My Finished Music Video

This is the final edit of my music video of 'School Boy - Hold On'.

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

When creating my music video, I used various different media technologies within the construction of my video, research and planning and evaluating stages of my project. Some of them I found easier to use than others. Such as using the Mac computers, i found this really hard as i had never really used one before. However, when it came to filming, i found this easier as i had got used to how to use the camera.

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

Throughout the stages of creating my music video, I have used many different technologies through both hardware and software. An example of the hardware I used is an Apple Mac, We used a programme called Final Cut on this to create our whole video. At first I found getting used to a Mac quite difficult as you go about doing things compltely different to normal computers however after a while of using it myself and watching how other people in my class use it, I began to get used to a different way of doing things.

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

As I was at the research and planning stage of my work I thought that creating a moodboards of artists from the genre we were with on was helpful as I was able to become more familiar with how the artists dress, how they present themselves and how they use colour and text on their CD covers to sell themselves.

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

Story boards are a really good way to show what you want to achieve in your work. As we had changed our whole video after we had finished our story boards for the second time, we uploaded them onto our blog. I think this is important as it shows we had thought carefully about what we wanted in our video. Its also breaks up all the writing on my blog and making it more pleasing to look at.

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

To help me get a better understanding of my genre during my research stages, i used serval sites to help me, the one I used the most would have to be YouTube. This is a site where you can upload videos and the public can comment on them if they wish. Some of them will be official music videos and others can just be one users have uploaded themselves. I found using this site helped a lot when trying to gather information about my genre and other genres and was ables to see what you would expect to see in a music video. This allowed me to start thinking of ideas in my head.

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

A technology I found really hard to use was Final Cut Express. This is a programme that allows you to edit, add effects and transitions to your videos. Having never previously used it meant learning how to do simple things on it was tricky as you have to use both the keyboard and the mouse which gets quite confusing as you have to rememebr all the differnet things you have to press for each command. I spend some time with lee after school helping him edit and the more we did it I began to get a better understanding of how you use it.

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

The camera was another media technology I came into contact with when I was filming footage for our music video. Before filming I thought about the different angle and shot types I could incorperate into our video and made shooting the footage a lot easier as I knew what I was going to do next. I also found that when I was out filming that I would get other ideas and then film them, for example when I was filming Lewis inside the car, I got other ideas of different and more interesting angles that I could film him from.

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

Whilst we were in the stages of creating our music video, I would still be adding things to my ancillary tasks. These are my DVD cover,the inside cover and the poster. For these I used a programme call Photoshop. This allows you to edit photographs in many different ways.

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

The technology I was most familiar with was photoshop. This was because I currently use it in photograhy.I really enjoyed using photoshop in my work as I already had a good idea of knew how to use it and what all the icons do. I used it a lot when it came to the stage where I was creating my DVD cover, inside and poster.

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

A good thing about using photoshop is when you are making something you can add each new image/text onto a new layer. This make it a lot easier if you need to change something at a later stage or if you make any mistakes. To make my DVD cover I used the ruler to help me measure the correct width of the cover.

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

When it came to creating a barcode, I tried to use photshop however this didn’t go too well. I ended up finding out you can use a font on ‘www.dafont.com’ to create your own barcode in seconds. I then used photoshop to add in the other icons I had on my DVD cover such as the ‘Copyright’ symbol and the other symbols I had used.

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

When I was making my DVD cover, I had to use the selction tool a lot to select what part of an image I wanted to copy onto my cover. This is a quick and easy way of copying a selected part of an image onto your work and found when I copied the images of Lewis, it made it a lot easier that cutting the whole way around his body.

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

Throughout creating my ancillary tasks, I used photoshop a lot to manipulate images. I used the fill tool to add effects on the bricks in the background. I also played around with repition and pattern and changing the opacity of images on the DVD cover and the inside to create give the images a different effect. I think this worked quite well.

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

Another use of technology I used was ‘www.blogger.com’, this is a website that allows you to upload, edit and share blogs with others. This is a very good way of keeping people up to date on where you are at and whats the latest you have done. This meant throughout all the stages of my work I was able to upload my storyboards, sketches of my DVD cover, inside and poster, my plans of what to do nexts and also write blogs on what I had already done. This site allows you to upload images, videos and music soundtracks, this is good as you can make your blog more interesting that just writing. Another good thing about this site is it allows people to comment, this means you can get feedback without pysically showing someone your work and they can just see it online. Also it allows the viewer to easily see the progress you have made throghout your work.

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

A way I could improve the technologies I have used could be by uploading my finished music video to the website such as ‘www.youtube.com’. However after seeing other work on the site and noticing there wasn’t much audience feedback given, shows how if I uploaded it, it wouldn’t benefit me at all. Another way i could get feedback is from our peers. By asking more than one group of people allows us to get a wider range of feedback.

Question Three - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

After showing people my DVD covers I showed them my poster. The only thing they really picked up on that I could have improved on was where I had put the text. After changing some of the text round a bit, I was happy with the finished product. Having this feedback on my work was really good as it meant I was finding out how other people were seeing my work instead of just me.

Question Three - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Feedback I got on my ancillary tasks helped a lot as it meant I could improve them and make them look better. Two things that stood out the most when people gave me feedback was my font, at first they didn’t think my font really fit in with my genre, however I then chnaged it used a font I found on ‘www.dafont.com’ and it really made a big difference. Another thing people didn’t really think worked was how I laid the titles of the songs out on the back of my DVD cover, this was because there was too much empty space left. When it had been pointed out I really noticed it myself and used photoshop to put a border around each song title. This worked well as it took up more space and added to the design.

Question Three - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback is a good way for the audience to watch your work and tell you ways in which they think you could change things and improve it. It also gives them a chance to tell you what they like as well and how it applies to your target audience.

Question Three - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

By having feedback from the audience throughout the whole production stage is a good way to see where you’re going wrong from the beginning instead of finishing the tasks and seeing you went wrong. Doing this allowed me to change small things in my ancillary tasks early on and improve them.