New media technologies that I used...

iMovie - Movie editing software

The editing software that I chose to use to edit my footage and to produce my final music video was iMovie. iMovie is a programme owned exclusively by the company apple for their products which meant that I had to use the software on a Mac computer that I was not very familiar with using as I usually work on a PC. I chose to use this software as it was the most capable editing software that I had available to me and I had also used it before for part of my GCSE coursework and my preliminary task so I felt that I would easily be able to develop the basic skills which I already possessed which would allow me to produce a stronger outcome.

iMovie has a wide range of editing features which I took full advantage of. These include special effects, transitions, adding music, precision trimmer, crop, image stabilization and other features.

iMovie also allowed me to quickly and easily publish my video onto the free online video streaming website ‘YouTube’. It let me choose what size and quality I wanted to publish the video at and gave advice onto which one to choose as the higher the quality of the video on a streaming website like YouTube, the longer the video will take to then buffer and play.

iMovie continued...

Adjusting the speedof clips

iMovie continued...

For a lot of the scenes in my footage I needed to either speed up or slow down the footage which I had planned to do to give a certain effect. One example of where I had to do this is the shot where my actor throws a stone into the water and you see a close up of the stone hitting the surface. The original footage of this was too fast and I felt that this shot would not make as bigger impact at its actual speed. To change this I selected the clip then there is an option to manually decide how what % you want to slow the clip down or up by. I chose to slow down this specific shot by 50% as I really wanted to exaggerate the stone hitting the water and the ripples that come away from this as it signifies destruction which relates to the destruction of the relationship that the song is about. Other shots that I either slowed down/sped up using this features in my music video include the time lapse of the sky changing from night to day, my actor walking through the puddle with the sky reflection and the ending clip of my actor watching the cars drive past.

Special effects andTransitions

iMovie has a wide range of special effects and colour, brightness adjustments that you can make to your footage however throughout my video I did not use many special effects as I had decided that I wanted to give my video quite a realistic, natural feel as it best suited the genre and ideology of my artist. At the start of my music video I put a dream effect onto the clips where my actor gets out of bed and opens the curtains. The dream effect makes the footage black and white and gives it a glow. I used this effect as it wanted to signify how the artist feels sad and depressed alone (his world is black and white) until he opens the curtains and the footage moves into colour showing how there is hope that he can find his love which would make his world better.

iMovie also has a variety of different transitions but for the same reason as above I only used very subtle transitions between a few of the clips as dramatic/bold transitions would not fit in with my genre and instead I chose to use transitions such as ‘cross dissolve’ which slowly merged two shots until the first faded out which helped two different shots flow well together and also added interest to these shots.

iMovie continued...

Overall I was felt confident using the software iMovie as I developed which skills I already knew and by using functions such as the precision trimmer I was able to clip my footage almost exactly how I wanted to for example I was able to make the scenes where my actor is playing the guitar in time with the music which is very important as this makes the music video more convincing.

The only limitations that I found with this programme is that it often wouldn’t let me crop a shot to the exact position that I wanted to which meant that I didn’t include some of the footage that I wanted too because there were distractions in the background which I had wanted to crop out but wasn’t able too.

Despite this limitation I do feel that iMovie allowed me to create a successful and convincing music video however if I were too carry out this coursework project again I would use a more advanced movie editing software as I feel that I have used this software to it’s full potential now and would not be able to develop my final outcome any further.

I have used blogger throughout this entire project as it is where I am presenting all of my research, planning, final outcomes and evaluation. In doing this it enabled me to keep all of my work in one safe accessible place. It was very helpful that I could view and update my blog any time I had access to the internet as it meant that I could instantly look back at any research or planning needed at that time to help when filming or producing my ancillary tasks.

The layout of my blog is very organised with my posts listing in date order so I know whereabouts each section of work will be. By using blogger there was no risk of loosing my work as it is all securely saved online rather then if it was printed out on sheets of paper which would be much harder to access whenever needed.

presenting my coursework

The only problem that I have found with blogger is that you cannot directly upload some document formats such as word documents, certain picture formats and obviously sheets of paper so instead I have had to find different online hosting services for these document types, upload them onto the hosting service which often takes a long time to do and then embed these onto my blog which sometimes reduces the quality of the original document or sheet.

Microsoft word is a very popular and used word processor that I have used throughout this project when writing up large paragraphs and also for research and planning. I have used this software as it is easy to use and also has good tools such as spell checker to make sure that everything is grammatically correct before publishing it on my blog. An example of when I used this is my lyrics annotations.

Microsoft word documents cannot be directly uploaded onto the site blogger so instead I had to use the hosting service scribd. Which uploads the word document and makes it Readable to the site blogger. Scribd neatly presents the word documents and allows you to scroll through numerous pages and to zoom in and zoom out which saves space and makes the blog easier to look through.

Like with word documents, blogger also does not support the format of power point presentations so similarly to scribd. I uploaded my presentation onto slideshare and was then able to directly embed the presentation onto my blog.

I created all of the presentations shown through slideshare on my blog using Microsoft PowerPoint. I liked this way of presenting my ideas, research and planning as you can add pictures, graphs and large amounts of text which can be organised in a clear and structured way which is very helpful when looking back at work for ideas and inspiration. (the slideshare that you are looking at now was created this way).

