Evaluation Script:
1. In what way does your media project
use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Green
screen video discussing the music video as it plays in background?
When
researching existing media products, textually analysing music videos allowed
me to identify the general conventions for this type of product. These include
basic conventions outlined in Andrew Goodwin’s music video theory that the pace
of the editing should match the tempo of the song and that there should be a
complementary or contradictory relationship between the visuals and lyrics of
the song.
I
have conformed to this in my own music video for the song "Lean" by
the band "Have Mercy". When editing my footage, I checked that all
transitions between shots would match the beat of the music in order to ensure
that the visuals seemed relevant and connected to the audio track of the song.
Occasionally I used "cross-dissolve" transitions which meant that the
transitions of visuals weren't abrupt when the notes played by the band are
fading into each other and are played in a legato style rather than staccato.
This makes the relationship between the music and the visuals more obvious to
the audience. I also repeated some shots of the protagonist leaning on the
female character which reflects the repetition on the lyrics “I’ll be the
shoulder if you need to lean” in the song’s chorus.
A common
feature of Have Mercy’s official music videos is the use of flashbacks in the
narrative which creates a greater understanding and emotional connection
between the audience and the protagonist of the video. I have tried to
re-create this effect in my own music video by repeating certain shots of the
male protagonist as he sits alone before receiving the help that is symbolized
by the female character.
A convention
of Have Mercy’s two official music videos is that the narratives appear to be
derived directly from the opening line of the song. For example, the narrative
of official music video for their song “Howl” is about a male character
overcoming the grief over the loss of his father, as indicated by the lyrics of
the first line of the song “you were young when your father died”. Therefore,
when creating my own music video for the song “Lean”, I focused on the opening
lyrics “I’m giving up on myself today” and interpreted this into the narrative
of a depressed male character going through a process of being alone and
suffering before eventually finding help in the form of music and a helpline.
The
relationship between the lyrics and visuals in the band’s existing music videos
is also very literal, so when the song “Lean” has the lyrics “put on my shoes”,
I showed footage of the male character literally putting on his shoes, because
often in music videos the visuals either show what is being described in the
lyrics, or shows the exact opposite for dramatic or ironic effect. This is
similar to how in the band’s music video for their song “Two years”, the scene
of the two men fishing by a lake coincides with the lyrics “when it rains it
pours”. I also took inspiration from this shot, as I found it highly effective
when the male protagonist was shown to be standing alone by the lake. I used a
similar shot in my own music video to show how although the male protagonist of
the narrative is depressed, he uses these emotions to reflect on his situation
and seeks and accepts the help given by the helpline, depicted in the video by
the physical contact and support from the female character.
Research
into existing music videos also allowed me to identify the three main types of
music video: narrative based, performance based and abstract or artistic. As
most mainstream videos are a combination of narrative and performance (they
contain a story-line combined with footage of the artist performing the song),
I chose to conform to this by using this popular format for my own music video.
To achieve this, I filmed twice: once with actors performing the narrative
story and once with musicians playing or singing along to the song. Then,
during the post-production process of editing, I combined the footage of
musicians performing the song and the shots illustrating the video's narrative.
This structure is similar to that used for the band "Have Mercy's"
two official music videos for songs taken from the same album.
Another
aspect I considered when finding the actors for my music video was to ensure
that the gender and ethnicity of the protagonist in my music video matched the
gender and ethnicity of the singer in the band "Have Mercy". I felt
this was an important convention to conform to, as not only does it create the
feeling that the visuals and audio of the video belong together, it is also
something that the band has done in their two main music videos
"Howl" and "Two years".
