Evaluation question 4 media dtechnology

Evaluation Question 4

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

My skills in using digital technology improved greatly throughout each section of the production course and consequently played a vital role in the creation of music video, digipak and magazine advert. Throughout each of the pre-production, production and post-production stages, digital technology was necessary in many forms, helping to enhance the process. To begin with, the initial digital technology I became introduced to was the website Blogger. Blogger was a platform that enabled me to create a collective group blog with individual postings, meaning that each member of my group could publish, share and acquire feedback for every post, whilst keeping information organised and easy to access.

Pre-Production

Despite also using Blogger as the backbone of my evidence to upload posts and keep research and planning organised, I found that during research I lay more of an emphasis on websites such as YouTube and Soundcloud. Both are popular and very reliable sources, particularly when it came to viewing examples of past music videos for my chosen artist- Bondax.

Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook enabled me to gain an idea of the sort of following that this artist had received. This was a crucial piece of research, particularly on initially choosing a song, as I wanted to make sure that the artist we chose was not too mainstream- it would be difficult to reproduce an already popular charted music video- however also something that had a certain sense of appeal, even if this was only to a niche audience.

Pre-Production

Using Google images meant that when it also came to producing my digipak and magazine cover, reliable examples were easy to find. Searching through Google images meant that I was able to research digipak net designs and examples of past artist magasine covers. Throughout the process, Slideshare and Prezi were also helpful in presenting our research and developments onto the blog.

Digital technology was extremely beneficial in this process, however the only downfall at this stage was that our relatively new artist- Bondax hadn’t produced a magazine advert or even a debut album cover. On one hand this meant that I was provided with a clean sheet to design without fear of appearing to imitate the artists previous work.

ProductionThe process of production for my music video was fairly straightforward in the end. By using a DSLR Canon 650 camera, I was able to achieve high quality, adaptable cuts that weren’t unfocused or fuzzy on replay. This put me into the role of director and cinematographer, as the Canon allowed for multiple shots, leaving plenty of footage to turn to in the post-production process.

ProductionFor the production of the digipak and magazine cover, digital technology played a vital role, as programs such as Photoshop and InDesign were key to both products. It was crucial that the digipak cover was decided first, as then we could synergistically apply a similar (or in my case, the same) picture to the magazine cover, clear indication of the link between artist, track, album and magazine display.

Post-ProductionIn terms of my music video, the post- production stage was most definitely the most time consuming of them all. However, Final Cut Pro (a somewhat more advanced version of iMovie) enabled me to fit together both the sound track and the footage of our video using the iMacs. Due to the nature of my music video, being that when we shot it, many parts were long continuous takes of the male character following his love interest around town. It was possible to choose the most fitting chunks of footage and just slot them into the timeline, as we did not need to worry about spending time cutting between jump shots of lip synching artists or still scenery.

Post-ProductionI found that, for the post-production of both my digipak and magazine cover, the website Pixlr was also helpful in constructing the choice of font for my digipak as I only had to look at past examples from album covers by Bondax themselves, to determine with font suited the style of my product. Once this had been chosen, it became relatively simple to apply the same text to the magazine article, whilst also ensuring that it was a more suitable font size, due to the change in dimensions of the magazine.