Over the past years digital technology has become more
widespread and affordable to the audience allowing them to have more
opportunities of distributions and sharing. Before we never used to have access
to a digital camera, making filming a lot more complicated as you wouldn’t be
able to playback the footage shot on the day, whereas now we can afford digital
technology such as the Canon 550D DSLR, this camera allowed me to shot my music
video and playback footage to make sure that I had captured everything I was
hoping to capture. I also had the ability to use manual settings, where I
changed the movie record size to 1280x720 with 50 frames a second; I also
changed the shutter speed to 100 as it is always best to shoot with the shutter
speed double what the frames are. When shooting, I also made sure the ISO was
set to 400 and the aperture to 4.5, this made the quality of my video clear
when shooting outside and inside.
Before
beginning anything, I created a blog on www.blogger.com, this blog was so that I could keep
note of everything I did during the process of creating all 3 products and the
research and planning involved. I was able to upload and show different skills
and formats of my work instead of just having a word document with everything
on it. This blog allows me to have a range of formats making my work more
creative. I found that using blogger to keep my work was very useful as I used
it for my AS coursework also, therefore I had no problem with it for my A2
coursework. However as in my AS coursework I didn’t usually use videos, I
noticed that if I uploaded a video directly onto blogger, the quality of the
video was very poor. I found a solution for this and created a free vimeo
account where I could upload my video and have a high quality outcome if I
exported the video correctly. Blogger wouldn’t allow videos over 100MG, which
is another reason why I couldn’t upload my music video straight on. Other ways
in which I was able to upload videos was by uploading them onto YouTube,
however Vimeo was better as the videos where in HD and looked a lot more
professional when uploaded onto blogger.
I used the
internet a lot for finding information for my research tasks, websites such as
Wikipedia which was my key resource along with YouTube. I used YouTube a lot
before shooting and editing my music video. This allowed me to understand what
is needed in a music video in order for it to be successful. When watching
different music videos I was looking at the different types of camera angles
and movements used which I then implemented in my music video. For example the
constant uses of close ups of the main artist was quite popular in many music
videos.
Many of
the presentation applications which I used for my AS coursework before and
after creating my magazine, I have used for my A2. For example, Prezi and Microsoft
PowerPoint where key presentation applications which I used for the planning
stages. This is because they were easy to use and the information displayed looked
interesting. Prezi is web based, which allowed me to create presentations which
looked entertaining. It allowed me to paste in links from YouTube and then
embed the whole presentation onto my blog. Microsoft PowerPoint was used a lot
throughout both courses. I found that using this programme made my work look
more organised. This is because I had the Text Box and Shape Tool which I could
use to move around and place where I wanted. For example when analysing similar
products such as magazines adverts I was able to point at the certain information
which I was talking about. I created a SlideShare account which is a digital
documents library which allows you to publish and share presentations and then
embedding the code onto blogger.
Collecting
audience feedback was essential for the music video. I created an online survey
using www.surveymonkey.com to collect audience feedback for my draft music video.
Survey Monkey allowed me to display different types of questions, for example
an opinion based question and a rating scale question. In order to get useful
feedback, I sent out my survey to over 100 people on social media sites such as
Facebook, and collected 68 responses in total, with useful feedback and
possible improvements. When I had a sufficient amount of responses I generated
the responses and uploaded graphs/charts of the responses onto blogger.
When
shooting photos outside for my AS magazine I used a Cannon 5500 1.8f 50mm lens which blurs the
background and focuses on the model. I
also used a Cannon camera when shooting photos inside, when editing the photos
I used Adobe Photoshop, which allowed me to remove the background. This meant I
was able to put my photo on a different coloured background. This is similar to
what I did for my A2 magazine advert and digipak; however I didn’t shoot any
photos outside. I created my magazine using Indesign; this is the
software that is used to make real magazines. By using Indesign it enabled me
to use tools and features that would allow me to produce a successful magazine.
Compared to Photoshop the text wrap on Indesign is a lot better and easier to
use, by using text wrap it allows you to have text going around an image and it
fills in all the spaces available leaving you with no uneven white gaps. When
creating my digipak, I used Adobe Photoshop to edit my photos and then I used
the ‘place’ button in Adobe Indesign to place the photo in and work with the
text wrap tool when adding all the information. For example with the fan
message, I used the text wrap tool and the text wrapped round the image and
looked professionally done.
I created my magazine advert using Adobe Photoshop; I thought
this was appropriate software to use as the images used included a lot of
editing. For example my main image consists of at least 5 layers which all have
a different effect to it, one effect used was an outer glow. I used an outer
glow to make the image stand out more and look eye catching as it is already in
black and white. Along with the main image I have also included two other
photos of the main artist; they are in the background at the top of the page. I
have put a pink window on these photos in order for the images to blend in with
the rest of the colour scheme. I have also used a lot of shadows to make the
text on the page stand out even more. The artists name ‘Pixie Lott’ consists of
an inner shadow against a pink background. This makes it look like it’s been
cut out of the background making it stand out the audience. I applied the same
skills from my portrait magazine advert and implemented it on a landscape
version. I included lyrics for the song into the background of the magazine
adverts, and changed the opacity level down so it wasn’t too bold on the
audience which makes the information in pink stand out. The final touch to the
both portrait and landscape magazine adverts was to change the hue/saturation.
I changed the hue to -36 making the bright pink into a more smooth and calm
colour and brightening the advert to +12.
I used Adobe Premier Pro CS6 when editing my music video;
this allowed me to cut shots to the beat of the song using the Razor Tool which
then allowed me to rearrange them into different orders. I used this lot with
all the different dance routine clips due to having shot in various locations. I
used a lot of transitions in my music video, the dissolve transition was used a
lot throughout which would fade into a different clip. This transition is used
in professional music videos also. When colour correcting my music video I
found that using RGB Curves improved the lighting and exposure of the video
making it look professional. As my digipak and magazine advert follow the
colour scheme of pink I used the fast colour corrector to change some of my
clips to pink in order for it all to blend in together. I changed the hue angle
to -16.5, balance magnitude to 67.58, balance gain to 20.00 and balance angle
to -27.9. This gave me an outcome of a soft pink over the clip making the whole
video flow well together.
