QUESTION 4HOW DID YOU USE NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

Firstly, using the Cannon xm2’s for shooting the music video was a lot easier than using the Panasonic to record on tape. Using SD cards gave us more freedom when it came to shooting indoors and outdoors; we didn’t have to worry about the tape jamming in the changes in humidity or temperature and overall the cameras were smaller and this made travelling easier. The only downside was that all the settings were automatic so we didn’t have as much creative control when it came to focusing and auto focus did create some aesthetic problems at times.

Using Final cut pro to edit was easy, accessible and I learned to explore more techniques to recover or enhance the music video. Colour correction was the main filter used to enhance visuals, it pushed the visual quality past a home-made video quality. Using opacity to superimpose images gave a flash back quality, it allowed me to show scenes from “the night before” without revealing exactly what happened and this added to the effect of being hung over, not remembering what you did last night.

Websites we used were sites like slideshare, prezzy and youtube to upload videos, documents and slideshows and use embedded links to use them on the blog. Not only were they easy and practical, they made the blog look better.

During research, Facebook, Blackberry Messenger and youtube helped when it came to audience research. Comments on youtube videos where a place where we observed peoples feedback on our and similar videos. For example out “prelim” task got two positive feedback comments, one from the producer of the original track and one from a random user. Blackberry and facebook let us contact our target audience and ask questions using instant messaging services and screen grabs for recording the conversations.

When searching for artist information or record label research and even looking at past products, google was the easiest way of finding what we needed to look for. For an archive of album covers, I simple searched for album covers to compare and get inspiration for our digipack.

I mainly used photoshop to put together the digipack and the magazine advert. Since there are preset layouts installed onto photoshop it was easy to customize and create a digipack/advert with maximum creative control. With choosing font I had control over the length, spacing, colour, transparency of the text, and if the font I chose wasn’t to my liking I could manipulate it to suit my vision. Without using any presets, a vision in my head could easily be transferred onto the screen and perfected over a few drafts.