We started to use technology before we even began constructing our media products; using the Internet as an aid to our research and planning.
We first used the Internet (and mainly YouTube) to search for the song that we wanted to make a music video for. This was a very long process and we managed to find the right song only due to YouTube's feature of related videos. This feature was extremely useful as it enabled us to find songs that we had never heard of or listened to before, which was exactly what we wanted to find. This meant that we could use this unknown song to construct our own visual interpretation of the song without having preconceived ideas from an original familiar video.
During the construction of the 2 ancillary tasks we used the Internet to download fonts from dafont.com, which was very useful as it meant that we were not restricted to the default fonts on the Apple Mac desktop computer that we were using, as they were all quite plain and did not fit with the style of the brand we were creating.
Finally we used search engines and YouTube to search for tutorials that would help us when using Final Cut Express (for example we learnt how to use the Chroma Key Effect), as none of my group had ever used the software before.
To use the Chroma Keyer Effect, Claire highlighted the clip that she wanted to put the effect on. She pressed the effects button then dropped down the menu to Video Filters and chose Key --> Chroma Keyer. She clicked on the eye dropper tool and selected the colour we wanted to stay, in our case the red rose. She clicked the invert button, then selected the clip again and clicked Alt + Shift and dragged the clip up to the next level on the timeline in Final Cut Express. To finish the effect she had to click the clip on top of the original clip and then click the invert button again. Finally she had to desaturate the clip again and now the clip is is black and white with only the red rose in colour.
Final Cut Express was the program that Claire and Jack used to edit our music video. If we did not have access to this program we would have had to use a simpler program that would not have given us the range of effects that it gave us e.g. cross dissolves, desaturate and chroma keyer. The program also enabled us to edit very tightly using clips that were split seconds long without affecting the quality of the video. The feature that we liked and used the most in our music video was speeding up or slowing down our clips from real time. This gave us a lot of opportunity to create tension and dramatic effects throughout the video, for example the gate to the graveyard opening and closing, and of Claire picking petals of the rose in the shadows.
To get footage for our music video we filmed using Sony Handy-Cams. They aided us during filming as we used it with a tripod for some shots that needed a steady hand, making the video look more professional. They also enabled us to film more shaky shots by having a strap on the side, meaning that we could run with it in our hand to film and not have to worry about dropping or breaking it. We could use the camera whilst it was being charged, so we could always film at any time and not worry about the battery life.
To take photos that we could use in our 2 ancillary tasks, I used my own personal camera: a Sony Cyber-Shot 12 mega pixel digital camera. As it has such a high mega pixel number, it meant that any photos that I took would come out in a high quality, useful for me when I worked on the digipak and magazine advert. The camera also has many different settings that I could use, for example I could shoot in black and white, sepia and negative, or even change the focus of the lens to shallow or deep. This setting was extremely useful in one photo, where I shot Claire's hand and the rose dangling from it in focus whilst the background was not in focus (photo below). This meant that I could get rid of the background easier in Photoshop.
I used Adobe Photoshop in the construction of our magazine advertisement and digipak.
This program was essential to the final appearance of our ancillary tasks. I frequently used the history brush tool, which creates the same effect as chroma keyer does in Final Cut Express by keeping one part of the image in colour. You can do this by desaturating the photo and then using the history brush tool to colour the selected parts of the image back in. I used this tool on the magazine advert where the rose is kept in colour whilst the rest of the photo is in black and white.
Another feature that I loved in Photoshop was the amount of filter tools there were. These enabledme to change the apearence of the images, for example I could make an image look like film grain, be wrapped in plastic or look like a mosaic. the filter tool I most frequently used was the 'poster edges' tool, which gave the images a bolder look and they became more outlined.
An example of how I used the history brush tool and the poster edges filter tool is below:
The final piece of media technology that we used was Blogger.com. We used this website to write up, post images/slideshows/videos of our coursework. I found this to be much more useful than using pen and paper, as it gives us the opportunity to instantly update our work, post images and videos that would otherwise have to be printed out or transferred to a CD or DVD.
Finally, I used Slideshare and Scribd to display my answers to the first two evaluation questions. This gave me the opportunity to display my work in different ways other than just text and images.
