Task 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Construction

In terms of the construction of our products, the most obvious – and most important media technology we used is computers. Most of the work we did in all our stages depended on some sort of computer usage. In the construction of our video, we used computers to edit our video. We used a Mac Pro to upload all our footage and then edit it. We would save the work we did for the day and then easily access it the next time we wished to use it.

The software we used to edit our footage was Final Cut Pro. It allowed us to edit our video digitally, in a non-linear way. If we didn’t like a shot, we could change it easily and watch the edit multiple times to see if worked or not.

This is what our project looked like on Final Cut Pro - the timeline allowed us to edit in a non-linear way.

This was especially helpful in our video because we had so many different layers which we placed on the timeline because we had several people from different shots in the same frame. This is where non-linear editing really helped us. If we didn’t like one of the many shots in a single frame, we could simply change that one shot instead of creating the whole shot all over again from scratch. This was very convenient and gave us flexibility with the creation of our product. We got to try several different editing styles to see which best suited our video.

As you can see from the yellow box on the left side, we could layer several shots over each other to create shot on the top right - multiple characters within the same frame.

Also, Final Cut Pro very easily allowed us to cut each shot at the beat. It has a little sound bar at the corner of the screen to see the audio waveform at a specific point in the song. We chose the exact point at which the bars were the highest which signified the beat where we were to cut to the next shot. This allowed us to be precise with the beat which made the video look more professional.

As you can see there are a lot of cuts - these have been made specifically to match the beat which explains why some shots are longer than others.

We also used Adobe Photoshop in the creation of our ancillary texts, that is, the digipak, advert and poster. We gathered some images from Google Images - such as the one of the lake that is in our poster and front cover of digpak and the fragment of the broken UFO/spaceship. We combined these two pictures together to create the picture so that it looked like the UFO/spaceship had crashed into the water.Using these images allowed us to create a piece of digital artwork to come up with polished final media product that fit with our band’s image. In addition, we used screengrabs from our footage to get a picture of the full band. We got individual shots of each of the band members where they looked best with their instruments and we then joined them together in Photoshop. We also used tools that allowed us to turn a picture of a band into a silhouette in addition to using the warp and mirror tools to create the effect of the reflection of ripples in the water on the front side of our digipak.

One of the most obvious media technologies we used was the digital camera. We used the Sony NX5 which shot digitally, that is on memory cards which could then be easily uploaded on to the Mac Pros so we could access them. We could also keep changing the memory cards if they got full

Research

In terms of research, the most useful new media technology that we used was the internet. We used websites such as YouTube to access videos of potential songs we could use. Once we decided to use the song ‘Baby Loves Me’ by ‘The Eels’, we watched videos of the other songs played by them to get an idea of what kind of a band they were. This taught us a lot about genre of the music. We understood the style of the band which then helped us to get ideas for our video. YouTube helped us in this area too, by allowing us to access different kinds of music videos to get ideas. We got our main inspiration from this one video by Red Hot Chilli Peppers called -. We observed the themes and message portrayed in the video and decided to create a video that would work similarly.

We also used MySpace to research our potential target audience. We went to ‘The Eels’ space and looked at the different kinds of people that visited this page. This gave us a lot of information of the age group and gender of their fans and therefore helped us with our research for the band.

We also used Twitter similarly to get a better idea of ‘The Eels’ audience and fan base.

This is The Eels Twitter Page

                                               We had a look at some of The Eels followers

This gave us an idea of the fanbase of The Eels. This helped us to plan our target audience.

In addition to these methods, we also used the bands official webpage to help us understand our band better. We could use this information for the band we create as well and this is reflected in our video and its ancillary texts.

Planning

After the wealth of information we gained from the research stage of our video, we used new media technologies such as Prezi and Powerpoint to help us plan our video. We used Prezi to put all our ideas together and share them among our group to brainstorm and finalise our ideas. For example, we had to pitch our initial ideas for the pop video we were to create and we used Powerpoint to create a presentation. It allowed us to combine text, pictures and videos which helped us share our ideas better with other people.

We also used Photoshop in our planning stage - we put together different pictures on an empty page to create a moodboard for our video. We used websites such as Google on the Internet to collect different kinds of pictures. Another key media technology that we used is smartphones. It was especially helpful when we were deciding on the props we could use. We visited a prop room where we took pictures of the different available props that could potentially be in our video. We then uploaded these on to a computer to share with the other members of our group to discuss which ones we could use which we could pick up the next time we went there. This was helpful for planning especially since we didn’t all have to go to the prop storage which made it more time efficient.

We also used DSLR cameras to do test shots of our idea to see if it worked out. Our idea included lots of flickering lights and we wanted to be sure that it showed up on camera or else we’d have to change our idea. After filming it, we uploaded it to a computer to watch it and analyse whether we were happy with it or not and how we could improve it. This made our planning stronger thus increasing the likelihood of our shoot being successful. Lastly, we also used Final Cut Pro to create an animatic. We drew storyboards which we filmed with our DSLR cameras and edited together to create an animatic. This made our planning more solid because we knew where each shot belonged and the all the shots we needed to film. This gave us all a better idea of what the final product would look like. This later on helped in the editing stage as well because we all had the same idea of what it should look like which was because of the animatic.

It was also important to communicate effectively as a group and so we created a group on facebook called ‘Baby Loves Me’. It was a private group and it only consisted of the members in my group. We used this as a means of communication especially during the holidays when we were in different countries and wanted to share our ideas and plan the logistics of our video.

 

Evaluation

We also used several different new media technologies to evaluate our task. The most-used one was Blogger. We were able to combine several different kinds of media such as audio, video, images, prezis and powerpoint presentations. This allowed us to present our information in a very visual way and we would always put any work that we produced (e.g. sketches, ideas, moodboards) on our blogs so that we wouldn’t loose them. This also worked as a means of communication among my group because we’d keep visiting each other’s blog to keep ourselves updated and see where we were at with our ideas.

In addition to that, YouTube was another key technology that we used to evaluate our product.We uploaded our final video there and a lot of our audience posted comments on the video, providing us with useful feedback that helped us measure the effectiveness of our products. We were also able to see the statistics with regard to the age group and gender of our viewers - we found out that our video was most popular among 13-17 year old girls, 25-34 year old and 55-64 year old males. We found this out through the YouTube statistic chart:

Lastly, smartphones are another kind of new media technology that we used in the evaluation of our products. We used a smartphone to film the focus group that we held. It was quick and easy and didn’t require any additional equipment to work. It was also easily accessible seeing as a large population of our generation own smartphones. The footage was easily transferred to a laptop where we could upload it to YouTube and Blogger.