All
of the protagonists in Have Mercy’s narrative based music videos are also
portrayed as making some sort of emotional journey. In the video “Two years”
the opening shot is a close-up of the protagonist’s face and this is also one
of the opening shots in the music video for the song “Howl”. I chose to conform
to this by making the opening shot of my own music video a medium shot of the
male protagonist listening to the song ”Lean” on his iPod. This early focus on
the male character of the video makes the audience focus on the character’s
development throughout the video, as this character is usually the one who
changes or gains experience throughout the course of the video. The
protagonists in the band’s official music videos “Two Years” and “Howl”
overcome some form of grief or loss throughout the video by the end of which there
is a sense that the protagonist has gained the closure or support that was
missing at the start. The characters in these official music videos are shown
in tracking shots to be running or cycling, giving the sense that their
emotional experience is a journey being documented by the song. To clarify that
the protagonist in my video is undergoing a long-term process of finding
support for his depression, I included plenty of long shots or tracking shots
showing the character walking through fields to give the sense that he is on a
journey.This makes it clear that he will be closer to his destination by the
end of the video, when he has accepted that he needs the help and support
provided y the helpline and personified in the female character.
To make sure
that the range of camera shots and ideas used in my own music video conformed
to the style, theme and ideas used in the band’s previous music videos for
songs from the same album, I analysed the band’s videos “Howl” and “Two Years”.
I hoped that doing this would help me to identify and include any of the band’s
iconography.
I included
multiple close-up shots of the artist/musician in my music video in order to
create a recognizable brand image of the artist which is a common feature of
music videos as record labels often demand that the main artist gains the most
coverage in videos with the hope that this could boost record sales,
My video does
not conform to the negative convention of the use of voyeuristic angles when
filming female characters as not only is this convention a more common feature
of music videos belonging to pop and rap genres, all of the band’s other music
videos lack this sexist portrayal, so need not be included within my narrative.
At the start
of my music video, I chose to have the titles “Have Mercy” and “Lean” appear
over my music video, as this is something that was done in the band’s music
video for “Howl” and for some of their earlier videos that manly consisted of
performance and documentary footage of the band as they toured their first
album. This use of titles displaying the band name then the song title appears
to be an iconic theme employed by the band, as if these titles and the band’s
logo does not appear in a music video for their song, this information will
still be displayed in the video’s thumbnail on YouTube.
In conclusion I have attempted to conform to all basic conventions
for music videos, as well as identifying and using stylistic choices made in
the band’s official music videos in order to apply some of these to my own
media product.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Audio commentary with footage of print artefacts and connections to music video.
Album Digipak:
When creating the album digipak,
I considered elements of my own music video as well as the existing digipaks
and music videos made by the artist "Have Mercy". To create the
template for the digipak design, I measured the band's digipak for their second
album "A Place of Our Own" which the song I have created the music
video for was taken from. This gave me the accurate dimensions needed to make
my design for an album digipak realistic and capable of holding an actual CD.
When designing the album artwork for the digipak, I looked at the band's
digipak for their first album "The Earth Pushed Back", as I found
this design to be uniquely eye-catching and an accurate portrayal of the Band's
style, tone and the themes of their songs, which I wanted to reflect in my own
print artefact designs.
My CD digipak design contains an
off-white coloured background with a plain boarder around the album artwork.
This is similar to the designs used for the band's existing albums, which is
the style I wanted to conform to in order to preserve the representation of the
band. Like the band's first album, my design for the CD digipak has a black and
white colour scheme which is continued across my other print artefact of a
magazine advert for the album. This colour scheme also matches the use of dull
colours in my music video which complements the melancholy and somewhat angst
filled tone of the song "Lean".
I chose to use the font
"Bookman Old Style" for all of the text on my print artefacts and in
my music video in order to have a consistent style across my ancillary products
and the main product. This font type is very gothic in appearance and because
it is similar to the font already used for the band’s existing products I feel
that the style of this font reflects the alternative tone of the band’s music.
I chose to locate the band name above the album artwork and the album name
below the artwork in the off-white boarder of the CD digipak in similar
positions to the text on the band's two existing albums. I felt that this would
create a sense of continuity across the original and my own album designs,
adding to the realism of my own design. Similar to other magazine adverts I
positioned the band name and the album name at the top of the advert in
the biggest font size on the entire advert in order to ensure that the audience
is drawn to the vital information on the page.