I used wordle in evaluation question 3 to present theAudience feedback that I gained from the questionnairesreturned from my class. Wordle presents the words enteredinto its system in size order of how many times they are repeated. (the more times a word is repeated the bigger the word will be). This was a very visually interesting and clear way of displaying text as the differences in size and colour makes the data more easy to interpret rather then a block of text.

I used iTunes to download my chosen song (The Boat by Benjamin Francis Leftwich) into my iTunes library and was then able to directly import this into iMovie as an mp3 file which then used as the only audio throughout the video.

I discovered Prezi at the start of this coursework project and was amazed at how easy it was to present pictures, text and videos in such an interesting and exciting way. I have used Prezi to present some of my research, decision processes during the making of my magazine advert and other posts on my blog. I like Prezi because you can directly upload it onto your blog and also contain a lot of information but in a ordered way. The only issue that I have had with Prezi is that you have to create a path of what you see in what order and sometimes it will not show everything you want it too even if you have selected that particular piece of information.

I have used survey monkey to gain audience feedback in evaluation question 3. Survey monkey allowed me to produce my own online survey with as many questions as I wanted. It also has a variety of different question types and what type of question you would like such as a multiple choice question or a paragraph comment box. After I finished creating my survey it allowed me to post it directly onto the social networking site ‘Facebook’ where I gained my responses from this online survey. It then allowed me to scroll through the responses that I got.

I used the social networking site Facebook to post my final music video and online survey created using monkey survey to gain my audience feedback for evaluation question 3. On the social networking site I have many friends which fit into the target audience of my artist so this was very useful as it allowed to easily access information useful feedback from them.

I used the social networking site Myspace to find what I thought was my chosen unsigned artist ‘Lucy Rose’ however after making the decision that I no longer wanted to use a female artist I then used it to contact my artist Benjamin Francis Leftwich to ask permission to use his song.

I used the video streaming website YouTube for my research into different music videos to help me understand the characteristics, forms and conventions and different genres of music video. I also used it to upload my final music video and also a short video of me in this evaluation question. YouTube is the most popular video streaming service and this is where music videos apart from on TV are most popularly promoted. YouTube is also very quick and easy to use and allowed me to directly embed my final music video and also any other videos used in my research straight onto my blog. The only limitation that I found with using YouTube when uploading footage onto it was that the standard of image quality was quite significantly reduced once taken from iMovie.

I used the online photo editing service picnik to quickly play around with ideas for my ancillary tasks. I also chose the fonts used on my album cover and magazine advert from picnik’s font library. Picnik enabled me too make quick and easy edits that look very effective and somewhat professional.

I used the programme paint to crop printscreens and different pictures throughout all stages of this coursework and was then able to upload these images directly onto my blog. It is a very basic programme with few functions however this is all I needed for what I wanted to do.

I used the bamboo pen and touch graphics tablet to create my final story board for my music video. I decided to use a tablet instead of drawing my storyboard as it meant that the storyboard was all done on the computer and therefor I did not need to scan in the sheets of my storyboard where there was the risk of reducing the image quality. By doing this it also allowed me to easily print out as many copies of the story board that I needed.

Throughout this coursework project I have used the scanner to upload many sheets for research, planning and also target audience feedback questionnaires for my evaluation. Using a scanner meant that I was able to upload my hand written sheets online at a higher quality rather then if I took photos of them. I also used the printer to print copies of my storyboard and also the song lyrics which I took with me whilst filming to remind me of what shots I needed to take and also how to make these fit with the song lyrics.

Still Nikon D40 DSLR Camera

I used a Nikon D40 DSLR camera to take photos for both of myancillary tasks, the location shots of my music video and alsothe images used in the stop motion animation part of my music video. There are many different settings on this camera and for the majority of shots I decided to control the camera manually which involved setting the exact aperture, exposure length and also the focus of the camera lens. By doing this I was able to gain the most control in the brightness and also main focal points of the photos. The file formats were ready to be uploaded straight onto my blog or compatible for Photoshop which is the editing software that I used. This camera is of a very high quality which I felt was very important as I wanted my ancillary tasks to look as realistic as possible and being of a high quality defiantly helped these to look more convincing. I also have a 3gb memory card for this camera which allowed me to take as many photos as I needed without having to worry about running out of available space for the files.

Editing software used for ancillary tasks I used the editing software Photoshop CS5 to create and edit my digi-pack and magazine advert. The CS5 edition of photoshop is the most recent edition so it therefore has the most up to date and professional functions as photoshop is an industry standard software that is likely to be used to create real album covers. I am familiar with the programme photoshop I have experimented with it for many years which is helpful as it is not the simplest of programmes to use. Below I have some screen shots and annotations of some of the different functions that I used on photoshop during the production of my ancillary tasks.

Using the spot healing tool on photoshop I was able to remove

the cigarette in my actors hand for the photo used in both of my

ancillary tasks as I did not feel that it was appropriate to have this

advertising my product as it will be viewable to many

different audiences as well as my target

audience.

I was able to change the hue, saturation and lightness of the photo until I got the effect that I needed.

Photoshop allowed me to work on different layers within the same document so I could play about on a copy of the background and then delete it if I do not like the changes or keep it. This meant that I could experiment with different colours and effects.

By having different layers this also allowed me to place different images onto on image document such as the social networking logos for facebook and twitter and also the barcode.

The only limitation that I found with using photoshop is that the programme often ran very slow when I have lots of documents open and also I have to convert the

file type so that is compatible for uploading onto my blog or any other programmes. Despite this photoshop CS5 allowed me to create a very developed

and realistic digi-pack and album magazine advert,