The use of ICT is a key aspect of our project helping with research, production and audience research as well as working as an effective way to present our findings.
- Web media applications enabled my creative process by giving a effective method to present findings, keep information in order and visually explain complicated ideas.
- Web media applications such as the blog using 'Blogger', Prezi to create visual representations of ideas and Youtube to help us research conventions of genre and music videos have all helped the created process immensely.
- The software 'Premier' and 'photoshop' also played key parts in our creative process, letting us edit our footage to create the music video as well as creating print work such as the digipak, tour advert and album advert.
- The blog was the key part of our process, allowing us to communicate as a group and visually explain our ideas. As some group members attend a different school this was a really valuable tool for us to have and allowed us to keep up to date with our process. As well as if one member of the group is absent, they are able to catch up with the work effectively.
- Blogger also allowed both the teacher and group members to comment on each others work letting each other know how successfull their research was and acting as a way to communicate ideas helping our final process and outcome.
- Blogger also allowed us to embed videos from 'youtube', upload photos and write descriptions therefore keeping everything in order and in one place and helping us make sure we incorporated all our research into our final video and filming.
- In the final stages of production, the blog was used as a production log helping us to record all shoots and editing sessions as well as setting deadlines and targets helping us to keep on track and meet deadlines.
- Although blogger was a very effective media application sometimes there were some challenges, At times blogger would not load posts properly and there would be big gaps making it look messy and unprofessional, this was time consuming to correct.
- In some cases some videos, slidebooms and prezis would not load correctly because of copyright issues or privacy settings, this meant that we had to look for alternative videos which was time consuming.
- In addition to Youtube, and blogger we used a variety of other packages to communicate our ideas, Slide boom, slide rocket and prezi were both used to create presentations to display ideas as well as being part of our pitch, to help us clearly show our ideas.
- These all consisted of embedded videos and pictures to again display different ideas which were then all posted on the blog linking all our work together and having one collective point in which we can refer to.
- Survey monkey was also used for our audience research, this helped us to test our concept on a wide variety of people as well as creating graphs for us online to help us display and read our data.
- The animatic was a very significant part of our work in terms of planning for our final cut. Cutting it to the duration of our footage enabled us to ensure that we had enough footage and to ensure that the footage linked together. For parts we were unsure of we used our storyboard to display an image so that we got a really good understanding of what our footage was going to look like.
-Through creating our animatic we could apply our storyboards into a moving image style so we could get a better sense of how our music video was going to look so we could re order, cut and add shots in place if we needed to, thus making the editing process a lot easier. This also clearly identified to us when a reshoot was going to be in order.
-To create our animatic we used 'Premiere 9' which allowed us to quickly add, move cut and edit the footage to put together our animatic.
-Through creating our animatic we could apply our storyboards into a moving image style so we could get a better sense of how our music video was going to look so we could re order, cut and add shots in place if we needed to, thus making the editing process a lot easier. This also clearly identified to us when a reshoot was going to be in order.
-To create our animatic we used 'Premiere 9' which allowed us to quickly add, move cut and edit the footage to put together our animatic.
Here is our animatic...
-ICT also played a key part in researching our audience Particularly through the site 'SurveyMonkey' which enabled us to create an online questionnaire with a variety of question types.
-This enabled our audience to easily answer the questions online accessed through us emailing them the link or posting it on the social networking site facebook. Allowing them to reply on the web page itself so the questionnaire was more acesable to a larger audience.
-Surveymonkey enabled us to choose the most appropriate question type for the question in which we wanted to ask our audience for example and open question, closed question or rating scale. The open questions were particularly successful in getting a more developed in depth response from the audience, this allowed us to use their ideas as inspiration. Closed questions on the other hand allowed us to get quantitative data in which we could quantify when accessing and analysing for example a simple yes or no question.
- Slide boom was also used when researching our target audience, i made a powerpoint to display to my focus group which i then uploaded onto the blogger to show my contribution as well as display my results.
- To create my print text i used 'photoshop' software, my part of the print work was the digipak and i used a variety of editing techniques and effects to create this. The main template of my print work was downloaded from a record company's website which gave me the proper dimensions for a digipak design.
- The main editing took place on the photographs looking at the saturation to increase the sharpness of the photographs and colour balance to give them an authentic autumnal feel that our group wanted to achieve throughout the production process. I also edited the brightness and contrast levels of the photographs when needed to ensure that all images matched and looked visually pleasing. To match the colour of the footage, colour tones were also edited increasing the red and yellow levels to create the warm orange colour the same in which was created in our video.
