Evaluation Question 4

QUESTION:
HOW DID YOU USE NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION, RESEARCH AND PLANNING, AND EVALUATION STAGES?

Introduction
New media technologies are technologies that have been introduced in recent years, that have aided the construction, research, planning and evaluation of media products. New tech has been extremely useful to us at all stages of production, and in a different way for each product. However, Web 2.0, first introduced in 2004, has been the most useful new technology, as it has aided us at every stage of production.

Research and Planning
- Web 2.0
Web 2.0 has enabled me to research and analyse similar music videos and provides inspiration, looking at Facebook groups has helped me to evaluate the target audience, and web 2.0 has allowed me to research the conventions of similar websites and album covers.

- Skype and Social Networks for communication
Sky and facebook messages have been extremely useful, as they have been an easy way to share and discuss ideas, plan shoots, and generally organise ourselves. This was key in our production, as it allowed us to easily communicate out of school hours.

- Video Narrative Storyboard
HD cameras helped us at this stage of production to produce a visual storyboard. This was extremely useful, as it allowed us to plan out exactly how the shots would look and would happen in the sequence, and meant that we could address any issues immediately, rather than in the middle of a shoot. This made us more efficient on set.



Construction
- Adobe Creative Suite 5, Premiere Pro and Photoshop
Premiere Pro was the main software that we used to construct our music video, as it allowed us to capture footage, edit our track down to 3.30, and edit the footage together in a creative way to produce our current music video.

However, it had more advanced features, such as grading and colour correcting. This allowed us to hide certain errors in our footage, and to give a music video a certain style, and I have shown this bellow:



We also used Premiere to alter the speed of the footage. This allowed us to create the slowmotion effect throughout the music video, which is a very common editing style in the dubstep genre, as it creates emphasis on certain shots and sequences. Again, I have shown this below:



Photoshop was another piece of software we used from the CS5 package. It allowed us to edit our photos, to air brush our models and to create special effects on the pictures. A before and after comparison can be seen below.

To record the voiceovers for my demo videos, I also used Audition, another part of the CS5 package, as this recorded from a USB microphone, and exported to a .wav format that was very easy to edit with.

- Web 2.0
Again, web 2.0 was useful for the communication of ideas and organisation between the group, but more importantly, it allowed us to construct a website to be the hub of our campaign. We used a website called WIX, that gave us a blank template, and we started from scratch, adding text, photos, videos, audio and widgets, to produce a very professional looking website. A demo of this can be seen below:



- HD Cameras and Lighting
The equipment we used to shoot our music video was obviously important as well. The cameras we used shot in 1080i high definition, which meant that the quality of the footage was greater, but also made it a longer process to edit, as render times were far greater.

We also used a lot of different lighting in music video. The main lights that can be seen are the floor lights, and we used these to blind the camera and create gorgeous lens flares. To actually illuminate our subjects, we used large studio lights on the ceiling, that had different tints, allowing us to create the red and blue separation. The final type of light we used was the strobe light. This can be seen in very short shots throughout the video, and it creates the rave type atmosphere that is associated with this music.

Premiere Pro + Mic

Mac - used for AE, adding the MTV logo

HDV Sony Camera

Floor Lights - Lens flares

Premiere Pro 

Audition - for recording voiceovers

Strobe Light

Evaluation
- Web 2.0
Finally, web 2.0 was very useful in our evaluation, as it allowed us to publish the video online to Vimeo, which allowed us to share it with our target audience for feedback, and allowed us to promore the screening of video to gather feedback. Social networking was an excellent way for us to promote our music video, because 96% of our target audience, 16-24 year olds, use these websites.

- Blogger
And of course, blogger was a new technology that has allowed me to document all the work I have done this project so far, including this evaluation. It has been a portal through which I can share videos and photos of my on going progress, and has been extremely useful.

Conclusion
In conclusion, new media technologies are undeniably extremely useful, and we could not have produced anything without them. They have facilitated the research, production and evaluation of all our products, through both physical equipment, such as cameras and lighting, and through software like premiere, photoshop, and web 2.0.