Thomas Flaxman (2094) A-Level Media A2 Coursework

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research and evaluation stages?

I will split this response into 4 stages, research, planning, construction and evaluation .

Research

The most important technology that has been fundamental to my entire Advanced portfolio is the internet. Without it I would have been dead in the water on a huge array of different points. Foremost of these points would be that I wouldn't have been able to access any of the huge array of web sources that the internet makes available to me digitally. I would have had to have been more reliant on books and more physical sources of information which would have been time consuming and inconvenient. It is with the internet then that the majority of research was made possible. Absolutely all of the information that I needed to know was online and at the click of a button, available. Examples of when I have made use of the internet in my research include when I have used websites such as Wikipedia for information on things like the music video director Anthony Mandler, the artist ELO and industries like YouTube. However I also employed a huge amount of other websites as well as Wikipedia which offered much more concise explanations about various things that I needed to learn about. It was with all of this information that I was able to formulate a knowledge about the elements, industries and artistry that exists in the area of music videos.

A disadvantage of this plethora of information is that occasionally sorting through it all can become misleading and inconvenient. This is because besides the enormous amounts of webpage results that appear when you Google almost anything, there is also the fact that despite Wikipedia having such a magnificently wide curtain knowledge of almost anything, much of the information on it can sometimes be far too detailed. When this does happen and you look for other accounts that are more brief it is fairly likely you will be met by the huge amount of non- relevant information that your do really need to know. Therefore this is why the web browser Google is so convenient. With the advanced search capabilities that Google offers, a lot of this annoying irrelevant information can be filtered out before you even press the search button. This is done through the use of symbols like the minus sign which will get rid of whatever you type after it and the quotation marks which will look for pages with a specific phrase in it's text.

As well as all this information that was provided to me I was also able to access a huge amount of brilliant examples of music videos that were professionally made and already online. This was incredibly important when it came to my research as it meant that I was able to see what actual real industry polished music videos where like as well as inspiration for my own. The way that I was able to do this was through the free to use website YouTube which is also the main platform that most artists use to publish their own music videos. YouTube has been an incredible help to me in both AS and A2 media, as it is just such an immensely convenient streaming website.

Really the only disadvantage to YouTube is that as it is a video streaming website, the internet is required to make use of it. However this is only a minute problem in this modern era of technology as we can now access the internet almost all of the time through a huge amount of devices such as phones, tablets and laptops with the aid of Wi-Fi or 3G. For me YouTube has allowed easy and quick research of actual products such as Fluorescent Adolescent by Artic Monkeys, Parklife by Blur and Too Close by Alex Clare at any time I want which has been hugely useful to me. Additionally if I had not had access to an offline version of my song YouTube would have been an ideal means of listening to it, otherwise I could have used Spotify or another free music service.

Overall Blogger has been the base of my general presentation of my Advanced Portfolio and it has been an incredibly convenient and versatile program to use. Generally functioning and easy to use, blogger has been a suitable method of presenting my work. However at times Blogger has been fairly awkward. This is mainly in the area of text and image positioning on certain posts that I have put up and it has become fairly irritating at times. As well as this the lack of a easy method of inserting print screens into posts have become trying at times but generally the Blogger program has been useful with its easily usable html tab for embedding, various easily usable insert functions and general layout design functionality. However it has been the programs above that have made presenting my blog posts more advanced. All free, all extremely easy to use, the websites above have been extremely fundamental media technologies in the presentation of my production.

Planning

For the most part the majority of my planning benefit from a much smaller group of devices whereas my research was mainly done on wired computers or laptops. When it came to story boarding my final product I found that my preferred method of doing this was through the use of paper based storyboards split into bars and my phone as a means of listening to the song. The phone I used was an iphone 4 and was extremely useful for me during the process of story boarding as it was an exceptionally easy and compact way of listening to the song. When it came to entering the lyrics of my song onto the storyboard, my phone made for an exceptionally convenient method of doing this as it had a scrubbing speed feature that allowed me to easily rewind and fast forward to the exact point of the song I needed.

Additionally my phone was exceptionally convenient when it came to a need for images to use in my blog or on general documentation of how I wanted to have something set up. For example I needed a convenient camera on hand to take pictures of props and location which could be then easily transferred to a computer and uploaded. This was exceedingly useful to me as it meant I could take pictures whenever I wanted. A drawback of using my phones camera is that it isn't anywhere near the quality of a DSLR or even to the highest standards of phone cameras which is now a fairly raised bar. This is bad as it meant for a poorer quality of documentation and made for a difficult job trying to edit, re-size and generally adapt images to suit my needs. Technological convergence also meant that while I was doing all this I could at the same time have the ability to contact my actors to check whether they were free on a certain day etc.

