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

Throughout the entire Research and Planning, Production and Evaluation, the main technology used has been the blog. This has been used to link youtube videos to my planning, to analyse existing videos such as here and it is always public and up-to-date online rather than repeatedly uploading power-points or documents once they have been updated. It is also much more simple and easier to navigate.

This has also been used in conjunction with social-networking using www.twitterfeed.com to link my Twitter account and automatically tweet updates from my blog to my twitter followers such as the examples below. This has been an attempt to broaden the viewers of my blog to get a wider range of audience and the feedback. Social networks have been utilised throughout the course of the research, planning, production and evaluation to obtain feedback and to improve the overall look of the coursework pieces.

To obtain the footage and images for this coursework, I used a Canon HD camcorder and a DSLR camera, which was shown here. Afterwards, in the post-production stages, a mac was used in conjunction with editing software, Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro to edit the ancillary products and music video respectively.

This includes:

Using photoshop and layers to create a pixelated view of the earth, using only multicoloured squares and a grid within photoshop;

Using a combination of the magnetic lasso, eraser/magic eraser and a number of brightness and contrast layers to achieve a very dark, but not fully black silhouette of the band members. This was repeated on each of the images on the digipak and poster. This was used to continue the representation of the enigma or introvert characteristics of the performers.

Here's an example on how I applied the equaliser to my music track, placing a variation on the classic "V" equaliser associated with most rock artists to bring out the bass and treble of the track, while "scooping" the middle tone to allow the vocals to cut through the mix, differentiating from the other parts of the song not sounding "muddy" - too much middle tone - or "tinny", with too much high end. I used this as it is synonymous with the rock genre and it was important for the music to sound the best possible.

Below are several different examples of the tools I have used in my video to edit. For fades I have used the pen tool to create a change in opacity (seen to the right) which appears as a basic fade out once completed. It was used primary as a way to convey the passage of time or simply a slower transition to the next scene and also used to layer two images on top of each other, a variation of cross cutting, showing simultaneous actions at the same time rather than separate scenes.






On the right shows an example of the radial wipe and how I've used keyframes and feathering to achieve the clock wipe similar to that seen in the Star Wars franchise which creates the effect of the passage of time but also further establishes the intertextuality present in the video. This was used to further establish the idea of the brand identity, albeit leaving the identity a mystery, which by association created a "culture" that the persona and the band revolve themselves around.





These next screenshots explain the different ways in which I have removed, replaced or altered the colour of the music video with the top most picture showing the black and white, comic-strip effect, akin to silent film and the second picture showing how I have used basic chroma key, replacing the green-shirt green screen to red or blue dependant on which chorus it is in the song. This last, final image represents how I've touched up certain colours to compensate for any poor lighting that was present when filming. The colour was often used as a way to right what was wrong when filming or to create a unrealistic setting for the characters world. This is because my main intention to audiences is for viewers to use my video as a form of escapism. This, along with the idea of the enigma code, was my preferred meaning.