Photoshop

To create the various posters and digipack Adobe Photoshop CS4 was used as well as Adobe Illustrator both these programmes are well known pieces of software which meant lots of people could help as I had little knowledge of either. The software allowed me to manipulate the images and mix graphics such as the band name “synergy” with the JPEG images. The use of layers in Photoshop allows individual aspects of the product to be adjusted and fine tuned, the background consists of light leaks through the colour which creates a good effect it also reflects the set design with the hanging bulbs, at AS level I doubt I would have thought about the design on the same level, I would have just tried to create something that looks cool and not have a deeper meaning. Also the image of the band was edited slightly after I used the lasso tool to crop them out of the original white background, a black and white effect was applied to the layer they were on. The photo shoot helped me to greatly improve my Photoshop skills and also setting up the shoot with the digital technologies in order to create a high quality final product.

 

Feedback on Director's Commentary

Stay With Me

Alli, Hannah, Sophie and James

Excellent considerate understanding of the technologies used in production of the video, for example in terms of set design quality and the use of FCP to create effective set design and mise en scene.

There are evident links between creative decision making and use of technology on both productions of the video using professional digital cameras and in the post production editing process – in discussion of match of action, lip syncing and graphic matching’. This is sustained and thorough and accurate in discussion of the branded themes of a broken relationship for example in discussion of the beat of the song and pacing of the cuts used in the editing process.

The commentary shows a discrete awareness of the use of new media technology and uses discriminating examples really well, particularly to selection and construction of narrative, editing techniques, such as FCP Tools. Excellent command of terminology and understands and discusses convergence really well.

There is sustained justified decision making links between the technologies used the product and audience reception in terms of the creativity that the group used.. Recognises the need to account for errors in the post production stage and the importance of converge technologies.

This is a well considered documentary – you may want to re-edit in terms of the presentation I think this is a provisional draft of the commentary.

Evaluation Task 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Task 4 Technology in pre production

New media technology was a significant process in our pre-production and planning of our music video


The Technology's I used in pre production were.



For research we heavily relied on the use of web 2.0 and website like Google and YouTube, We used Youtube to research bands of a similar genre in order to look at there videos and try to pick out the code and conventions they employed to create an understanding and build a star image with their audience, through the use of mise en scene, camera work and editing. e.g we used YouTube to research the Christina perri jar of hearts video to develop the dance element of our video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v_4O44sfjM.
We also mainly used google images to research digipack designs of similar artists. to get design ideas being able to embed the url code and send the link of the video helped us to share ideas easily making being creative more easily.

We also did a animatic of the different shots we wanted to use in our video we used a Sony NX5 camera to film this which films straight onto a memory card which mad it very easy to transfer to the macs for editing. We put the A1 size piece of card with our arranged storyboard on and put it onto the wall, we then put the camera onto a tripod and shot each individual shot for 10 seconds.

 The use of the digital camera speeded up the editing process as the convergent technology makes the transfer of the footage from camera to computer far easier, also the quality was not effected when we transferd the footage over and the technology alowed when we had finished to finally upscale to HD quality. The editing of the animatic was done on final cut pro, this editing software allowed the rough cut of the shots of the music video in real time it helped errors to be seen before the final shoot day. the use of new media digital technologies helped slicken the pre production process and the vast resources it gave us at our finger tips helped us to be more creative.

Blogger has also been a technological part of our pre production due to the fact that I have posted all of my ideas, and the stages to the process of making our music video has enabled me to organise my work and access it from any work station. We have posted all of our research in an organised fashion on the program allowing us to use the page as a log ot on line folder almost of the process of creating the music video and package of the band.




Also to give  the digipack a more profesional look we did a photo shoot with a high quality digital slr camera Nikon D500 camera this gave us lots of options  so we could fine tune the camera and take the best photos we could for the front cover of the digipack and the poster.