A2 Media Studies EvaluationBy Christopher Blower

QUESTION 4

0How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

NEW TECHNOLOGIES…

0 I used new technologies throughout each and every stage of creating my music video and ancillary texts.

YOUTUBE & VIMEO

0 Web 2.0 was a key player and I used YouTube for the very first and last stages of production, as I was able to find many music videos and animations similar to what I wanted to achieve. This helped me define the look and feel of my music video by finding out the conventions of indie music videos, and this was the website where I first found the video ‘Bedshaped’, which was the biggest inspiration for the style of the music video.

YOUTUBE & VIMEO

0For the distribution stage, I originally employed YouTube once again to upload the final music video onto the Web, but the video was later blocked by the website. Another video sharing website, Vimeo, was then used to upload the video.

BLOGGER

0 I used Blogger to keep a record of all my research and planning via my own production blog, so that I could not use any useful data I had collected and refer back to it constantly during production, as well as upload my final ancillary texts and evaluation tasks.

IPOD TOUCH

0 I used a different kind of technology for shooting the music video itself – the video was filmed entirely on my iPod touch which worked because the way the set had been designed meant the camera had to face down to film the images so the cutouts did not slide off the paper, restricting me from using more delicate equipment. However, the quality worked surprisingly well and it meant I was able to transfer the footage to my computer much quicker.

ADOBE PREMIERE PRO 5.50 I edited the video together in Adobe Premiere Pro 5.5. I had previously used

version 3.0 of this software in my AS tasks but I was still unfamiliar with many aspects of the software, as my experience in working at home mainly lies in Corel VideoStudio x4. Lighting for the video was my biggest problem during production, and I used Adobe Premiere to rectify the lighting as much as possible, as well as piece all the individual clips together. Once I was familiar with what to do, I found the software much easier to work. Placing all the clips together was very simple as my music video was inspired by the narrative of the song and therefore I did not have the challenge of lip syncing.

GOOGLE

0 I occasionally turned to Google and YouTube for tutorials on certain aspects of Adobe which I did not initially understand, such as lighting. Google was especially helpful because it led me to many external websites with different tutorials, such as the official Adobe website and blogs from filmmakers who use the software professionally, giving broader information on how various aspects of Adobe work.