Throughout the entirety of my coursework revolving around the creation of my multimedia music productions, I have used a variety of different forms of media to help me in numerous ways. This has allowed me to create high quality media products, with technology allowing consumers to become prosumers, aiding the demand for more professional goods to appear on the market.
Construction
During the construction stage of my coursework the main program I made use of was Final Cut Pro. Unlike my preliminary tasks in my foundation portfolio, Final Cut was used instead of imovie due to the precision of my editing, which would have not been possible with a more basic editing program. My music video was very complex to edit due to the fast pace of music and the transition from colour, to a monochromatic colour scheme. For the beginning of my sequence, delicate editing was carried out ensuring that the shot changed on every beat of the music. This meant that a single shot had to be cut into flowing fragments, allowing a narrative video structure to be carried through. Having identically replicated some of the initial cuts also allows the theme of addiction to be represented, showing that the young girl has been in this situation before.
Around the one minute mark, a transition marks the movement of a monochromatic colour scheme into one of full colour. To do this, a black and white colour filter had to be laid, overlaying a cross-dissolve transition between the clips in which I wanted to fade from monochrome to colour so I could delicately reduce the opacity of each clip to create a smooth transition between the two.Final Cut also allowed me to experiment with a range of different effects and transitions. I found this to be helpful at the very beginning and end of my music production as this allowed me to slow down my clip, making it almost mechanical in order to represent the effect that drugs have on the human body, giving the individual an almost spaced-out feeling. Additionally, this allowed more emphasis to be placed on the clip in order for the audience to take greater acknowledgement of the movement of the lava, coinciding with and symbolising the movement of blood around the body.
The advanced nature of Final Cut Pro further allowed me to download my unsigned bands song into iTunes via their Youtube Channel, so that a high quality song could be transferred across without any adaptations to the original song. The programme additionally let me lock the song in place so that when cutting and editing my footage, the song stayed in one piece rather than having it cut identically alongside my filming. This in turn enabled me to work with my music whilst editing, insuring I was able to cut my footage accurately on specific music beats.
The equipment I used also helped with the construction of my music video. Having used a small hand-held portable video camera, this allowed me to included both steady and unstable camera shots in order to portray different perspectives to the audience. For instance, the sequence of shots featured outside looking towards the characters face were filmed by the girl herself. With the camera being hand-held this made the shots unsteady, allowing the audience to witness a perceptive shot and feel like they were in the shoes of the young girl. The use of up to date technology also allowed me to capture a large capacity of footage so that I was able to get a variety of different angled shots of the same subject.
My print productions task of my digipak and magazine advert also made use of new and up to date technologies. For this task, the predominant technologies I used were photo editing software's, the main being Photoshop.
The first technology I made use of however, was that of a digital camera. This allowed me to capture the image I wanted, experimenting with different angles until I found one suitable. I was then able to transfer my images onto my desktop, ready for editing. For the digipak, I used photoshop for the early stages of preparation, editing the photos to give a greater contrast between the subject and the background colour by altering the saturation of the image, so that more emphasis and focus would be placed on the dolls damaged appearance and the insertion of the needle into the face. Photoshop also allowed me to create the textured appearance within the inside of my digipak. By adding a bubbled affect and a change in colour to the original injection image this enabled me to replicate that of blood. Apart from this, the majority of the work done on photoshop consisted of layering the images with text in order to create a realistic end product. The software enabled me to choose from a wide selection of fonts, allowing me to find a suitable text for my media product and keep it consistent through the whole production, manipulating the position of the text where I felt it was necessary. One area solely created on photoshop was the spine of the digipak, as the software easily allowed me to rotated the text to a vertical alignment, and position it within a narrow space. Another program used was the photo editor, Befunky. This allowed me to super impose the light trail effect onto my image, used to represent the visual scaring left on the girl by her relationship with alcohol and drugs - the main overall theme behind my productions. Using this program I also changed the background colour of my image, making it more vibrant in colour in order to attract the eye of my audience more easily. I felt this was an effective decision as I feel it reflects the loud personality of my target audience to a greater extent after my audience research revealed they enjoy going out and partying in their spare time.
Finally, Microsoft word was also used in the construction process of production, acting as the base in measuring each digipak panel identically to 12.5x12.5cm and putting all of the panels together so that a digipak composition could be formed, for me to print and later fold into a three dimensional product. This technology was useful as it allowed me to rotate my page horozontally and print off on A3 paper.
Planning
During the planning stage of production I didn't use a wide variety of technologies compared to that in my construction process. The first thing I did in the planning process was to trial some original ideas. Using technologies including a hand-held camera and the programme imovie, stop motion was tested. This consisted of me filming my friend running at different paces, tracking her movement as she ran towards the camera. Once transferred onto the computer I was able to experiment with a range of effects including colour and speed to produce an end result, After this, I found that using stop-motion throughout the entirety of my music production would be fairly difficult and time consuming, aiding me not to use it in my production. Planning therefore was an important aspect in my production as it enabled me to change my initial ideas at the beginning of my construction process. My quick experiment with stop motion can be seen above.
An important aspect of my planning was hand drawing a storyboard so that I had a plot to follow for my music production. This established the shots I was going to use along with the the location and props involved at such stages of production. I found this very useful as this allowed me to up together a planning schedule so that I was using my time most productively and catering me external shots for when the weather was best. In the planning process, imovie was also used in attempt to trail stop motion filming. After this attempt, I decided not to include stop motion within the music video as I felt this would be a difficult and time consuming process to carry out across the whole production. Throughout my advanced portfolio I also recorded my progress via Blogger, so that I could keep up to date with my production deadlines and receive any necessary feedback from my teacher. This was definitely the most useful technology I used within the planning process of my productions as this additionally allowed me to build upon my initial ideas, forming them into what would later become my final productions. Blogger also enabled me to insert images, embed videos and present information in a variety of creative ways via platforms such as Prezi and Slideshare, organising all of my text in chronological order so that it was easy for me and others to follow.
One of the most important things I did in the planning stage was to create a planning schedule. For this I used Mircosoft Word, creating a table so that I was able to have a clear image of what was needed in every shot. To present this on my blog I uploaded it to Slideshare. This allowed me to frame and embed my documents in a more interesting way, rather than simply typing them up on a blog post.
Research
One of the very first things I used was the media platform of Youtube. This allowed me to analyse music videos of a similar genre to my unsigned band, therefore making me knowledgeable on the common codes and conventions used in real world media products. Along with an analysis, Youtube allowed me to embed music videos onto my blog so that I could go back and revisit each video and my findings.
When I did my initial audience research into what my target audience would most like to see in my music production, I used an online survey engine called Survey Monkey. This allowed me not only to create a questionnaire, but also enabled me to create graphs from my results. Being online this helped me to publish my survey, using the Facebook app to distribute my questionnaire to people of my own age, thus targeting my intended audience.
Of course, throughout my coursework I made us of search engines, mainly google to help me with my research. This was heavily used when designing my digipak, having searched numerous digipaks of a similar genre to not only to analyse their design, but also to see how the majority of digipaks were composed so that I could make my own print design relevant to real world products. Below is a link to some of my digipak reasearch:
http://nicoleeddy.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/G324%3A%20Research%20into%20digipaks
Another programme which heavily features in my research is that of Prezi. Prezi is an online platform allowing you to create presentations in a semi animated way. I feel this is a more creative process than the use of any other media platform when presenting my work, an example of this can be found below:
Finally, during the evaluation of my coursework I used a range of different technologies. This included the use of a video for question 1, followed by the use of prezi, slideshare and blogger as these form the combination of the most used technologies overall in my advanced portfolio.