My planning also benefit from the website YouTube as it meant that I could easily find tutorials on things like folding up the green screen as well as creating the time lapse on Premier Pro. This information was incredibly important to have prior to my construction stage as it meant that as little time as possible would be wasted trying to figure these things out later.

My planning also benefit from watching Music channels on the TV such as 4music etc as it meant that I could gain inspiration for my own music video easily.

Generally much of my planning stage reaped the majority of its rewards from media technology from the aid of the research stage.

Construction

Music Video

During the construction of my product I used a huge range of technology that I had never touched at AS, while at the same time technologies from AS like sound equipment were no longer relevant.One new media technology I made use of in my construction of my music video was a green screen. The one that I made use of was a pop up one that was incredibly convenient. The complexities in this arose much later on during post production which I will go onto in a moment.

The majority of my filming was done on a JVC camcorder which shot HD footage. Generally the camcorder was fine to use apart from the fairly small battery size on the camera leading to time needing to be spent charging it during shoots. However when it came to a editing I found that the quality drifted slightly when the camera was moving quickly, which was most prominent on the POV shots. Apart from this however the camera was very convenient to use as it was small and non-bulky which meant for easy use during the POV shots etc. as well as for transporting between locations.

Another media technology that I made use of during my construction was a Go Pro 3+ which allowed for time-lapse creation which took minimal technical experience. I found this extremely interesting as it meant that I would be able to create time lapses for the first time. When it came to using the images the Go Pro took however my life was made much harder as a friend had told me and research said the same thing, that Microsoft movie maker could be used to create time lapses and so I used it. However after a large amount of time spent attempting to get the program to work I gave up and tried to find a different solution. In the end it turned out that the editing software that I had made use of for the majority of my video 'Premier Pro' had an extremely simple function of inserting images into it to create a time lapse and when I found this out it took moments.

When it came to editing, my video was massively more complex than my AS editing as firstly my video was far more fast paced than in AS but as well as this I used a much larger array of different editing techniques. This was all done on the program Adobe Premier Pro which I believe is the best program I could have used, which is best shown by the negative experience I have had with other editing softwares such as Song Vegas. One example of a complex new editing technique I have used in the creation of my video includes the 16 point garbage Matte keying effect which allowed me to cut away excess video from the green screen shots I had. Additionally I used another effect with this which was another effect called colour keying which allowed me to get rid of the remaining green from the shots. A problem I encountered during this process, as can be clearly seen below is that I had to adjust the garage matte keying effect almost frame by frame to make up for the shadows being cast on the green screen. Overall my experience of green screens and their corresponding editing has been very tedious and in the future I will consider other means or I will be much more careful with shadows being cast.

The effect Garbage Matte in use.

Before the colour keying effect.

After the colour keying effect

Another added complexity was the speed editing this video had which was fundamental for my comedic head shaking shown below as well as for general timing and comedic effect of movement in the shots. This was made extremely easy by the program and was literally as easy as adjusting a percentage. This feature was also helpful for when I needed to speed up and slow down my time lapses accordingly for greater effect. Along with this video effect I have also used a colour change effect to make it red and increase its effectiveness.

This is an example of when I used the video speed adjustment.

This is an example of what happened when I used the colour change effect to add a red filter.

Generally this years editing has been far more complicated than last years with a much greater development in the area of video effects. I believe that this has allowed me to develop a much broader understanding of the program Premier Pro and that I can now use it effectively to create media products. Premier Pro on the whole is an extremely good and easy to use program that I feel I learned to use quickly. Generally it has allowed me to achieve everything I have intended to achieve this year.

Ancillary's

Digipack

When it came to creating my ancillary's I needed a far better camera than my phone to take the pictures for it and therefore I decided to use a DSLR camera. This meant that I could have professional looking images that would be suitable for editing, re-sizing and general adaption to my needs. I used this camera in collaboration with a tripod for steadying and a green screen to remove the background to take pictures of all of my characters. I then used these images on my digipack and my website.

