Directors' Commentary and Evaluation: Question 4- How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

In the research stage of our production, technology such as the internet was crucial, especially ‘YouTube’. Our group knew straight away that we would ideally want to make a music video in the hip-hop genre, so that made the research stage that much more resourceful as all we needed to do was analyse various different music videos from that genre. From this, we then chose ‘All of the Lights’ and analysed a selection of similar music videos which would help us to form ideas for our own video. In the research stage when our group collectively decided to use various locations around Manchester, we used Google Maps to check distance from one to another. After we had completed all of the research necessary, we moved on to planning our own music video. We found that the most effective way of doing this for us was by using software Microsoft Word. The production treatment, all our meetings, decisions on locations and costume was all finalised on this. The only thing we used a pen and paper for were the storyboard, shot list, and notes on song choice.

When filming we had the music playing in the background using speakers in the studio which made it a little easier for the characters to lip-sync to a higher standard. This was a very important piece of technology applied, as it meant the editing process of the video would go smoothly.

I used Final Cut Pro in the post-production of the music video to edit. As I had no previous experience using this programme, initially it was very difficult to get to grips with the different components needed to edit the video. I needed to convert every video we filled into .MOV first before I could begin to construct my timeline. As we took quite a variety of different videos in the studio to use different shots in the video, it meant converting to .MOV was quite time consuming. Also, I found that when using Final Cut Pro, a problem I frequently faced was that whenever I made a slight change to the video, I had to render the whole video just to view my changes. I also used the two transitions ‘Fading’ and ‘Cross-dissolving’ as I felt it made the video flow from the different sequences effectively.

From a constructive aspect we used the studio cameras which are of high quality and profession. Originally we were to use a ‘Legria FS306’. This camera did have some useful features, for example, instant playback after filming and easily accessible. We decided to solely use the studio cameras for filming the footage necessary for our music video and then use the Legria camera to take images needed for the digipack. With this we also used a tripod to stabilise the camera to create stationary shots, and from this Jordan used the programme ‘Photoshop’ to project the images and edit them to suit our hip-hop genre.

In the studio we also used the ‘Green Screen’ to formulate our video along with the scenes filmed on the red sofas in the studio. This allowed me to place relevant images we went out and took at the original filming locations during the planning stage as a background. In the editing stage this meant I had to construct all the footage onto the timeline, and then remove the green screen behind the video in order to put an image behind it.

In our blog, to show some of the images we have presented them in a slideshow using software called ‘Vuvox’. This makes the blog more interesting and easy on the eye when viewing. Furthermore, we have used YouTube clips to illustrate some of the ideas we had in the research stage and also screen shots of various different artists.

Also, communication between all team members was through mobile phones. If we had a planned meeting outside of college then we used SMS or BBM to contact each other which suited us perfectly. Also, the teachers would e-mail us with recent updates to tasks which needed to be completed. Both of these methods were fast and efficient.

In the evaluation stage I produced questionnaires to gain feedback from our audiences who had was also doing media and others who had no media knowledge at all to gain a balanced response. I formed these questionnaires on Microsoft Word as it was easiest to make copies and supply them to the audience.