QUESTIONFOURHOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

RESEARCHYOUTUBEI used YouTube in order to find videos which I could potentially gain influence from for my own music video. I searched for a range of videos, all of which fell under either the ‘indie’, ‘rock’ or ‘indie-rock’ genre category. The use of YouTube was very helpful in terms of researching videos due to the extent of published music videos which can be found on the website; these ranging from official videos to fan-made videos. I feel out of all the music video websites, YouTube is the most helpful due to being the most easy to access and having no limitations or time restrictions. The inclusion of public feedback on videos was also helpful as it helped me to decide which videos people generally enjoyed most and I was therefore able to use some of the feedback to create my own work.

GOOGLE IMAGESI found that when trying to gather a handful of images quickly, Google Images was most useful as it held a variety of images which were situated around the same topic. For example, there were multiple shots of one magazine cover which I was able to pick from meaning it was easier for me to analyse layouts. A limitation of this search engine is the lack of modern magazine adverts which could be found. The majority of results were from 2012 and before and this made it difficult, since I was aiming to analyse more modern and relevant images in order to please the majority audience.

SOCIAL MEDIASocial media was successful as it is is somewhere where all people are able to freely express opinions and feelings towards topics of their choice. On platforms such as twitter and instagram, the use of hashtagging makes it easier to find a specific topic which people are talking about, meaning I was able to easily find things based on Catfish and the Bottlemen by searching ‘#catfishandthebottlemen’.

RESEARCHRADIO 1 TOP 40Radio 1 Top 40 is the national radio website which produces a weekly ranking of the UK’s top 40 singles. There are a range of charts, all for different genres and the songs which are in the charts are all high profile songs which are kept/added to the running by the public downloads and purchases. I felt that this was a helpful website when researching potential songs, as it helped me to see which bands were most popular and whether or not they were rising or falling in the charts.

GIGS AND TOURS WEBSITEThe Gigs and Tours website was helpful in the research process as it allowed us to see which bands were currently or preparing to tour in the UK. With knowing this, we were then able to contact potential bands and ask for permission of entry so we were able to film live performance footage for our video incase we wanted to create a performance based video. This was also helpful as it gave us lots of information surrounding different venues and events.

RECORDCANON 1100DWe used the Canon 1100D to film the majority of our video as it held high quality and adjustable settings meaning it was easy to use. I think this camera was successful in terms of filming in high quality but was of limited help when we needed to film clips in slow motion. This is because the Canon only has 30fps and slowing any filmed clips down would make the quality less defined and make the shots seem jumpy and unclear.

iPHONE 5SDue to the limitation of no slow motion filming on the Canon, we decided to use our phones (iPhone 5S) to film any slow motion clips due to the iPhone having 120fps as an option. This enabled us to film slow motion clips without the unwanted, jumpy effect that the Canon gave us.

NIKON CAMERAWe hired out the Nikon from college and used this camera alongside our iPhones and the Canon in order to film the same shots simultaneously whilst being able to experiment with different angles. I feel that this worked well and helped us when editing our video together because we had a variety of shots to chose from. A limitation of using 2 different cameras in one video is the fact that we were unable to resize the footage from the Nikon camera as it only filmed enough to fit the Premier Pro screen, whereas the Canon footage filled the screen and more meaning we were able to move the clip until it was sized perfectly. This meant when we added the crop effect to the clips later on, we lost areas of footage due to not being able to resize what we had previously filmed. In addition to this, the quality of the cameras were different meaning the quality continuity failed in certain areas.

EDITPREMIER PRO/AFTER EFFECTSWe used these 2 programs in order to create a professional looking video. Premier Pro was effective for adding basic effects and transitions onto our clips, such as exponential fade and dip to black. Premier Pro was an easier software to use in comparison to others such as ‘iMovie’ and ‘Final Cut Pro’. After effects was used for more advanced editing techniques, such as: warp stabilizer, lighting effects, ghosting and echoing. These techniques all aid in making a more professional looking video. I feel that overall, these softwares were successful as they helped us to create our finished product. In saying this, we came across a few problems with things such as rendering. Due to us getting carried away during the editing process, we forgot to render parts of the video, meaning we ended up waiting up to an hour whilst our video rendered.

AUDITIONAudition was used to try and remove the ambience which can be heard in the opening clip where Phoebe speaks in French. Despite our efforts, audition was unsuccessful in removing the ambience and we still have some of the background noise in the clip. We also tried to remove the ambience using another software called ‘Audacity’ which similarly to ‘Audition’ is a audio editing software, but this was even less successful than our initial attempt using ‘Audition’.

DISTRIBUTIONYOUTUBEYouTube was a platform which helped us greatly when trying to distribute our video. This could be for a number of reasons, such as there being thousands of daily viewers which could easily stumble across our video and comment on it. Another reason it was helpful was because the website searches by association, meaning if an individual was to type in ‘A2 Draft Edit’, all videos which have been tagged to be associated with any of the 3 words will come up as a search response. Another successful point which stems from YouTube is the option to share your video to social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr. This means that anyone who follows me on any of the social media platforms would be able to see what I have created due to me having posted it as a hyperlink directly from YouTube.

SOCIAL MEDIASocial media was helpful when trying to distribute our video as there is the option to ‘direct message’ people the link to our video. This can range from friends and family to artists and bands, meaning that there is no limit to who could potentially see our video. This is helpful as it means that the video could become widespread and therefore get a wider range of feedback which could be used to improve what we had created.

ANCILLARIESPHOTOSHOPI used Photoshop when creating both of my ancillaries in order to produce professional looking projects. Photoshop was more successful than other softwares such as ‘Lightroom’, as I found it easier to manipulate images and put together my pieces. Photoshop also allowed me to create my layout designs for both ancillaries. I originally considered using an amateur software like ‘Paint’ in order to create my layout designs, but I soon discovered that Photoshop was more precise in terms of positioning and adding detail.

DAFONTDue to wanting to use a font which was similar to the Catfish and the Bottlemen’s font, I used the website DaFont to download anarray of fonts which I could potentially use on my ancillaries.I change a range of both serif and sans serif fonts and then compared what I had downloaded to the band’s real font. I thendecided to use the font shown at the top and bottom of the image.I chose this because it was so similar to the original font and feltthat both positioning's worked well and could be used on both ofmy ancillaries. This font also helps to highlight the convention ofsimplicity in the indie genre.