Evaluation Question: How did you use media technologies in the construction & research, planning and evaluation stages? - David Manning

Construction:

Building from our experience at AS we used the some of the same successful media technologies as we did last year. Firstly, we used the AVC HD Cannon camera to record all our footage. It was brand new at the time so it was very quick and efficient to use. It was very user friendly and only took a matter of minutes to work out how to use.

We used Final Cut Express to edit our music video during the post production stages. We were able to use this efficiently and quickly as we had learnt the basic editing techniques last year. This meant we had more time to be experimental and therefore were able to use some really unique editing techniques, for example when we edited the footage to look like the same person appeared twice in one shot. We did this by layering two pieces of footage together, (both pieces of footage were shot in the same location on a tripod to ensure stability) and the cropping the images together and feathering the edges to match the other piece of footage.

Planning:

We used the video cameras to test how well we could lip sink to Cassius. It also helped us understand how the audience would view it and what we needed to do to make it look as realistic as possible. We learnt the knowing the lyrics to the song was vital and so was keeping the beat. We also had to make sure we put our all into it as a half hearted attempt looked really weak and didn't work at all!

Research:

When researching music videos we were reliant on YouTube to watch official videos on demand and analytically analyse them. We also used YouTube to help us come up with editing techniques and successful camera work that we could easily use in our music video.

We also visited official band websites to help us understand the typography and graphology of indie rock bands. It also helped us established a greater sense of identity for our music video, poster and digipak as it allowed us to understand how branding could be used successfully.

Evaluation:

We were able to gather some specific audience feedback by using a webcam to interview audiences to record and upload their feedback of our final product. This was a vital use of technology as it allowed us to get an in depth view of personal audience feedback and a one to one interaction with the people we aimed our work at.

We also used YouTube to evaluate our own work against others and to see how it was criticised or praised by YouTube users. This gave us international audience feedback.