I have had some troubles with some of the lables not picking up all the posts that they are supposed to. So I would prefer if you looked through my blog top to bottom so you don't miss anything.
Thanks :)
Wednesday 31 March 2010
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
I think it would be fair to say that this whole project would be almost impossible if it wasn’t for the creation of new media technology, NMT and so I am eternally grateful for all the inventions and gadgets that I have used along the way.
Research:
When creating a music video you must of course choose a song to create a video to. To do this I decided to enlist the help of my dad’s enormous CD collection which unfortunately fills half the house, but with the help of an i-pod I was able to carry around the whole collection in my pocket and choose a relevant song whilst also looking for possible locations.
Once I had chosen the song I needed to look for inspiration which came in the form of the German MTV channel and was where I discovered the Pharcyde video. I was then able to search the group on You tube once back in the UK and try and work out how they created the video so that I could make the video my own.
In the meantime whilst also doing this I began to create the blog that you are reading this off of. Blogspot is a great tool for putting all your information and research onto as it allows you to upload videos and images with very little trouble.
I also knew that I had to create a poster and digipack so I also began to search the internet looking for examples that I could take inspiration from for my campaign later on in the project.
No blog is complete without a banner and so I decided to create a banner to head my blog using Photoshop. This allowed me to create the banner to just the right size and also choose the colour I wanted.
Planning:
NMT was a very important part of the planning stages as I had to gather actors and props for the video. Social networking sites such as Facebook allowed me to quickly and easily contact actors so that I was able to quickly and efficiently send messages to people and update them on the current situations around filming.
E-mail isn’t perhaps as new as the social networking sites but via email I was able to send the song to the actor, Conor so that he was able to learn it in advance of us filming the lip synching parts.
Production:
Production was probably where I used the most NMT as it is such a large and technical area.
Filming the lip synching parts off the video I was able to play the song through the computer via i-tunes because I was bale to synch the i-pod with the computer. This helped Conor, the actor a great deal as he was then prompted when to come in rather than off the top of his head.
Again I used the software Photoshop when creating the ancillary texts as this allowed me to manipulate and change any part of the poster or digipack that I wanted with almost know limits, from text to imagery.
To edit the music video, once it had been filmed I used the software known as Final Cut Pro. Like Photoshop does for images the software allows me to manipulate the video almost however I want allowing me to cut and edit parts of the video that were irrelevant and also add in effects.
Evaluation:
You may be thinking that the evaluation is probably the subheading that uses NMT the least, but you are wrong. To write a sturdy and strong evaluation you must have feedback from a large number of people and audiences and so to distribute my music video I decided to post the video on Youtube. This enables anybody from around the world to access my video and leave feedback.
Blogspot also comes back into the equation because as I’m sure you know the world doesn’t appear to use typewriters anymore so I am able to post my evaluation directly to my blog which also holds all the information and research that I have done previously.
Research:
When creating a music video you must of course choose a song to create a video to. To do this I decided to enlist the help of my dad’s enormous CD collection which unfortunately fills half the house, but with the help of an i-pod I was able to carry around the whole collection in my pocket and choose a relevant song whilst also looking for possible locations.
Once I had chosen the song I needed to look for inspiration which came in the form of the German MTV channel and was where I discovered the Pharcyde video. I was then able to search the group on You tube once back in the UK and try and work out how they created the video so that I could make the video my own.
In the meantime whilst also doing this I began to create the blog that you are reading this off of. Blogspot is a great tool for putting all your information and research onto as it allows you to upload videos and images with very little trouble.
I also knew that I had to create a poster and digipack so I also began to search the internet looking for examples that I could take inspiration from for my campaign later on in the project.
No blog is complete without a banner and so I decided to create a banner to head my blog using Photoshop. This allowed me to create the banner to just the right size and also choose the colour I wanted.
Planning:
NMT was a very important part of the planning stages as I had to gather actors and props for the video. Social networking sites such as Facebook allowed me to quickly and easily contact actors so that I was able to quickly and efficiently send messages to people and update them on the current situations around filming.
E-mail isn’t perhaps as new as the social networking sites but via email I was able to send the song to the actor, Conor so that he was able to learn it in advance of us filming the lip synching parts.
Production:
Production was probably where I used the most NMT as it is such a large and technical area.
Filming the lip synching parts off the video I was able to play the song through the computer via i-tunes because I was bale to synch the i-pod with the computer. This helped Conor, the actor a great deal as he was then prompted when to come in rather than off the top of his head.
Again I used the software Photoshop when creating the ancillary texts as this allowed me to manipulate and change any part of the poster or digipack that I wanted with almost know limits, from text to imagery.
To edit the music video, once it had been filmed I used the software known as Final Cut Pro. Like Photoshop does for images the software allows me to manipulate the video almost however I want allowing me to cut and edit parts of the video that were irrelevant and also add in effects.
Evaluation:
You may be thinking that the evaluation is probably the subheading that uses NMT the least, but you are wrong. To write a sturdy and strong evaluation you must have feedback from a large number of people and audiences and so to distribute my music video I decided to post the video on Youtube. This enables anybody from around the world to access my video and leave feedback.
Blogspot also comes back into the equation because as I’m sure you know the world doesn’t appear to use typewriters anymore so I am able to post my evaluation directly to my blog which also holds all the information and research that I have done previously.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
From the audience feedback I was able to change many parts of the video that previously made understanding the narrative difficult or little touches that I hadn’t noticed when editing the video. For example the scenes where I filmed the lead singer, Noah painting his demise on the glass were originally backwards which I had decided to do so that it would look as if he was trying to undo his inevitable future. However when I showed this too the group they stated that it looked a little odd when he was taking the paint off with the paintbrush that when the image appeared a few seconds later in the video the part that he had previously taken off had reappeared and he was now trying to remove another piece. To correct this I took into account what the group had said and decided to make the glass scenes flow in the forwards direction which I believe this was the right decision as the scenes now flow much better and Noah seems to be painting his inevitable future towards destruction as well as living it.
