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

During the planning stages of our video we used many different media sites such as 'youtube' and 'muzu' to consume videos of our chosen genre, allowing us to embed them into our blogs and analyse them for content and ideas that were later transferred into our main products. We also used 'windows movie maker' a simpler editing program alongside to animate a storyboard which was hand drawn as part of our planning.

For our music video, we used a range of different equipment to create and complete it.
For shooting the video we used two different cameras. For shooting our performance footage (the band playing) we used professional recording cameras that are used on television, we did this in the college's media recording suite, the reason we did this was because this environment not only contained all the equipment we needed, but it also looked professional and had the look of a practise studio, so this gave us many advantages.
In this room while we recorded ourselves performing the song, the song itself would be played in the background while we recorded. We took multiple takes of the band performing the song in a variety of different ways, and used a wide variety of camera shots. At some points during the recording of the performance, we used a handheld camera to get close-ups of the band and their instruments, especially for the guitar solo to make it seem more exciting and appealing, and we also used tracking shots to move around the whole of the band while we all performed, this also had another pro: The handheld camera had a lower resolution and gritty look. This gave the video more of a dirty look and feel which worked extremely well with the genre of music that we have chose (Rock N’ Roll), which conventionally has a dirty, gritty and urban look to the videos.


This is an example of the gritty low-res close ups we were able to capture using the hand held camera during our filming.

For our narration we used a simple handheld camera, the reason we used this was because it was much easier to record with. Our narration is set in a very dark, desolate urban environment, so having a handheld camera was easier to record with due to our various camera shots. For example we would not have been able to do a tracking shot of our character as he walks through the streets with a large camera, this would of been extremely difficult and complicated, whereas with the handheld camera we were able to move with an incredible amount of ease. And if we also used a professional camera, we would not of been able to get many of our shots, including the shot where the camera is placed within a coil of barbed wire which shows the character and the grotesque environment which he is walking through.


This shot would not have been possible with a larger camera as the extremly low angle required would have been too difficult to possition.

Also because the handheld has the natural low resolution/gritty urban look which comes with it, this also suited the narration extremely well as the environments are the streets near a main road, then the abandoned houses which were in a very poor condition, and then the graffiti ridden tunnel in which the narration ends as our character walks off into the light of nature.

When editing on final cut pro, we decided to edit the performance and narrative together as two complete pieces and then edit between them, this allowed for maximum flexibility when editing the narrative as it was already pieced together as a sequence. We used a wide range of the final cut pro tools whilst editing, from basic cut functions to visual effects and text boxes. When editing the performance we watched the performance from every possible angle and decided on key moments we wanted to include in the performance sections (e.g. guitarists solo). We would also included a rapid cut-rate at the start of the video to amplify the music during this sequence.


The timeline we used had many differant layers on for each camera at each time, we would watch playback from each angle and decide which would be the most effective.

We also used final cut pro to add effects to our video to make it more effective, for example effects such as 'earthquake' add distortion to the image during key sequences, connoting chaos and confusion. We also placed colour filters such as monochrome and contrast on our video which contributed to the bleak mise-en-scene.


This is an example of what our performance section looked like before we added visual effects.


This screenshot shows how we added the visual filters to our video that drained the more vibrant colours from the mise en scene.


This shot shows how we used the 'earthquake' effect to amplify parts of the song.

During our evaluation we have used multiple technologies such as the social networking site 'facebook' to gain feedback on our video from the target audience by uploading it to the site and placing it within a group for fans of the genre.
We also used webcams to create video for the blog such as the directors commentary and the audience feedback podcast.