Evaluation Question 3:

Blogger is the site where we blog everything down. It's where all our ideas come together, and shows the construction of our music video and ancillary products. Blogger is a key part in the way my work is set out, it keeps it organised and is where all my thoughts and the process of making a music video are listed. Blogger has been used for research, planning, and the evaluation stages.

Media technology has been a major part in researching, planning and evaluating. I have tried to se as many different kinds of presentation softwares to make my work look more presentable.

When researching for inspiration, I tried to conduct a lot of research. The internet has been the main thing needed in order for me to conduct my research. Google was used incredibly a lot, when i had to search up music videos and definition of certain words. It helped me gain understanding of the music industry and also allowed me to collect facts and figures.

Youtube is where I got all my videos from. I was able to embed them on my blog, so people can watch them without having to be directed to the youtube page. Youtube was mostly used during the research stage, as I had to find certain music videos and look for ones that inspired me. It also helped me understand who to use certain softwares such as final cut pro.

Another way of presenting my work was by using images and captioning them. I directly out the images onto blogger, so there wasn't a presentation software used. I was also able to embed videos from youtube and vimeo. We had to make a prelim, and this was uploaded onto vimeo; so we had to imbed the video and discuss the things that went well and the things that didn't. Having videos imbedded onto my blogs made it look better and it was something that was visually exciting.

Although I used a lot of presentation sites during the research stage, I look for more new ones so my presentation softwares wasn't as repetitive. I looked at several different ways to present my work during the planning stage. Using youtube was a vital part, and it was used in every aspect of the course. I used new presentation softwares such as Popplet, Mural, Note-ly, Thinkling, time toast, and plenty more.

As part of planning, I had to make a storyboard, so we knew what to film when the time came. It was really hard, because I did it on my own, so I had to think of all the shots. Although, we didn't follow the storyboard, because things don't go to plan. I also made the animatic, I used iMove to make that. I placed the images in the timeline, and added the music to it. The timing wasn't right, as some shots were too long. But when ti came to the actual one, all the timings were right. It was my first time doing an animatic, and I did find it hard at first, but it helped me when it came to our actual music video.

When it came to planning ancillary products, I made several mock ups, using photoshop. After finishing the mock ups, I used Slides to present them. It was easy to use, and I liked the way it was layered out. It made my work look better, and made it more sophisticated.

We filmed using the college cameras, they weren't that great in quality but we knew by editing after our music video would stand out. I had experience in filming last year, so I knew how to film. Obviously the camera was also a major part in the production of our music video. I del comfortable to film; although we did have static shots, we also had a lot of movement in our music video. We used a fig rig to hold the camera, as we moved it around, to make sure our music video wasn't just static.

We were given new hard drives. They were much smaller and more compact and easy to carry around. This is where we had to save all our footage, we also had a spare hard drive and I also saved the clips on my own computer because we didn't want our footage to be deleted.

Even though I had experience with final cut pro, I had a little amount of experience. However, now I have so much knowledge in using final cut pro. Final cut pro was hard to use at first, but I got used to it. It made our work look more professionally done and allowed it to look HD. It allowed us to cut into the right places, and add base tracks. I learnt how to change the effects and contrast so it looks much more saturated. I was also able to put the REC tool on some parts of the footage, giving it the home video look. final cut pro allowed us to get a final product as well as a teaser for our music video. I was able to put in clips, and sort them in the right order, before lip syncing each and very one of them, making sure the lip sync is good. I learnt how to use the blade tool, and other tools such as mirroring effects.

For our tester trailer, I made 'Ren' on motion. I used the type tool, and typed in the artists name, which I then added a background, and changed the font as well as adding texture- metallic texture. I had to air drop it to another computer, this is when we put the font onto the teaser clip.

On the hard drives, we had this programme called instashot, which tools screen pictures every 30 seconds. This allowed us to see the progress when we made our music video. I took the screen pictures and placed them on powerpoint, this is where I annotated around it, discussing what we added and how we did a certain thing.

Photoshop was a huge part when it came to making my digipak and advert. I chose photoshop rather than Quark because I found photoshop much easier to use. I learnt a lot of things when using photoshop, such as making sure the image is clear enough and to make sure that the sharpness wasn't overly done. I was able to play around with the scale of images and the way it looked as well as the colours. I saturated images to make sure it was more colourful. Tools such as the magic wand too was a very important part, I had to delete the background and add more colour. I was able to play around with different filters and text, and make the font stand out more by adding shadows.

For the evaluation questions, I used notes.ly, poppet, and made my own videos, discussing what went on. I also used Camatasia, which is something i've never used before, but i've got the hang of it, it's much easier to use than Final cut pro. Also, using these sites, made it easier for me to make notes on the evaluation questions. It was simple, and easy to read. So it was easy when it came to answering the evaluation questions.

We had to upload our audience feed back onto youtube, so all we have to do is embed it on to our blog. Youtube was a major part in our work, and has helped me in several ways.