How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Software
Computer programmes we have used throughout our project :
Internet
The internet was used mostly at the start of our project. This application is safari on the school macs and explorer on ourcomputers at home. We used youtube right at the start to analyse existing music videos and to find our song. Without youtube, we would have had to analyze videos on tv. This would have been nowhere near as useful as we would have had no choice in the videos we watched, and without sky + (I still live in the dark ages) , there would have been no way of stopping and rewinding the videos. Also without youtube we would have struggled finding our song. We used the suggestions panel to find related songs to the genre we wanted. Although we did eventually choose a song which Charlotte suggested after seeing it on a tv show, without youtube we would not be able to compare it to other ideas, therefore would not be fully sure that it was our correct choice of song.
The website uktribes helped us with our research into our target audience, making sure that our video was exactly what our target audience wanted.
We used the interactive communication site facebook to dicuss with one another about our filming schedule.
The internet was also important in the presentation of work. We used blogger, an interactive blog site, to present our portfolio. We already knew about the magic of blogging through our AS media coursework, and some of us also visit blogs outside of school. Therefore, we know it is a brilliant way to present all sorts of information and technologies, as we could upload videos, slideshows, unlimited pictures etc. Without blogger, we would not have been able to create such interesting and technologically developed pieces of work.
I used the website "quackit" to find html codes to present my work in a creative and interesting way. It is a brilliant website with lots of information about all sorts of html codes, including a scroll box and drop down boxes.
We also used slideshare and scribd to upload documents from our computer, making our blogs more intereactive.
Photoshop
We used photoshop, an image manipulation programme to create our two ancillary tasks.
Photoshop has an amazing array of tools ready to manipulate images and create a product exactly the way we wanted it. Some of the tools we used included :
We used this software to create the perfect compliments to our video.
History Brush Tool
This was used in the magazine advertisement to ensure that the rose remained in colour while the rest of the background was black and white, maintaining the vibrance of the rose. After selecting the history brush tool, we painted over the part of the photo we wished to keep in colour, then made the rest black and white. This was similar to the use of chroma keyer in our video.
Clone Tool
This was used on the back of the digipak to keep cloning and repeating the image of the rose torn up on the floor. This was effective as we could continually paint this pattern and achieve an image of thousands of torn up roses on the floor.
Photo Edges Filter Tool
This was used to alter the images' look, to make it look more intricate and detailed. The vibrance of the rose was important in our advertisement to juxtapose with the other pictures and the black background.
Magic Wand Tool
This was used to cut the images in our advertisement out from the background, without this tool we would not have achieved a professional looking image as we would have had to cut each picture out manually. They would have had a disjointed and erratic edge, therefore not looked smooth and professional.
Transparency Levels
This was used to edit the pictures surrounding the red rose in the magazine advertisement; having these images at a less transparency ensured that the rose remained vibrant, and the images of me also created the impression that I was 'looming out of the darkness'.
Colour Adjuster
This was used in the digipak to desaturate three panels, and enhance the redness of the rose on the back of the digipak. It successfully altered the colour to achieve the mood which we wanted.
Without photoshop, it would have been impossible to create anything near the image we were aiming for, without tools such as clone tool, history brush and photo edges. Photoshop is a highly professional piece of software and I am so glad that we have had access to it throughout our coursework!
Final Cut
For the editing stages, final cut was the software to use. It had all sorts of technical features which we couldn't wait to get our hands on! Comparing this to basic software, such as windows movie maker, I can see how lucky we are to have had access to this software. We did find final cut very hard to get to grips with. None of us had ever used any software like it before! However, through many tutorials and a lot of scratching our heads, we finally got the gist of it. And actually, once you know what you're doing, its not all that hard :)
Would you believe, me being the technical dinosaur I am, I actually struggled getting the video from the tape onto the computer at first. However, finally I learnt that you have to go on file > capture > capture now, and most importantly make sure the tape's rewinded! Then we're all good to go! Once the software was downloaded, we had to select the "in" and "out" points of each clip, then drag onto the timeline and cut using the 'razor blade tool' as appropriate. Then, we could rejig the clips as we wanted to create our video!
We quickly learnt how to add cross dissolves which would play a leading role in our video, and how to desaturate clips. These featured a lot in our rough cut.
To add a cross dissolve, we made sure that the two clips we wanted the transition between were next to each other. Then we clicked in between the two clips to highlight the join. Then we went on effects > video transitions > dissolve > cross dissolve, which created a cross dissolve transition in between the two clips.
To desaturate a clip (make it in black and white), we double clicked on the clip so it was selected, Then clicked on effects > video filters > image control > desaturate. This made the whole clip immediately black and white.
However, to create the professional vibe which we really wanted, our final cut skills had to come up a notch. Therefore, we spent evening after evening and early morning after early morning trawling through tutorials on youtube. Here is another instance of when the internet was useful in our project and, should we have not had access to it, our success in final cut can be questioned and we could have even been prevented from succeeding in some of our effects.
Our biggest success story was with the chroma key - you can follow a link to a blog post all about it here. Using the chroma key, we were able to transfrom clips like this:
To clips like this!
How did the chroma key work?