One panel of my digipak design
contains images taken from the band's documentation of their tour of the album
"A Place of Our Own". This is inspired by their sponsored
documentation through the use of Polaroids: "As
part of our UGG® Offstage program to support up-and-coming musicians, we set
the guys of Have Mercy up with a polaroid and plenty of film to document life
on tour. This indie rock band from Baltimore has graduated from basement shows,
but they’re still sticking to their humble roots. This is a far cry from the
glamorous bus and bowls of single-coloured candies backstage. This is what it’s
really like on the road." -http://www.ugg.com/blog?postid=the-tour-diaries-have-mercy
One of the opening shots of my
music video shows the male protagonist listening to the song "Lean"
by Have Mercy on an iPod. During the editing process I realised that this shot
displays the official album artwork for this song and would contrast the album
design I had created for my print artefacts.
To resolve this and to have
consistency across my main product and ancillary products, I imported an image
of my album cover design to my adobe premiere elements 9 project where I was
editing my music video. I then located the shot containing footage of the wrong
album cover in the editing timeline at the bottom of the screen and dragged the
imported image of my own album cover design onto the editing timeline above the
footage that required editing. At this point the image appeared over the
footage, and I could re-size it, rotate it and reposition it until it was
located directly across the image of the original album cover in the shot. In
order to make the image placed on top of the footage look more natural, I
adjusted the brightness of the image in order to make the brightness of the
picture match the brightness of the iPod screen in my music video.
Despite this, there was still the
slight problem that the iPod in the footage moved slightly as the protagonist
presses the "play" button. In order to make the image of my own album
cover design to move with the iPod, I had to create a stop-motion effect in the
film, adding a new version of the image and moving it to match the movement of
the iPod screen, until I had a sequence of images in slightly different
positions in order to be placed directly above the image of the original album
artwork on the iPod.
To ensure that my digipak design
conformed to the essential elements of a CD, I looked closely at the backs of
digipak designs to identify the conventional information included on the back
and in the small print of CD designs. I included a barcode and the logo of
"Hopeless Records" who are the record label that produced Have
Mercy's second album. I also included some of the band's details on the back of
the CD digipak, in the form of the URL for the band's website "wearehavemercy.com"
located at the bottom of the back panel of the digipak in small print with the
other details.
I used the same track
listing on my own digipak design as the listing on the band's original digipak
design, but chose to position my list in one column as opposed to two which was
used on the band's original design. I also used the same text font (Bookman old
style) as I had used for all of the text on both of my print artefacts. I hoped
that this continuity of text font style, colour and size would give my work an
air of professionalism, making it appear to have a high level of authenticity
and realism.
Although CD digipaks are
traditionally "a custom printed card packaging that can hold one or more
CDs which are held in place with plastic trays (CD flexi-trays) which are glued
into the digipak."(http://www.discfactory.co.uk/packaging/cd-digipaks/)
I chose to make my design entirely out of cardboard in order to match the
materials used in the band "Have Mercy's" two existing CD digipaks/
cases for the albums "The Earth Pushed Back" and "A Place of Our
Own". The band's two existing CD cases hold the lyrics booklet and CD in
two cardboard pockets that are made out of the cardboard of the end panels in
the CD case design. I have used a similar method to store the CD in my design,
however, as the brief specifically states "digipak" design, the
central interior panel of my CD case could also have a clear plastic tray
inserted on top of the design in order to hold the CD in a more traditional
manner. To ensure that my digipak design also conformed to the size of similar
existing media products, I measured out the dimensions of the CD case for
"Have Mercy’s” second album "A Place of Our Own", which, like my
design, contains six panels (three interior and three exterior).
The spine of my digipak contains
the band's name, followed by the album title and the record label or album
producer's logo. This order of information on the spine of a CD case is the
most common I had found when researching similar, existing products and the
original CD case designs for the band "Have Mercy".