- Font was also considered very carefully when creating my digipak, i wanted to create a coherent brand image as well as being original and signifying Ben Howard as an artist. I used the website 'DaFont' to search for fonts which i found appropriate. On my first draft i used a pretty font that looked like handwriting but after looking at other group members work we decided that we needed to use the same font to create continuity in our work./ I then re edited using the font 'bebal'. I used this to write Ben Howards name, the album name 'Follaton Wood' and the track listings. I think that the font worked well to promote Ben as an artist.
-I individually went through the footage at first and deleted shots in which we definitely wouldn't use for example, when we had filmed without realising the camera was on, if someone or something such as a bag was disrupting our shot or if the quality was just not good enough. I also cut some static shots which were really long, this allowed the main editor to look through the footage easier speeding up the process. As well as giving us more space on the time speeding up premier.
- I also opened another project and edited the saturation levels of all the footage to see weather it created the feel that we wanted to achieve, as a group we decided that we wanted more colour contrast than saturation. To solve this we changed the levels of 'redness' on the colour chart of each piece of footage, adapting the 'RGB' levels in order to create the warm orangey yellow colour wash we wanted we then increased the red and green colours but slightly decreased the blue level on each to give a more autumnal feel. Kitty made sure each were to the right level so the footage all matched up, the red colour 115, the blue 95 and green 105.
-Other techniques In which premier allowed us to use were, the cut tool to get the exact bit of the footage in which we wanted as well as the zoom tool to crop out any unwanted parts of the shot. Transitions were also used in our piece, mainly dissolve transitions between the boy and girl shots to create a link between the two characters and to signify them as a couple. This also linked the footage as it was predominately random shots and created a more dreamy feel which is what we wanted to achieve.
-Time stretch tool was a key part in our editing process, to create a dreamy feel from the girl shots we used the time expansion tool to slow down the footage into slow motion. This created a contrast between other shots and connoting her death as compared to him being alive. We also used time expansion tool to speed up other shots for example the church pan as it was to slow.
- Although premier worked very well as an editing tool there were some challenges in which we needed to overcome, sometime premier would be very slow due to the amount of footage in which we had on the timeline, this was time consuming to us when we only had a few hours at a time to edit due to other lessons at school.
- In addition to this the footage needed regularly rendering which was also very time consuming as it took along time to do so. To solve this problem we adopted the technique of rendering when we were in other lessons so that we did not waste any editing time and would be able to meet our deadline.
-Having so much footage also made it difficult to navigate around the timeline. We had more than two hours worth of footage and once we had dragged all the shots we wanted to use on the time line it took up alot of space and memory making it slower to run and not all shots loaded immediately meaning we would have to wait to see what we were editing. To overcome this is was vital that we deleted any footage that we did not want to use, meaning we had to be realistic and not just hold on to footage.
- Another issue we faced was the public being present in our shots, most of our filming was done in calverly park which was very busy at times. When editing we found many shots in which would be perfect to use but there were members of the general public in the background. To overcome this problem we used the zoom tool to crop out any bits in which we did not want to show, then moved the framing so that the shot was still visually pleasing.
- In addition to this with premiere we found that every time we made a cut to the footage it would cut the audio track on the audio timeline below, this then messed up the order of the track and parts were missing thus would not play properly. When we replaced the new track into the timeline at the end of editing some of the cuts had shifted so we had to go through each part and cut it correctly to the new real 'Follaton Wood' song by 'Ben Howard' as well as trying to edit the track to how it was before, with less instrumental.
One problem in which we found was the memory shortage, our memory card got full very easy so we had to keep deleting footage during our shoots, this was very time consuming. We overcame this problem by checking the memory on the memory card before every shoot, deleting unwanted footage.
Another problem was the lack of battery life in the battery's which meant that we had to charge the battery at any possible time to ensure that it lasted the whole shoot, to overcome this problem we took two or three fully charged battery's with us to ensure we did not run out of charge mid shoot.
In addition to this we had problems with the quality of some of the footage taken in either dull evening lighting of bright lighting such as on the pier. This was due to the white colour contrast, to ensure that this did not occur we had to make sure that we opened the lens onto a white background to allow the camera to adjust its settings.
ICT helped me alot in my evaluation. I chose to use a variety of ICT to present my work for example PowerPoint and 'Slideboom'. ICT also allowed me to upload and embed videos to my work as well as print screen then screen dump images from our video and editing process to illustrate and back up my comments. This allowed both the teacher and group members to interact and analyse each others work, thus working collaboratively. As well as the blog being a key way to display my work it helped on all aspects.
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