Facebook. Using this social networking site helped us to communicate with each other and share ideas we found on the internet which we could link each other too. In order to find ideas for the characters outfit and style, we looked at websites such as weheartit.com as it has a popular fashion blog type section on the website. This is a very popular website within our target audience as many teenagers have their own blog. Kate Nash’s website also influenced us as we could see what type of clothing she wears which we would want to demonstrate in our video.  We made mood boards to help influence our ideas of what we would like to dress the character in.

Producing the...

Music video: Throughout the creation of the video is where I thought we really used our creative skills well and excelled in using new media, from using a brand new editing programme. This showed how I used the technical skills I had learnt to my advantage, from using professional software and equipment to create a final product I can safely say I am proud of which  shows off all of the skills I have learnt along the way during this project.

The original song was 4.15 in length, so after a rough copy, we decided to cut it down to 3.01 in length. We did this through Adobe Premier CS2, which we used to edit. This programme clearly shows the song to the second which helped us to decide exactly where to cut the song. 

We used a KODAK Zi8 camera to film with. We used this as was easy to carry about and quickly record and stop and it only really had one main button on it. Also, as it had a USB to charge it, it was easy to charge if we were near a computer instead of having to find a plug and carry the charger around – which would have been another thing to remember and worry about. We mainly used a tripod to film most of the scenes as this was the best way to keep the camera steady and allowed us to do high angle shots safely.

 We used a lot of other technology throughout the production of our video.

 In addition to the natural lighting that we used throughout the video, we thought that we would take full advantage of the weather and filmed the majority of the video outside. This gave the video a summery, happy feel to the video which is very Kate Nash like. We wanted to create a bright, bold colour gradient in the video. I experimented with the colour tools on the editing software and decided to create my own contract to emphasis the summery feel. I also added a black zoom around the edge of the screen when it says ‘she was as quiet as a mouse’. This demonstrates her quiet and shy personality.

Album cover: For the album cover we used Publisher. After trying to work out how to use Photoshop, we decided that it was too complicated to try and learn how to use in a quick and effective way to produce our album cover. Although, it was not as good as it could have been as it was made on Publisher, I think that we have done the best we can and we are both proud of it. The image on the front cover was shot was a Canon 550D as Alex had a photo shoot just before we started making the digipak and album cover. These images were shot in a professional studio with the correct lighting and edited on professional software. We deliberately made the glittery lips on the album cover stand out as this was a running theme throughout the digipak and music video.

Evaluation

Both of us are regular users of Facebook and Twitter. This was very useful during the evaluation stages of the project as we promoted on both social networking sites and could check up on the progress and feedback we had received. From uploading our video onto YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, this gave us a more diverse range of feedback.