Evaluation - Question Four

Question Four: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation?

I used various different technologies throughout the planning, research, construction and evaluation stages. I used photoshop, non-linear editing, blogger, prezi and goanimate. I had used the majority of these technologies before I started making my music video. The only ones I hadn’t used were non-linear editing and goanimate.

The hardest one which I struggled with at first until I got the necessary help was the non-linear editing on the editing suite. I wasn’t sure how to work it but once I got my head around it, I could do it. Once I had got all my clips on there and my song it was easy and I could do it. To get us used to it we did a preliminary task which was recreating 30 seconds of a music video and we used Lana Del Ray’s Summertime Sadness. I didn’t really do a lot of editing because I was the director and I didn’t have my free lessons with the other girls so I was still quite new to the editing suite when it was time to construct my music video.

Even though I didn't specifically do the editing of this preliminary task it helped me realise how much work had to go into the whole music video construction.

The first thing I had to do when I decided what song I was reconstructing I had to research different music videos that had been in that genre of music and I concentrated on what other music videos Demoraliser had done. Demoraliser's videos are just them performing so I wanted something a bit different. When I had decided I was doing a narrative for the music video alongside the narrative I had to decide what I wanted to happen and also associate it with the lyrics. When I had decided what I was going to do I made an animation of all my storyboards on windows movie maker and put them all together.



 My storyboard showed what I wanted to achieve over the course and also how long each slide would last etc. It took me quite a while to get used to using windows movie maker because I had never used it before but when I got my head around it I had my animatic finished quite quickly.

The next step after this was starting to film my music video. I used one of college's digital cameras and got on with filming. I carried my storyboards around with me to make sure I knew exactly what I was doing. I filmed almost most of it in my media lessons when we had time dedicated in our timetable lessons for our media coursework. I also borrowed a camera for a weekend so I could take it to Ringside so I could film. The reason I filmed at Ringside is because the Demoraliser (band who sing the song I did) was doing a live performance. This did not really work because the lightning was really dark. I contacted the band to see if they was coming to Hull again but unfortunately they wasn't. I also got permission off the band to film. When all the filming was done I put all my files onto the editing suite and started putting them in order and placing them. Once my music video was done I had to put my name, candidate number etc at the front of the video.

Once my music video I was complete I started to move onto my ancillary text which I used photo shop for. I got my digipack template off moodle and copied it onto photo shop. I opened up the files with my original ancillary text photographs and started to edit them. I decided to do them in black and white because I personally believed that they looked better than colour images. Once they was edited I saved them all as jpeg files and started to move them on to my template. I decided to make a sequence at the top of the digipak and the front cover and front cover had minimal text on them.

I also made a prezi earlier on the year in my research stages. I have done prezi's on my music genre which I have chosen and also the codes and conventions of the Hardcore genre. I made a prezi last year so it wasn't something I had to learn new this year.


All of this process from the research to the final edit has been posted on to my blog. I used blogger in media last year so I knew how to use it even though I am still learning certain aspects of blogger. I learnt how to put a link to some sort of media whether it was a video or an image. The link goes over some text, I have used it in some of my questions. Overall, I have learnt alot of things from how to edit to how to film a music video and manipulate it all together. Its been a long, tiring and stressfull period but the outcome was worth it.