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

We used new media technologies throughout this project, many we were familiar with and a number of which we had never used before. We highlight upon these in the video below.

A main difference for me was the difference in camera, the editing software and the website creation site, Wix. We also utilised a number of social networking sites available on web 2.0 such as Facebook and Twitter as well as Skype Conference calls which we used to keep in touch and brainstorm online.

Research
We relied heavily on web 2.0 in the early stages of research using YouTube and Vevo to view music videos online as well as using links of those pages to get to band websites. A particularly useful website was www.Tastekid.com a website that generates similar bands to ones you are listening to. This made our research particularly efficient as from one website we could immediately get an idea of what genre and style of band we would have to be like to suit the track we had selected.

 

Planning

As a group we stayed in contact over Facebook and Skype showing storyboards and ideas over video calls. This meant as a group we never stopped sending each other ideas making the planning stage develop ideas organically as we kept adding to each others ideas and developing even when not sat  down at a desk.

 

Construction

We utilised new technology most in the construction stage. In the productions stage of the music video we used a new type of camera, the .........
We also got to light our sets on our own for the first time, this proved difficult, but we learnt much about different forms of lighting and how to halo a character.

During editing we used Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, I am semi-familiar with this programme as we used it last year however being in a smaller group this year I really got a chance to experiment with editing and using different visual effects and colour grades to saturate the footage.

We also used many new technologies to create our ancillary texts.

We used a new programme called Wix to create our website, This was entirely brand new to me, it was challenging and confusing at first but as I became more accustomed to utilising the templates and flash links provided by the programme, things finally came together. Wix was generally a very useful tool it allowed us to create a visually interesting and interactive website. The use of galleries and widgets allows the creator to make something interesting without difficult html codes.

We managed to get our hands on photoshop CS5 for editing our album cover, we got to grips with it pretty fast and it allowed us to use adjustment layers over images such as 'vibrance' and 'luminosity' to give the images more colours and impact. The new version of photoshop made everything faster and easier to use such as the 'artistic' colour tool which allowed us to turn the band members and surroundings into cartoons.

Photoshop CS5 allowed us to create realistic looking album covers easily and efficiently. I used www.DaFont.com to download the fonts we used on the album as well as the ones on most of our merchandise.

Evaluation



We used lots of new media technology in our evaluation, many of which we ave already mentioned, for example we recorded and edited our response above, we used Facebook and YouTube to moniter who was consuming our products and who 'liked' them as well as using www.SurveyMonkey.com and monitering peoples opinions of our products (mentioned in Q3). Using New media allowed us to reach a vaster audience much faster than ordinary.

THIS BLOG IS NOW CLOSED

Lyrics from our Music Video

I was walking down the street,
When out the corner of my eye
I saw a pretty little thing approaching me.
She said "I've never seen a man
Who looks so all alone,
Could you use a little company?

If you can pay the right price
Your evening will be nice,
And you can go and send me on my way."
I said "You're such a sweet young thing
Why you do this to yourself?"
She looked at me and this is what she said:

"Oh, there ain't no rest for the wicked,
Money don't grow on trees.
I got bills to pay,
I got mouths to feed,
There ain't nothing in this world for free.
I know I can't slow down,
I can't hold back,
Though you know, I wish I could.
No there ain't no rest for the wicked,
Until we close our eyes for good".

Not even fifteen minutes later
I'm still walking down the street,
When I saw a shadow of a man creep out of sight.
And then he sweeps up from behind
And puts a gun up to my head,
He made it clear he wasn't looking for a fight.

He said "Give me all you've got
I want your money not your life,
But if you try to make a move I won't think twice."
I go like "You can have my cash
But first you know I got to ask
What made you want to live this kind of life?"

He said "There ain't no rest for the wicked,
Money don't grow on trees.
I got bills to pay,
I got mouths to feed,
There ain't nothing in this world for free.
I know I can't slow down,
I can't hold back,
Though you know, I wish I could.
No there ain't no rest for the wicked,
Until we close our eyes for good".

Now a couple hours have passed
And I was sitting at my house,
The day was winding down and coming to an end.
So I turned on the TV
And flipped it over to the news,
And what I saw I almost couldn't comprehend.

I saw a preacher man in cuffs he'd taken money from the church,
He stuffed his bank account with righteous dollar bills.
But even still I can't say much
Because I know we're all the same,
oh yes we all seek out to satisfy those thrills

"Oh, there ain't no rest for the wicked,
Money don't grow on trees.
We got bills to pay,
We got mouths to feed,
There ain't nothing in this world for free.
I know we can't slow down,
We can't hold back,
Though you know, we wish we could.
No there ain't no rest for the wicked,
Until we close our eyes for good

Album Cover

When designing the album cover I took into account the attributes of our band that made us different from other indie/alternative bands. We were care-free, cheeky and fun. Wanting to reflect this in the album artwork we decided to turn the band members into cartoons, this gave off the impression of immaturity and makes the whole thing seem non-naturalistic going hand in hand with the surrealism of our music video.


To construct the album we used Photoshop CS5, Its new colour effects such as 'vibrance' and 'luminosity' allowed us to make the album appear more eye-catching and colourful.


We used www.dafont.com to create the fonts used on the spine and on the billboards.

Final Shoot

Our final shoot was our safety. We used it to gather all the footage we realised needed re-doing or we took shots that were eventually used as 'filler'. We realised in editing that we needed more shots of vader to make the section of the video more interesting, so we came up with the idea of strapping the mask over the camera to use a stylyesd point of veiw shot.

Second Shoot

The day before the shoot the actor we had originally used for Darth Vader had broken his wrist. This was not an issue, for us, as he was the one character we could afford to replace due to the fact that none of his body, face or clothes are shown. Leo kindly agreed to step in on short notice and couldnt have done a better job. With Leo briefed by Phillippa, who was directing the shoot, things moved pretty quickly.

We had also brought in the media technician from our school to sort out the various light set-ups before each scene as well as helping us with any technical issues with the camera.

We were fortunate enough to get all the footage we planned to film as well as some extra handheld shots of the band performing.

First Shoot

It was good to finally get some decent footage which we could work with, We still weren't 100% happy with the lighting as there was alot of unnecessary shadows throughout the footage as well as some shots were the lead singers face is too highly exposed to the lighting.

However, despite the various lighting issues a lot of the footage has been pleasently suprising with a stylistic film grain and decent, continious colour grade which will save us time in editing.

We have planned a few re-shoots for next week as we want to get the lighting perfect as well as using more exciting types of shots, possibly more handheld and tilted angles.