When creating the design for my digipak I focused on how the images on adjacent
panels relate to each other. For instance, the colour of the front and back
panels of the digipak when folded up are both mainly white with black details,
images and text. To contrast the two outer panels, all of the interior panels
and designs are mainly black and grey in colour with white details. I think
that this helps to differentiate between the inside and outside panels of the
design. The use of the binary opposites of white and black in my print artefact
designs is aslso intended to reflect the importance of these oppositions within
my music video, where the troubled male character wears black and the female
character who represent a "guardian angel" form of help and support
wears white. To ensure that the images on the interior panels of my digipak
design are still related to the exterior panels, I used the same image of the
palm tree and grass that I used on the island in the album design's front panel
on the left and right panels of the interior design. I hoped that the
repetition of this design would clarify that my interpretation of the
"Place Of Our Own" in the album title is an imaginary place that a
listener can find when listening to the music.
I intended that the close-up versions of the palm tree image on the inside of
the digipak design would give the audience a sense that they would be
transported to the island shown on the front of the digipak by listening to the
music. This island represents a respite and a "place of our own" away
from the troubles of everyday life, represented by the grey city skyline
located behind the island on the front panel. The idea of an audience escaping
and finding peace from listening to the music is linked to how the male
protagonist in my music video finds help by listening to the song
"Lean" on his iPod and by calling the helpline he finds on a
noticeboard.
Magazine Advert
for Album:
To ensure that my magazine advert
conformed to the conventions of real album advertisements, I analysed a range
of adverts from the music publication "Rock Sound magazine”. As the band
Have Mercy has been previously reviewed and written about in this publication,
I thought that it would be suitable to make my magazine advert comply with the
conventions of advertisements used in this particular publication. The size of
my advertisement is A4, to match the size and width of the pages in most
magazine publications.
I tried to keep the colour scheme
in my magazine advert very minimalist and black and white to match the lack of
colour in my digipak design and the dull colour scheme within my music video.
This continued colour scheme also emphasises the significance of binary
oppositions used within my music video. The focus on the colours black and
white in the print artefacts link to the importance of the male character
wearing black and the female character wearing white in the music video.
An image of the front panel of my
digipak design is included in my magazine advert to link my two ancillary
products together. This also conforms to the convention of having an image of
the album cover in the magazine advert's design.
I did not included a price on my
magazine advert as I am aware that CD's and albums can be purchased at a wide
range of prices from the wide range of retailers that you can purchase them
from. Usually a price is only included on an advert if the advertisement is
being sponsored by a particular store or retailer. As very few adverts in the
publication "Rock Sound magazine” list prices on the adverts or are
sponsored by independent retailers, I made the decision to conform to this lack
of pricing.
My magazine advertisement foes
include iTunes, Google play and Spotify symbols to identify where the music
advertised is available from. I am aware that this is not always included on
adverts as it has become commonly accepted that audiences are either aware of
where they can purchase music or will already have their own preferred methods
for purchasing or streaming. Nevertheless, I decided to include the symbols for
these three services in order to display an awareness for the music purchasing
and streaming services that are the most popular amongst the target audience
for my music video and ancillary texts.
As some magazine adverts in
publications like “Kerrang!” and “NME” contain positive quotes from critics and
star ratings, I decided to include two quotes from independent reviews of the
band Have Mercy’s album “A Place Of Our Own” along with the star ratings given
by the reviewers. Although not all magazine adverts have quotes on them, I
decided that it would be a good idea to include them in my print artefact
design because if a product is recommended by a well-known reviewer such as a
magazine or website, this can increase an audience’s interest in the product
being advertised.