Firstly on my CD digipack the program Photoshop was extremely useful as it meant I could use CD templates easily and effectively along with a huge amount of other effects to create a professional looking CD cover and insert for my product. One way that I used the program Photoshop to my benefit was through the use of the colour selection tool which let me get rid of all of the background green in the images. I also used the crop along with this in the same way that I used the 16 point garage matte keying in my video, to cut off the excess image. This process was effective as it allowed me to completely remove the backgrounds from the images with very little effort.

Firstly in this example I removed the excess from the image with the crop tool

Secondly I clicked the colour selection option in the selection tab.

Thirdly I chose the mid tone of green in the image and adjusted the fuzziness of the image until the green of the image was preteen white in the box.

Finally I pressed delete to remove the green from the image leaving me with a blank back ground.

Another way I made use of the media technology Photoshop was through the use of the various text editing options. This was effective as it made the text in my digipack far more interesting and effective. It was also very easy to use and adjust to my needs.

I used the options in this box to add a shadow to my text and make it bolder.

Finally another way that I have used the media technology Photoshop was through the use of the burn tool, which allowed me to put a professional looking border around my digipack's insert booklet, which is important to the general aesthetics of the digipack.

The burn tool can be used to darken areas of shapes in Photoshop.

Generally Photoshop has been an immensely useful tool in general image editing throughout my Advanced Portfolio and has allowed me to create a professional finish on the images in my product that would otherwise be achievable. Overall I have found very little to fault with it and and have been very pleased with what I have been able to achieve with it.

Website

My website benefit from much of the same things as my CD digipack as images used in the digipack also feature in the website. For example the CD cover and the image from the back of the CD cover. The creation of my website however, has mostly benefit from the use of the website Wix which has been immensely useful in the creation of my website. It has allowed for easy construction and editing of layout, allows for easy image insertion and font adjustment which has helped with brand continuity. It has, free of charge, allowed me to create a website available online. The only disadvantages I found with this website was that it didn't always allow for smooth editing of the shapes on a web page, however other than that it was extremely convenient.

Evaluation

The most beneficial media technology during the evaluation process apart from Blogger, Presi or other presentation websites has been social media. The reason for this is that social media has allowed for an extremely convenient method of collecting audience feedback from my target audience. The main one being Facebook which has produced relevant feedback from my target demographic of 16-21 year olds which make up the majority of my friends list. The advantage of this is that I can collect quick and relevant audience feedback online simply by posting my music video, the disadvantage is that this feedback is for the most part, usually short and biased as they are my friends and don't want to hurt me. However for the most part Facebook has given me some helpful feedback.

Additionally to all the other audience research that I received my class also exchanged work with another y13 media class in Hackney East London which provided non-biased feedback to be analysed.The school we collaborated with is a much smaller school than ours and until 2010 was a girls only school. Also, in terms of ethnicity it is a much more multicultural school than ours with a diverse range of backgrounds and languages spoken. The intention behind this collaboration was to widen the feedback we received from our target audience as they are the same age and are studying the same course. We have never met before so the videos are completely decontextualised for this group.The method that we used to transfer this feedback to each other was through a video of our reactions, which was uploaded to the URL https://vimeo.com/125346494 which requires the password : 'media' to access. This feedback was very useful to me as it came from a group of people who are in my target age demographic. The feedback for my video features at the point 1:20 in the video, which is just after the introduction to the video.
Firstly the initial response was very good as it was a general consensus that the video was entertaining and enjoyable. This links with my aim to create a video which was specifically made for the use, supportive of Mquails Uses and Gratifications, of entertainment and escapism. Therefore the fact that the very first reaction from most of the audience was a reflection that showed me I managed this goal was very encouraging.
Secondly the group generally thought that the narrative of the video wasn't very clear. This isn't a massive problem as firstly my video was made for a passive audience to be entertained by and therefore wasn't focused on producing a complex narrative and secondly narrative isn't usually a massively important element of music videos.
Thirdly another interesting point made in the feedback was that the video seemed to have a retro feel to it. This is good as it shows how the video links the song back to its older roots which will mainly help to target my secondary target audience of older ELO fans. Although there are many young people who are fans of this retro type of video and these will be drawn to this.
Finally one of the audience members, as well as others thought that more thought should have gone into the costume of the characters in the video. This is a comment seemed fairly focused on the clown characters and was a fair point as I admit I would have preferred to have been in possession of a full clown costume for the characters. However I did not and due to other factors much of the guidance I gave to the actors was simply to wear colorful clothing that was still convenient for them to obtain quickly.