Intro

My name is Eddie Rowe, (candidate number 9147). I'm a media student at the Latymer School. I am working in group 2 with Mario Louka, (candidate number 9099),and Ignacio Flores (candidate number 9049). To view my work, use the 3 labels on the right named 'A2 Research and Planning', 'A2 Construction', and 'A2 Evaluation'.

Group 2 Music Video

My Music Video

Digipak

My Digipak

Group 2 Website

My Website

Monday 4 January 2016

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

We found new media technologies central to our project, new software and hardware allowed us to create the best possible project. These technologies gave us opportunities for better communication between the group, more in-depth research, and higher quality finished products that would have been achievable without.

Research & Planning

Social media was a hugely useful platform for us to use, not just within the research and planning stages, but throughout the whole project, especially for keeping in touch with one another.
Our Whatsapp group

Our Facebook Group
We made a Facebook page which allowed us to post ideas or reminders to one another at any time.
Our mobile phones also contributed hugely to our project as they allowed us to not only check the Facebook page at any time, but also keep in instant communication via a Whatsapp group chat we made.



YouTube was probably the most useful platform in my opinion during the research and planning stage as we were able to spend a long time watching and analysing existing music videos found on this website. It was very useful for getting inspiration, and if one of us found a video we liked in our free time we would be able to share the link with the other members of our group in order for them to see it as well.


Construction

During the construction process, our school's studio served as a massive help as it was already kitted-out with both a white and a green cyclorama, alongside lights with different colour settings, and blackout blinds on the windows. We also made great use of the Arri floor lights, which we mainly used for helping light up the background equal amounts, so that it would look good when chroma-keyed.

The Leapfrog lighting desk was also a huge help to our project, as it allowed easy remote usage of the Arria 1000k lights mounted in the studio. Instead of manually having to scroll through each colour filter on every single light, the Leapfrog desk allowed it to be done automatically just by keying in a number. Furthermore it was able to 'save' lighting set-ups, meaning we could finish shooting one day, come back the next and load up the exact same set-up in an instant.

I also think that the cameras we used were of a huge use in our project. We mainly shot on the Canon 5D Mark II, and although I found it had a few problems with rolling shutter, it nonetheless produced great quality final images. The school's 550D and my 600D were also a great use as they allowed us to shoot in 60fps, which was required for the slow-motion shots we did. Furthermore, the ability to swap the lenses around on all these cameras meant a very fluid shooting experience.

Construction: Post

During post-production, new media technologies also came to play a huge part. We used Adobe Premiere Pro for general composition and some basic video effects, and Adobe After Effects for the more complicated video nuances. One of the basic effects achieved using this software was an audio effect I added at the beginning, where the music starts off sounding 'tinny', (like it's just coming from the protagonist's headphones), then the bass filters back in as she puts the headphones on. I achieved this by using a high-pass filter audio effect, and key framing it to that moment in the timeline.
The timeline in Premiere Pro made cutting shots easy.

Highpass cutoff for 'tinny' sound



I would argue that Adobe After Effects, (AE), was the most integral new media technology for our project. Without it many of the effects found in the final video would not have been possible. I was the only one in the group who had much prior experience using this software so initially I had to explain a lot of what I was doing to the group so that they could contribute, for example explaining Iggy how to do frame-by-frame masking, one use of this was the close-up shot of the champagne glass. Unfortunately however, the software often took ridiculously long times to open saved files.

Long opening times were a pain.
The main use I made of AE was for chroma keying the shots of actors that were in front of the green-screen. The reason I used AE for this was due to the fact it allowed far more customisation in the process, for example allowing me to colour-correct just the edges of people in order to blend them better with the scene.



Another great use of AE was the other visual effects, including creating the backgrounds such as that seen in the 'Mars' scene and the 'New Year's' scene. These backgrounds I created by utilising AE's mask tools, alongside layering. Further effects I did that wouldn't have been possible without the software include making the glow sticks in the last scene change colour, and other light effects.
Layers in AE
Evaluation

Blogger has been the most important media technology I have utilised in this project, as it has allowed me to show ideas I had and decisions I made throughout the course of the project. Furthermore it has allowed me to respond to the evaluation questions in a more visual way by embedding other web tools and images. Although the most integral piece of software in my project, I do have some qualms with Blogger as it is a nightmare trying to format posts with, and often seems to randomly make pictures break text in the wrong places.


HTML5 was very useful when I made a video speaking about stereo imaging, as it allowed me to present the video in a slightly different style to a YouTube video.

The graphics interchange, (gif), format has been very effective when trying to present and explain my ideas. This has been especially notable when using short clips from existing music videos, as it allowed me to show only the relevant section without expecting anyone to go through every single video referenced in full. The ImgFlip website was great for converting sections of YouTube videos into .gif images.

Prezi has also been a very useful technology in the process of reflecting upon and showcasing my ideas and thought processes. I found it good in this sense as it can not only display text, but also images and video. This is a great web tool to present information in a more visual format, as opposed to purely blocks of text.

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