Both my digipak design and my
magazine advert design contain images of the musician that features in my music
video. This was to create a consistent representation of the artist across my
main product and both ancillary texts. This also makes all three of my media
products appear to be a combination, all linked and associated with each other
by the images of the artist, images of the front panel of my digipak design and
the one font type used across the text on all three products.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Prezi
Feedback From the Initial Pitch:
The first amount of audience feedback I gained was when I pitched my initial ideas for my music video to my media studies class. I started this pitch by playing the song "Lean" by Have Mercy to the class and I had them annotate their ideas and interpretations of the song onto a copy of the song's lyrics. This gave me a perspective of other people's initial interpretations that I could then use to adjust my ideas for the music video accordingly. As most of the class agreed with my interpretations of the lyrics being about addictions, isolation and depression or mental health issues, I knew that most audience members would interpret the preferred reading of my music video's narrative.
Although the pitch highlighted many concerns about the sensitive topics in the song, the fact that I would be addressing these issues with a positive message about seeking help and support from helplines like the Samaritans was well received. As my target audience is likely to relate to the characters in my music video, the inclusion of a real telephone helpline in my video could provide my audience a method of seeking help and support. The fact that the male character is the one who seeks help from the helpline also addresses the issue that men are the most likely to commit suicide because of a belief that asking for help would signify a failure at masculinity.
Feedback questioning the significance of some ideas on my storyboard led to the inclusion of shots of tarot cards in my music video. I hoped that the connotations and meanings of the cards would help to address any lack of clarity in the narrative of my music video, which was a major issue I experienced in my media production last year for AS.
My idea to have the female character as a physical representation of the support given to the male character through the helpline was well received by the audience of my initial pitch, although how I was to make the female character's role as a "guardian angel figure" clear to the audience was questioned. To ensure that the role and significance of this character was clear in my music video, I decided to place a sketch of angel wings faintly over some shots depicting the female character. I hoped that this effect combined with the decision to have the female character disappear in time to the final beats of the song would clarify the intended role and nature of the character presented.
Feedback from the first Edit of my Music Video:
Once I had finished editing my music video, I brought it into a media studies lesson to get feedback from my peers who had previously given feedback on my initial video ideas. As I worked alone on this project, this stage of audience feedback was vital as I had no other ways to get a second opinion on editing techniques and styles I had used in order to execute my original video concept.
Whilst most of my peers had little or no constructive criticism or suggestions to make on my first edit of the music video, my peer Jacob Campbell-John suggested that I should make the layout of my music video widescreen to make it appear to be more like a real product. I managed to do this by highlighting all of the footage on the editing timeline in adobe premiere and by cropping the footage by 12% at the top and by 12% at the bottom. This created the two black bars at the top and bottom of my footage giving the impression of a widescreen formatted video which gave my music video a professional appearance.
Another suggestion made by Jacob was to apply the "fast colour corrector" effect in order to alter the vibrancy and brightness of the footage in my music video, as the colours in some shots appeared to be "washed out" or "faded". By using this effect, I increased the saturation of most shots and edited the brightness, which increased the vibrancy of the colours without losing the gloomy tone I wanted for the video. I also feel that this effect made the majority of my footage to appear to be of a higher quality than the original, which again increased the professional appearance of the finished product.
Feedback on Print Artefacts and from Questionnaires:
Feedback on Digipak Designs:
When creating initial designs for an album digipak, I showed two designs for the front panel of my digipak to individuals who fit into the target audience for my products. I received the following feedback:
- "The island design looks better, It's easier to look at."
- "I prefer the one with the island on it, it's a lot more simplistic and I hate it when album artwork is over-complicated."
- "The design with the collection of pictures is nice, but it might be too complex for the front of a CD cover. Wouldn't it be better to have pictures of the artist elsewhere on the album cover?"
As most audience members found that the collage design was too complex, I decided to see if this was improved by adding a black and white filter to the images. Although this was a great improvement to the collage design, it was still far more complicated than other existing digipak designs.
I also decided that it would not be a good idea to use images that are not my own on the front panel of the digipak, so instead used this design on an interior panel. This meant that my digipak design would still be linked to the band's current documentation of their tour of this album, but the design located on the front panel would comprise solely of my own images, images with creative commons licenses or images that are in the public domain in order to avoid any copyright disputes related to the main panel of the digipak design.
