Prezi
We used Prezi to collect all our ideas together on one page in an interactive way. Prezi was really helpful when we wanted to create pieces such as 'Mood Boards' because we were able to put pictures, videos etc onto one page which would represent all our ideas. This helped to organize all our ideas, especially when doing our pitch to the rest of the media class as we were able to separate how we would like to construct each part of the video. We even used Prezi when deciding on the different costumes the cast could wear as it allowed you to paste an unlimited amount of photos and videos. However, it could be quite fiddly and zoom in or out when you didn't want it to.
My prezi used for my pitch is posted below.
HD CameraWe used the HD camera to experiment with filming whilst filming our focus groups. We were able to understand how to use the tripod, camera etc. We learnt how to keep it steady whilst filming and how not to record over past work! I thought the cameras were really useful, especially during the construction stages. They picked up everything and were always really clear on the film. However, once we had finished filming, they did say that there was no footage on the camera, which panicked us a lot. But when we put it on the computer all the files were on there which was lucky.
Premier pro
Premier pro was a crucial part of our product. We used it in research whilst we were thinking about the style we wanted to film and edit our video in, we researched into stop motion and I made a small stop motion experiment to see if it would look in our video, how easy it was to create and which parts of our video would look effective in stop motion. Premier pro was a vital part in this as I had to edit the pictures to make them stop motion. I felt that it was really easy to use, the razor tool was especially good as you can cut up the pictures and footage to the length that you want which was good while experimenting with videos.
My stop motion experiment is shown below.
Premier pro was the software we used to construct our video. It was a really excellent software to use because you could experiment with lots of different tools, for example I played around with the lighting level on the first part of the video a lot till I found the right effect. I found it really simple to use, I especially liked using the speed/duration tool because it was key to my editing. It was really easy to play around with different effects. However, I found difficulty with the software when it came to rendering some of the effects on the footage. This was because it took a really long time and if we didn't like the effects then we had to change them and render them again. Rendering would also sometimes cause the computer to freeze, and once it even crashed which meant we had to redo a whole scene which had taken two lessons. This was obviously very frustrating.
The opening scenes of the wind up doll took the longest to effect because we had to create an old, vintage effect with 'grain' effect and shadow it. This took a long time because of the amount of time we had to render!
The opening scenes are below.
Premier pro was really good when evaluating the product, because I was able to edit videos of people giving feedback to me based around my product to make a video with titles of the questions. This was really useful to gather audience feedback in a compact way so that I could look back on my feedback with ease.
Media 2.0...
Media 2.0 was a big part of our product. We used it to help us improve our work via audience feedback, to broadcast our work to our audience and to find out what our audience would want from the product. It also helped us in our research as we were able to look at videos in the market and see how people have responded to them. We then took the ideas to create our own.
Youtube was very useful to use during the research as we were able to research a variety of different styles of video based around genre and editing. Our main source of inspiration was found on youtube, the Skins advert from 2004. We looked at a variety of different trailers for films in which our audience may be interested in, looking at the editing styles etc to inspire us for our construction.
When doing the stop motion experiment, we also looked up a variety of tutorials and different videos of stop motion to help us construct our own experiment.
The tutorial is shown below.
Videos such as this were really useful to help us do a step by step experiment for the video. We also looked at the variety of ways in which stop motion could be used to inspire us such as the video shown below.
Youtube was obviously very useful for when we uploading the videos. It is so easy to use, however, sometimes it did not recognise the format of the video so I had to go back to premier pro, export it again and change the format of the file.
Facebook
Facebook was crucial for our product as it allowed us to gather audience feedback, research into products that people would like and select some of our cast members. When gathering our audience feedback, we were able to upload the video, digipack and advert then tag lots of people in it to gather their opinions. However, many of the people did not give sensible answers to the specific questions I asked, although they did give positive feedback to the product in general.
During the production stage of the digipack and advert, I put some of the photographs taken on facebook and tagged lots of people in them. This was so I could narrow down which photos my audience would most prefer. The feedback on some of the photos was critical and some was really positive, so I used the photos with the positive feedback for my final design for the ancillary product. Shown below is some feedback to one of the photographs of Emily I was originally going to use.
Jodie Packwood and Milly Morris Media studies pictures - please give feedback
I also used Facebook when looking through my friends to cast and to use as my target audience. I would go onto their photos, judge how photogenic they were and then look at the types of music they like. This is an advantage of Media 2.0 , you can interact with people over the internet in a way you cannot without it. It allowed me to be creative in my research, as I would pair different types of make up with some of the cast members whom I thought it would suit by looking at their Facebook photos.
I also went on some of my target audiences profiles who I felt our video would appeal to and saw the other artists that they had listed as the music they listen to. This allowed me to a detailed audience profile and gave me a direction to go in when creating my product.
Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop was the software I used to edit the photographs on my digipack and advert. I find it very difficult to use because there are so many controls on the software and if you click one thing wrong then it will all go wrong! I find the layering bar at the side of the programme really confusing, but I got the hang of it after editing the pictures for a while. I used photoshop to edit each one of my photographs I had taken for the print work, posted them to Facebook and then chose the best ones to put on the digipack/advert template.
The main edit I did to the digipack was getting a matching brightness/contrast across all the photos because I wanted to have a slight shadow across all the photos and on my feedback of my first draft of the print work Leah had said "the photos are not all the same contrast."
Below the tactic I used to adapt the brightness/contrast is shown. Click to enlarge.
I also did minor editing to the photos such as getting rid of blemishes any of the cast may of have. This was to give that professional, airbrushed look that many mainstream music products have. It was really simple to use and I felt it added to the professional look I was trying to use. It is shown below. Click to enlarge.
Photoshop was easy to use in some ways, for example, I found putting text onto the product fairly easy. However, moving the text around could be irritating as it sometimes would move where I didn't want it to. Text method shown below. Click to enlarge.
On the digipack template, I had to create a seperate banner to go down the spine of the digipack. This was really irritating and I found it difficult to do as there are no shortcuts on photoshop, for example, you have to click 'edit' then 'paste' every time you want to paste something. Shown below. Click to enlarge.
We also used photoshop to edit the photos we used for stop motion in the video. We had to make sure the brightness and shadow of the photos was the same as it was in the video. It was fairly simple to do so photoshop was very useful in this sense.
With reference to technological determinism, I would argue that new technology had a lot to say in my production work. Without Media 2.0, I would not have half of my research or audience feedback. It helped me plan my project right from the start by inspiring videos I found on youtube and videos that my friends had enjoyed on facebook. The technology available to me has somewhat determined the product I created, mainly because I was able to see what types of product my target audience would want and I was able to do a lot of in depth research using new technologies. I think if I had had an iphone I would of been able to use certain App's which may of been useful to my project.
The new technology helped my creativity because I was able to do really in depth research and do things with editing which I would not of been able to do otherwise, for example, without Photoshop I would not of been able to edit my photos to a professional standard. I think it is really good that ordinary people can access these software because I think it allows use to be more creative using simply, new technology. However, I don't think it is good to rely on these new technologies as if they crash then you can lose all of your work as I did with a few shots. Premiere pro allowed us to do a lot of creative editing such as changing the colours of certain shots, putting a light wash across all of the shots etc. This allowed my product to look a lot more professional and didn't restrict me with what I could do.
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