Task 13: Evaluation Question 4

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.