For the island design, I have neatened the edges of the design and enlarged the artwork to improve the quality of the design. I felt that these changes increases the professional finish of the product, making it seem more realistic and closer to the quality of existing digipak designs that I had analysed.
Because this island design received the most positive feedback from every member of the target audience that I asked for feedback from, I chose to use this island design on the front panel of my final digipak design.
Questionnaire Feedback on Initial Magazine Advertisement Designs:
To choose between the three magazine advert designs I had created, I created a questionnaire to let members of my target audience choose their favourite design and to give constructive comments and criticism that I can use to improve them before creating the final advertisement design. The preference of design in the questionnaire responses were divided between the first design and second design, so I decided to use the comments on the designs given in the responses to improve and choose between those two designs.
Two questionnaire responses preferred the first design. I learned from one response that they found the colourscheme effective as it "corresponds with the dull colours of the album cover". The other response that preferred this design claimed that it had "depth" which draws you in. However, this response appears to have chosen the first design because although it "seems too crowded at first", it contains "additional information" which allows the audience to easily determine whether the music being advertised would appeal to them.
One response chose the second design as their favourite because of the simplistic and minimalistic design which made the advertisement seem more "forward" and easier to comprehend. Another response found that the white space on the second design "draws the eye to the central image" and "clearly shows what is being advertised". However, this response also identified that the second design contains less information than the other two designs.
Overall, I learned from this audience feedback that a minimalistic background is the most effective for a magazine advertisement design, but that this design needs to contain a substantial amount of information to compensate for the simplistic design. With the information gained from these questionnaires, I selected the second magazine design as my final product, but added the quotes included on the other two initial designs in order to increase the information on the advert which appears to be something deemed highly important to my target audience.
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Extended essay with embedded images .etc.
Research and Planning:
The entirety of my research and planning for my music video and relevant print artefacts has been documented through a sequence of posts on Google's "Blogger".
Blogger has been ideal in terms of research and planning as it allowed me to access my analysis, research and creative ideas on any device that has an internet connection. This meant that i could continue work that was started at the academy at home without the need for backing up files of a USB device, or having to use up limited storage space on the school system's email by sending myself multiple files of varying sizes.
By using Blogger, all of my work was organised in date order once the posts were published. This meant that I could use the "Blog Archive" tool on the right hand-side of the screen of my blog to find a specific post.
This has proved an especially useful tool when evaluating previous work, as it saved time in locating previous posts that are relevant to my current work and progress.
Another useful feature of Blogger is that a wide range of media can be embedded into my own blog posts. Embedding images into posts has allowed me to support and enhance my textual analysis of existing products, by including images or screenshots of the particular elements are moments that I had written about.
Existing presentations created using SlideShare and Prezi could also be embedded into my blog, allowing me easy access to resources related to my research into specific theories. For example, when researching Andrew Goodwin's music video theory I came across an extremely useful Prezi resource created by John Duggan. As this Prezi was created for educational processes, I could share and embed it to support my own summarisation and application of the theory.
The ability to embed YouTube videos into posts on Blogger meant that I could create a collection of existing music videos and videos containing song audio to for the basis of my initial ideas for the music video. By collecting these videos together in one post, I could then compare them to find common themes across the genres and begin to create visual ideas that I could include in the first or final edit of my own music video.
Embedding YouTube videos also proved useful when I was analysing existing media products and music videos. As well as further supporting my analysis alongside print-screens, by embedding the music video being analysed at the top of the blog post, I could watch the video whilst typing on the same page, which was far more efficient that simply using split screens or switching between web pages. The inclusion of the video in question alongside my analysis also clarifies any confusion related to the media text in question, as it becomes obvious that the music video being analysed is the one included on the same page. The fact that hyperlinks could also be inserted in posts on Blogger further clarified the media sources and texts referred to in my own work.
