Evaluation Q4

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

To overcome the issues with copy write commonly found in the media and music industry we used the website www.unsigned.com. to find our chosen band and track. This also meant that it would easy to contact our chosen artist and in theory more likely to receive feedback. The Internet is an effective method to publicize unsigned bands as it is possibly the most large scale method of receiving an audience.

We used Facebook predominantly in order to receive a broad range of feedback. This method was quick and simple, letting us easily receive a fast response to our production. It also means we can post a range of different texts such as all of of our tasks (magazine advert, digipak, video) and receive feedback on them all.

Youtube: Using Youtube helped as a research method helped us to gain a sense of the conventions of music videos in general and promos specific to our genre. It also helped us to take this information and to develop it into our original ideas.  

This technology also helped with the exhibiting of our finished promo, from which we can see a range of different peoples responses and opinions, and whether or not our final product was successful essentially by the amount of views it has received. This was reasonably effective as we could see that the video received around 600 views however not everyone who saw it gave some feedback therefore it was not very effective in terms of feedback although it did offer some.

iMovie: This technology was used as the editing method for the production of our promo, we used this to put the selected clips together, add transitions and edit as well as adding effects when necessary.

iMovie enabled us to sequence a dual narrative containing both our performance and narrative elements. We used straight cuts for the majority of the piece as it created the sense of pace we were trying to achieve from the piece as we felt that was one element that was lacking in the preliminary task. This also meant it gave the piece a sense of energy conventional to indie/rock promos. 

Fish eye lens:

We used the fish eye lens to film all of our narrative. We did this because we felt it did three things:

1.    Enforced the difference between the narrative and performance.

2.    Added to the effect of the location being surreal and warped

3.    Added a sense of scale to the shots which are lacking in the performance as the location is not evident.

  

Photoshop: This technology was used in the making of our digipak and magazine article. It was a especially useful technology to use as it enabled us to take iconic images and turn them into something different as seen in our album art.  It then enabled us to edit these images and change them from being normal to abnormal again furthering the conventions of the indie/rock genre. I think it also helped to create an authentic and professional look to our work.

From this project I have believe I have developed skills for planning shooting and editing. I also think as a group we have become more concise and well organised with our projects. Additionally I think we have taken ideas and elements from previous projects that have been successful and have furthered them and developed them into our latest production.

Throughout the course I have also learnt the importance of lighting and how effective it can be or in some cases unsuccessful. I think this is one of the elements we have most improved on in this project in particular and I think this is reflected in the performance aspects of our promo.

 This shot illustrates how the lighting made it possible to eliminate any sight of a location and enhance the detail of the shot at the same time. For example the guitar is very clear. This was good because it mean that the most significant parts of our shots (such as guitars) could be enhanced.

Additionally I think we grasped the skill of lip syncing quickly and effectively and our video is almost perfectly in sync however we did encounter the issue of multiple vocal layers making it impossible to sync the video with both vocals.

Blogger: we used blogger as a means of noting down ideas and conventions to be developed in the future. It helps to show a steady progression of the project as a whole. The multimedia aspect also made it easier to display our work in more interesting ways and helps to illustrate a range of skills. It also helped to maintain a certain degree of organization to the project which was important with regards to actually producing the project.