Firstly, we double clicked on the clip we wanted. Then we went to effects > key > chroma keyer. Making sure that the clip was in the second frame as well, we selected the colour red and altered the
image blur and filter edges to make sure
the area we wanted to keep in colour was covered. Then we clicked the trapezium button which took out the rest of the picture. Then we pressed ctrl + shift and dragged up, creating a duplicate layer right above the first and made sure the top clip was clicked off the trapezium button. Then, we desaturated just that clip. This created the effect which left just the rose in colour! This meant that we could convey that while my whole world was falling apart, the rose and hence love was still retained.
We also made use of the colour corrector tool. To show the transition from happy to sad times we did not always want to use plain colour or black and white, therefore opted to change clips using this feature to make them inbetween black and white and colour, showing the gradual transition to death with the very end scene of the graveyard being in black and white.
First we double clicked on the clip, then clicked Effects > Video Filters > Colour Correction > Colour Corrector.
Then the screen below came up, and we dragged the slides for 'whites', 'mids', 'sat' and 'blacks' levels to successfully adjust the colour.
Here are some examples of how we changed clips using the colour corrector :
We also used an overlay which had a similar effect to the cross dissolves. In the overlay my shadow is picking petals off the rose and in the background is my dead face. This is a prolepsis of my death due to the love which is slowly being destroyed through the metaphorical rose.
This was really easy and simple to do, we just made sure that the two clips which we wanted to be over layed were on top of each other, then pressed ctrl + clicked on both so they were both highlighted. Then we went on modify > composite mode > overlay and rendered it, so the overlay was created.
I have done another blog post about the effects we used in final cut, which I updated as we went along the project. You can get to it here .
Hardware
The sony handycam was what we filmed all our footage on. It proved very useful, as it was light and compact, easy for us to film everywhere and anywhere we wanted. Additionally, the high battery lifespan meant that we could get all the footage we needed outside. We quickly got to grips with the basics of the handycam, ie. how to record, pause while recording, stop and play/edit. We toyed with the idea of using night mode to record a scene in the dark, but in the end this did not fit our story. Accompanying the handycam was a tripod which we could fit the camera onto. We quickly learnt that it was very different using a tripod and not using one! However, we decided to not use the tripod for some scenes where we particuarly wanted a shaky effect, for example the facebook scene. The idea behind this scene is that it is a point of view shot, seeing it through my eyes and the shakiness represents how I could be sobbing while reading it. We also used a handheald camera for the scene of me running, this effectively conveys how shaky and unstable my world is at that precise moment.
Alysha's camera was a sony cybershot 12 megapixel camera. She used this to take high quality pictures for the digipak and magazine advertisement, as well as location photos. The fact that it was 12 megapixels meant that the photos looked very professional. Furthermore, we all learnt our way around this camera and had fun altering the light settings, close up settings and more.
At school, we use mac computers. Year 12 meant a lot of scratching our heads at these computers, because the majority of us had never used one before. However, we quickly learnt, and by year 13, being the (ahem) professionals we were at apple technology, we thought there was nothing more we could learn. We were so wrong! There is a long long list of what I have learnt this year on apple computers, including aligning all the windows so they fit neatly next to each other, how to open new tabs on safari and how to correctly eject a memory stick! But nevermind all that, I have also learnt a great deal which was actually applicable to my coursework through the programmes we used. The main one being final cut which I have detailed above.
This is me using a mac computer at school.
My computer at home is a windows vista acer laptop and I used this to create slideshows and word documents, plus update my blog at home. This is why I love blogger, it is so easy to access from anywhere, including my horrendously slow laptop!
Finally, I used my phone, an iphone, for a lot of the coursework. Being always connected to facebook meant that I could easily drop one of my group members a message. While out and about, I did not always have my camera on me so when we were taking location shots, I often used my phone. My phone has a 3 megapixel camera, auto focus, auto white balance and auto macro so while not as good as a digital camera, it sufficed for location shots. I also used the italk application to do a voiceover for my evaluation. This consisted of me speaking into the phone and recording it, then connecting it to a wifi network and putting that on the computer through the computer programme italk sync.
To Conclude.....
A great range of technologies were accessible to us throughout our coursework; which was really useful and I don't think that our coursework would have achieved the same amount of professionality if we had not had access to these technologies. Both modern hardware and software were avaliable for us to really express our skills in their finest potential, and without such technologies we would have not been able to create a) such a professional looking video, with all the effects such as chroma keyer and colour corrector and such intricate and high quality ancillary tasks with photoshop, as in a more basic photo editing programme we would not have had access to features such as the history brush tool and the filter edges tool b) such extensive research as we were able to use websites such as uktribes and youtube to research every aspect that we wished to include in our music video, and c) discovered all the ways to present work in the evaluation, this included websites such as slideshare and scribd, where we learnt we could host word documents and slideshows, and the website quackit, which helped me find html codes to present work in a creative and professional way. These technologies maximised our work to its full potential and we really have learnt a lot about them throughout. For example, we had never used final cut before and now we feel like we know it very well. We learnt a lot about html to present our work in the best way possible, and although we used photoshop last year, we now feel much better acquainted with the software. We have made full use of the hardware given to us, appreciating the use of the sony handycam and the sony cybershot 12 megapixel camera, and learnt about the functions on both these pieces of apparatus. Technologies were a very important part of our A2 media coursework, and without the level of technology which we had, it is safe to say we would have been lost!
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