When analysing existing print artefacts, Microsoft PowerPoint proved especially useful as it allowed me to freely arrange "Text boxes" and "shapes" such as arrows around an image of the print artefact being analysed. Having one analysis per presentation slide also allowed me to easily compare the codes and conventions for the design of CD digipaks and magazine adverts. The analysis could then be embedded into my blog by taking a print-screen of the PowerPoint slide.
Production:
When creating my print artefacts, Microsoft Office Programmes such as Word and Power Point proved very useful in terms of simplicity of use and a range of colouring and grouping effects that could be applied to images, although these were generally of a low quality. Therefore I used adobe Photoshop elements 9 to edit images and to remove backgrounds from images, crop images, apply effects to or edit the style of images with a professional finish and quality.
I then saved these edited images as PNG files and inserted them all into one Microsoft PowerPoint document. I usually find that arranging images and text is easiest in PowerPoint, which I had access to both in the sixth form college and at home, allowing me to work on arranging and construct the print artefact designs both in lessons and in my spare time.
I later realised that there is also a "set transparent colour" function under the "recolour" option in Microsoft PowerPoint, but I found that this produces a much lower quality effect than the one I achieved using the "magic eraser" tool in adobe photoshop elements 9.
PowerPoint has the options to "Group" images together which I found especially useful when creating my print artefacts. Once I had arranged the images and text in a way that I wanted and found to be the most effective or appealing, I could select all of the images and "Group" them together, allowing me to move them as one and preserve the order I had placed them in.
You can also edit images in terms of the order of "layers" in Microsoft PowerPoint. By right clicking on an individual images, the layer options to "move forward", "send to front", "move backwards" and "send to back" were extremely useful when attempting to arrange multiple images on top of each other.
I began the process of editing my A2 music video using the software Adobe premiere, which is installed on the computers in my sixth form's media editing suite. However, I soon discovered that I would need to edit my project on different software, as adobe premiere pro is often over-complicated, hard to use with little training and my access to this software was limited to the time allocated to coursework in my media lessons. I therefore decided to edit my music video at home using adobe premiere elements, which is very similar to adobe premiere pro (the software I used to edit my media project last year), but has a simplified format, saving the time it takes me to locate tools, effects and options to apply to my footage. This editing software was also available for my use a home, meaning that I could spend larger amounts of time working on my media project from the comfort of my home, which I felt increased my productivity significantly in comparison to the progress of my editing last year when was working on my AS media project in the media editing suite.
The first stage of editing involved uploading the footage from my camera's SD card to my computer. To do this,I dragged the video files from the SD card file on my computer into the work-space of adobe premiere elements. This opened a message which took me to a separate "image importer" screen which allowed me to complete the import, copying my film clips to the work-space of the program where I could drag them onto a timeline and begin to edit them.
To make my footage into a music video, I converted the band "Have Mercy's" song "lean" into a MP4 file, which could be imported to the adobe work-space and added to my editing timeline.
This audio file of the song will replace the audio clips on my footage as the soundtrack for the video. To remove the audio from my video clips, I selected all of the footage placed on the timeline and right-clicked to find the option "delete audio". This method proved to be very useful as it saved me from having to individually select each audio track by left-clicking it whilst holding the "Alt" key and manually deleting them one by one.
Now that I had the audio track of the song and all of the footage, I could trim down the footage that I wanted to use and arrange it along the timeline in areas where it would complement the lyrics and/or tempo of the song. I discovered that the shortcuts for the razor tool (which allows you to cut and divide footage into separate clips) was pressing the "c" key. By pressing the "v" key, this then returned the cursor back to the normal selecting arrow.
In order to ensure that my music video conformed to the convention of having the editing pace match the tempo of the music, I found that by setting markers at certain points on the timeline helped me when editing to identify key or significant changes in the tempo and lyrics of the song, letting me where to locate important video clips on the timeline and where to locate transitions between video clips. To set a marker, I chose the location where I wanted the marker, then clicked on the small blue symbol located between the video preview section of the screen (top right) and the timeline at the bottom of the screen. I then selected the options "timeline marker", "set timeline marker" and "unnamed". These markers have no effect on the actual video footage, and just acted as an useful indicator for me to use throughout the editing process.
