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

Research and Planning: Communication: In the planning and research stage of our music video technology played a very important role for us. It largely helped us with communication when organising our shooting days; where were going at what time and taking which equipment and outfits etc, therefore making it quick and easy to organise ourselves making the overall process simpler. This technology being our iPhones, they allow us to communicate in several ways; text, calls, emails, even Facetime when finalising outfit choices for each shooting day. The most beneficial use for us was having the ability to have a group text conversation through iMessage, so everyone was involved therefore was the most efficient way of organising things and making decisions when we werent actually all together. It also allowed us to send images of locations, outfits, inspirations. Plus we could send videos and YouTube links to share ideas for our music video; all very important factors for our research and planning. Our Smartphones having iMessage allowed us to hold group conversations for situations like this; wed been over and over song choices and in class we had to make a final decision in order to progress with our music video. However one member of our group wasnt in school that day, therefore by short listing songs then using iMessage to ask Nicoles opinion, we could all have our input in the conversation and see one anothers views allowing us to quickly and easily come to a final decision.

Here shows the simplicity of organisation due to the technology we had.

Weather: As shown in the texts previously, a vital part of planning was checking the weather. The weather would affect our filming a lot because we had to have similar weather on all days of filming throughout locations. We couldnt film on a bright sunny day, then the next day it be dark and rainy, it would ruin the important rule of having continuity throughout our music video. So we always took precautions when choosing our shooting days, to ensure we had the best footage to produce a music video to a very high standard. We tried to avoid any predicted rainy days; with the app on our iPhones we were able to select suitable days, or if the weather changed we would reschedule. Overall we were lucky with our shooting days as the weather was good every day.

Travel: We also used the Trainline app on our iPhones to plan our travel, allowing us to check all train times and also see live departures. We chose to buy a travel card and go from Upminster as the cost of tickets were a lot cheaper for us to go from there and we could get the C2C straight to London Fenchurch Street, which was the best route for us as one of our original locations was near Tower Hill station, just round the corner from Fenchurch Street. Plus by having a travel card we were able to travel all around London via tubes, easily getting to each location quickly so we could get the most out of each filming day efficiently.

Construction: The camera we used to film our music video was a high standard professional Panasonic camera, fortunately we had access to good equipment like this therefore allowed us to film high quality footage. Also giving us advanced options for filming to take the best shots and clips to create an effective music video. Then for our editing we used Final Cut Pro, an editing software for Macbooks, again it is more advanced than other editing software like Pinnacle. It has more options to add to its professional appearance; including better transitions so each clip flows effectively to the next with no amateur looking slides. Another important feature for us was the colour effects; this allowed us to adjust the colours and lighting of the footage. Due to us filming over different days the weather varied on each day therefore by adjusting the colours this kept continuity throughout our music video. We also used others effects, for example Slow Motion to emphasise a certain clip and add variety to keep the audience intrigued for the duration of our music video. For our Ancillary tasks we used Photoshop to make our Digipak and Magazine advert, with Photoshop being The worlds most advanced image editing app lets you enhance, retouch, and manipulate photographs and other images in any way you can imagine. We thought it was the best option for us when creating our designs to ensure theyre attractive and to a high standard. Social networking sites: We used a variety of social networking sites, such as Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, throughout the making of our music video. During our research and planning YouTube was particularly useful for us as we used other artists music videos as inspirations to help us develop our ideas for the storyline, narrative, costumes, makeup and locations. YouTube allowed us to even take screenshots which we then added to our work within the planning so we could always refer back to them when needed. Two of our main inspirations were Rihanna and Rita Ora, so we focused a lot on their music videos, watching them via YouTube which we either accessed on the school computers or on our iPhones on the go. YouTube was also used during the construction of our music video as we uploaded a short taster of our video whilst we were in the process of editing our complete one, to interest our audience we gave them a glimpse of what ours would be like. From this we gained a lot of positive feedback, also some critical views which enabled us to take them into consideration whilst in the process of putting together our final completed video, ensuring it was finished to a high professional standard.

Throughout the Evaluation process YouTube was used to gain feedback, by posting our Music video on YouTube a lot of people were able to easily access it telling us what they thought about it. We could then post the link to other social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to gain more feedback. By posting the link on Twitter and Facebook mostly our friends and family gave us feedback, but by having our music video open to the public on YouTube, anyone could see it around the World therefore this meant we were more likely to receive honest opinions.

Other major social networking sites we used were Twitter and Instagram; these were both used during our planning. Theyre a method of presenting our ideas for people to see and follow our progress. On Instagram we showed off our outfit, makeup and location ideas to our followers; posting photos of where we were on our location stopping day and Nicole (main character) modelling the outfits and makeup. Then during the filming and construction of our music video we uploaded more photos and tweeted our whereabouts and what we were doing so that people could follow the process; from planning all the way up to our finished product.