Another important change that stemmed from audience feedback was changing the end of the video to fit in with the length of the song. Many people had already said that I had too much time lapse in the later parts of the video but also complained that the glass smashing shot which originally occurred after the song had finished was too late. So what I decided to do was to cut out some of the later time lapse and bring everything back a little so that there was less time lapse and the glass smashed on the last beat of the song.
Another important change that stemmed from audience feedback was changing the end of the video to fit in with the length of the song. Many people had already said that I had too much time lapse in the later parts of the video but also complained that the glass smashing shot which originally occurred after the song had finished was too late. So what I decided to do was to cut out some of the later time lapse and bring everything back a little so that there was less time lapse and the glass smashed on the last beat of the song.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I believe that the music video and ancillary texts work perfectly together. The whole theme of the band Noah & The Arc was that they were escaping from a past of problems and danger and I believe that all three do this very well.
The music video displays some of the bad behaviour that Noah used to practice in his past days by cheating on women and how he gets caught out when one of the women discovers a note left by another.
I decided to create the digipack in black and white as I felt that this best reflected the differences between good and evil. What is also important about the digipack is how it shows the development of Noah’s story as he finds himself in prison at one stage before being set free and him seeing the light.
The poster then comes in at this point. I again decided to use the black and white colour scheme to continue the ideology of good versus evil. I also decided to continue an idea which I originally thought of when creating the digipack of turning some letters to face the opposite direction. This played into the hands of the video as parts of the video as you know are in reverse and I believe help to distinguish between right and wrong. The story part of the poster is in affect the last chapter as it displays the dates of release for the album and Noah has in a sense at last broken away from his evil past and so the poster depicts him turning away from the past and heading towards the future.
The music video displays some of the bad behaviour that Noah used to practice in his past days by cheating on women and how he gets caught out when one of the women discovers a note left by another.
I decided to create the digipack in black and white as I felt that this best reflected the differences between good and evil. What is also important about the digipack is how it shows the development of Noah’s story as he finds himself in prison at one stage before being set free and him seeing the light.
The poster then comes in at this point. I again decided to use the black and white colour scheme to continue the ideology of good versus evil. I also decided to continue an idea which I originally thought of when creating the digipack of turning some letters to face the opposite direction. This played into the hands of the video as parts of the video as you know are in reverse and I believe help to distinguish between right and wrong. The story part of the poster is in affect the last chapter as it displays the dates of release for the album and Noah has in a sense at last broken away from his evil past and so the poster depicts him turning away from the past and heading towards the future.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products
My music video, You Showed Me conforms to the forms and conventions that are traditionally found in Britpop videos very well. The lead member of the band is the main attraction of the video much like in The Verve’s video Bittersweet symphony, and the main idea of the video is very down to earth. The use of cinematography allows the audience to see plenty of shots of the singer, which boosts the bands popularity and fame but also has enough cutaways to make the video not just a simple slideshow of facial features. Lighting is very subtle and mainly quite dull which fits into the rhythms of the songs, In my case with my video I had no need to use lighting as the sunlight lit up where we were filming in the bedroom particularly well and outside scenes of Britpop videos are usually quite dull to fit in with the whole feeling and oppressive mood.
What is also important to a Britpop video is how the video represents Britain and again I believe that my video does this in a very successful way. Britpop is very traditional in how it represents this, for example Blur used the milk carton as the main character of their videos Coffee and TV while Coldplay used the beach in their video for Yellow, all traditional things that can be associated with Britain. What I decided to do was follow these conventions by using the high street as the main place for my video and revolving everything around a relationship which is centred in the typical traditional family home.
The last convention of a Britpop video is that it has to be slightly unusual in how it carries itself. It has to almost be an art piece as the songs don’t tend to lend themselves to the fast gyrating of dancers, so the videos have to find other ways of entertaining the audience. This interest is usually created through a narrative such as Blurs milk carton video. But instead of their just being a simple narrative which the audience follow odd things also occur in the meantime. For example Richard Ashcroft doesn’t simply walk down a road, as he does so he barges passers-by in all directions which causes the audience to watch more as this is now interesting as you wonder if anyone will try and stop him. So in sense Britpop videos are not just simple music promotional tools but are also videos of performance art which entertain the audience, and it is this effect that I believe that I have created by creating a video that flows in reverse.
What is also important to a Britpop video is how the video represents Britain and again I believe that my video does this in a very successful way. Britpop is very traditional in how it represents this, for example Blur used the milk carton as the main character of their videos Coffee and TV while Coldplay used the beach in their video for Yellow, all traditional things that can be associated with Britain. What I decided to do was follow these conventions by using the high street as the main place for my video and revolving everything around a relationship which is centred in the typical traditional family home.
The last convention of a Britpop video is that it has to be slightly unusual in how it carries itself. It has to almost be an art piece as the songs don’t tend to lend themselves to the fast gyrating of dancers, so the videos have to find other ways of entertaining the audience. This interest is usually created through a narrative such as Blurs milk carton video. But instead of their just being a simple narrative which the audience follow odd things also occur in the meantime. For example Richard Ashcroft doesn’t simply walk down a road, as he does so he barges passers-by in all directions which causes the audience to watch more as this is now interesting as you wonder if anyone will try and stop him. So in sense Britpop videos are not just simple music promotional tools but are also videos of performance art which entertain the audience, and it is this effect that I believe that I have created by creating a video that flows in reverse.
Wednesday 24 March 2010
Wednesday 17 March 2010
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