When editing, I identified that some of my footage appeared to contain too much dead space. To counteract this, I zoomed into the footage by selected the footage either by simply clicking on it, or double clicking on it to open up another preview screen. I then selected the tab "Edit" from the list of options along the top of the left hand side of the screen. At the bottom of this new screen, there is a button labelled "edit effects". By clicking on this, I was given the new drop down options of "motion" and "opacity".
To zoom into the video clip, I opened the drop down option labelled "motion" and moved the slider along the option "scale" until I was happy with the amount I had zoomed into (or out of) the original footage.
Once I had zoomed into the footage, by clicking on the video display at the top right section of the scree, I could drag the footage by the small circle that appears in the centre. This allows me to move the zoomed in footage in a way that moves the dead-space out of view, so that only the important action in the footage is focused on.
Once I had finished editing the music video, I uploaded it to YouTube. This allows me to embed my final music video into my advanced portfolio blog made using "Blogger". As both YouTube and Blogger are owned by Google, the two platforms work well in conjunction, making the entire research, construction, planning and evaluation stages easier and more efficient.
Evaluation:
The first stage of my evaluation was to write an evaluation script. I typed this up onto Blogger so that I could access it on any device with an internet connection, allowing me to proof-read, edit and use my script whenever I had available time.This greater accessibility provided by the use of Blogger also meant that I could work on presenting my responses to the evaluation questions using different media technologies both at home and in my sixth form's editing suite, which gave me a greater range of possibilities related to presentation.
1. Green screen video discussing the music video as it plays in background?
2. Audio commentary with footage of print artefacts and connections to music video.
For my response to the second evaluation question, I decided to make a video with an audio recording with relevant images and clips from my music video. I originally intended to record myself reading out my evaluation script using a microphone which I could then edit using audio software such as "Audacity". However, as I had no access to a good quality microphone and it has been many years since I used the software audacity, I simply decided to place my camera lens-down on the table in front of me and to have that record my voice. Then, in the editing process, all I had to do was to delete the video on all of the footage imported to an adobe premiere elements project, leaving me with an completed audio track. To make this voice recording more engaging, I added relevant exerts of text and images related to the topics covered in my response to the original question. I saved all images that I wanted to use for this video as ".jpeg" files, as these are of a relatively small file size and often load much quicker than other file types such as ".png" files (portable network graphic files). By making this evaluation response into a video, I could also add titles to the video, and used these to demonstrate the particular font type used across all of my media products and to display quotes that I had used when writing my evaluation script in order to identify the sources i had used for wider reading.
3. Prezi (online presentation software that is designed to be a more engaging and effective method of presenting data).
I decided to make my response to the second evaluation question into a "Prezi". Prezi is a free online presentation service that is supposedly a more engaging and effective method of presenting information than traditional PowerPoint presentations. As Prezi is an online service, it is also easier to share and distribute than other presenting formats, and I knew from previous experience that a Prezi could easily be embedded into my blog. As this is a fairly modern and popular media technology to use for presenting information, I felt that it would be the ideal format for outlining the impact that audience feedback had on my coursework.
One of the aspects I like about Prezi is that I could simply drag any images of questionnaires and other resources given for audience feedback from the folder that they are saved in directly onto the Prezi. although this is a common feature of modern media technologies, quite often this does not work, spends a long time loading or requires a different method of adding images to preserve the original standard of quality. Inserting a new text box on Prezi also requires the minimum effort of clicking the background once. This simplicity and ease of use made presenting an evaluation response much quicker than the process of creating and editing a video was.
4. Extended essay with embedded images .etc.
For my response to the final evaluation question, I have written an extended essay covering the different uses of media technologies throughout the research and planning, production and evaluation stages of my media production. To make this essay more interesting, I have included screenshots and images to help illustrate my points.
