Evaluation question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Here is a short video we constructed to evaluate the new media technologies and processes we made use of across our production process. Below is the script for this video for closer analysis, and underneath that are a couple of videos created to show some of the particularly complex or interesting processes we used.

* Within our production process we made use of many new media technologies which all helped contribute to designing, producing and accessing audience feedback.

* The main programme we used to create our video was Final Cut Express, teaching ourselves fairly complex techniques such as stop motion and split screen in order to achieve the style of music video we planned – that being one following no particular narrative, but being ‘random’, nonsensical and simply visually entertaining.

(whilst speaking, video playing of us creating stop motion section on final cut, and maybe split screen bits)

* An important feature of our video is the overlaying animation – we achieved this effect through using Adobe Photoshop.

It was a lengthy, time consuming process but we are really impressed with the level of animation we managed to produce, seeing as we had never done it before and had to work out how to achieve the effect ourselves, teaching each other the technique as we went. (playing video of animation being made).

To create the animation we had to convert the video clip into Photoshop, where the programme splits the video file into 100’s of frames, that we then filtered through to find the appropriate sections of lyrics for example, then began drawing on the chosen image on every layer (100+) moving its position slightly each time, so when all the frames are played alongside one another, the pictures become a moving sequence.

* Social networking – In relation to audience feedback, we relied a lot on social networking media such as Youtube, facebook, myspace and Last.fm – we used each platform in varying ways to gain the specific feedback we needed.

- We used Facebook and myspace to upload sections of the edit as we went along, to ensure we were meeting the expectations of our target audience, and were keeping every section of the video on track to the best of our ability, to avoid any sections lacking full attention.

- We used last.fm when researching our band to gain information on the genre, their existing work, the demographic of their target audience and their overall style.

- we also used myspace to further this research, gaining knowledge on their audiences in relation to age, gender and social group.

- We used youtube to gain wider feedback other than just from our peers on facebook and myspace – by uploading early edits onto youtube we were able to see feedback from existing fans of the band who would’ve potentially been searching for videos of the Shout Out Louds songs, and would’ve come across ours in their searching – therefore we have a direct response from real fans of this genre and band that we don’t know, giving us real, honest opinions on the work so far.

*  Another fairly new media technology we made use of during out production was SD cameras – in previous years filming for A2 media would’ve been done on DV tape cameras, but we were able to use SD cards which provided us with a much simpler, quicker process when uploading and selecting successful clips.

- When filming straight onto SD the clips cannot go directly into Final Cut, but have to be converted into a different format beforehand. To achieve this we made use of a SHAREWARE programme called ‘MPEG Streamclip’ where you drag and drop a file into the window, select export to Quicktime, then chose the format ‘Apple DV Pal’ – this process is very quick and as soon as it’s done the files are ready for final cut.

After using photoshop to create all of the frames for the animation, we placed them into final cut express and edited them so they were 0.04 of a second long, so when placed next to one another appeared to play as one individual clip.

This is a screen grab of the process of creating the 9 way split screen on the musical interlude sections of our video. We had to use complex editing techniqes in final cut express to make each image appear on the screen in full size, then shrink down and move accross the frame to a certain place. We then did this with each of the 9 shots to create a visually successful nine way split screen.

Here is a screenshot of the calendar dates we uesd on the section of lyrics that read 'watching the days go by'. We used stop motion to create this section: we uploaded many still images taken of the calendar with the date changing every time, and then placed them into the final cut timeline. We then had to cut each image to the same length then order them correctly so that the date changed in chronological order. We also had to edit the colouring of these shots as they weren't as bright as we wanted them, this was done simply through the video filters option of 'colour corrector', where we simply increased the 'highlights' and turned down the 'lows'.

This shows our four way split screen, similar to the 9 way one above, but for this one we didn't use the images entering, they just came into the frame as one image together. We did however have to change the order of the sequences of the stop motion shots for each of the four windows, which was very time consuming! We did this so the split screen wasn't boring having exactly the same sequence playing in each frame, so we made it so the book pile moved up and down in different times and paces in each frame.