Friday 10 February 2012

Feedback on Director's Commentary

Affi

Hector, Jake Karis and MiMi

Sound and considerate understanding of the technologies used in production of the video, for example in terms of set design quality and the use of FCP to create ‘earthquake’ effects.

There are evident links between creative decision making and use of technology on both productions of the video using professional digital cameras and in the post production editing process – in discussion of match of action, lip syncing and graphic matching – in glitch effects and blinder lights in production. This is sustained and thorough and accurate in discussion of the branded themes of the MV of urbanism and a social realist feel.

The commentary shows a discrete awareness of the use of new media technology and uses discriminating examples really well, particularly to selection and construction of narrative, using masks and editing techniques, such as cross cutting and the pacing used. Excellent command of terminology and well presented – understands and discusses convergence really well if implied in the commentary.

There is sustained justified decision making links between the technologies used the product and audience reception in terms of the Grime genre. Recognises the need to account for errors in the post production stage.

This is a well considered documentary, well done and Well presented work.

Director Commentary/ Photoshop evaluation



This video above discusses how as a group we used new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages.
what we didn't discuss in the video was the use of Photoshop and the design of our CD digipak and music poster. I will be discussing this below in detail.
Firstly we used Mac technology software, final cut pro in order to edit the video, this consisted of selecting and arranging various clips we had shot. We used final cut pro in order to edit the shots to cut to the beat of the music track.        http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/top-features/


Photoshop enabled us to manipulate images and graphic design. By working with layers and using the tools within photoshop we could radically change the image to look like a completely new one. So with the ability to do this we turned our pictures into digipacks and posters.
We used photoshop as it allowed us to be as creative as we wanted and made us creative designers. We could use layers, enhance quality and definition, add effects and revise our photos. With the colour filters it enabled us to mess around and find the correct colour balance which best represent our artist. We wanted to make a digipack and poster which would stand out and be quite simplistic yet convey the star image we wanted to get across. We wanted to get across the image that he was from the inner city world. As you can clearly see with our promotional poster, we made the image black and white because it sets a tone to the poster and the artist. We added small bits of colour such as the record label logo and introducing new media technologies such as facebook, twitter etc.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop

Here is a print screen of the editing process of our promotional poster. As I said before it allows us to edit images and use layers in order to create the poster and the digipack and right to the end to the final product. It was a long process which requires a lot of though which would lead to our desired target which was to attract the customers and the correct audience. We stuck to the black and white theme throughout the poster. The only things which we left in colour was the online media logos and the record labels logo, we did this because we wanted to let the audience see that they could find out more about him daily and assessable. I still think that the poster could do with further development as it doesn't feel creative or professional enough. Thats why we designed some of the elements as a group and then went on to finalizing it. I feel like there should be some more images to make the poster more exciting as well as eye catching.


As well as our poster, I also used photoshop to create our digipack. This was slightly more challenging because there were four panels and not just one. Each panel had to be different in a sense that it either had to relate back to the video or it had to reveal some information about the artist and show some contextual meaning in it. The front panel is of Affie having a mug shot taken of him, this was a tricky task to do as it involved a numerous amount of tool within photoshop and many layers. Also effects were used to adjust the contrast and exposure of the picture in order for them to stand out to out target market. At this stage of the A level course I know that I have used photoshop in a more advanced and professional way than I did last year with the AS course I was using more tools, effects and layers in order to get to the final product of the poster and the digipack.

Tuesday 7 February 2012

Evaluation task 4- pre production



Here below are the media technology’s I used which played a very important part of all process within my media production,particularly in pre production. In the industry such as film, television, photography and digital video pre-production refers to the tasks that must be completed or executed before filming or shooting begins. This include finding the actors or models, budgeting, scheduling, renting equipment, building the sets and tests.


Youtube- to research other music videos.it is an online video broadcasting site where other media record companies. Here is a URL link..Here is a link to our music video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-SLbnvm1cU

E-Blogger- tool and was an on going diary that helped with our decision
                                                                      Making. In order to display all this information and research we had done, we used E-Blogger. This online tool helped me publish all the create pieces of work that I had done. Within my blog are the discussions and my personal thoughts and interpretations of the new media technologies that I had used in order to make, plan and research ideas for the music video. Blogger can be made personal and you can upload work from external sources such as, slide share,word, prizes etc.


At this early stage of the process, we were researching and finding out what genre of music we wanted to do. Having used this search engine Google, we looked up the grime genre and artists within this genre. Firstly wikipedia, is a ver well know online encyclopedia that gave us the definition of grime. It gave us more than enough information about it and even told us the pioneers of the genre, (Dizzee Rascle, Wiley and roll deep)



Wikipedia- to find out more information about the artist Mikill Pane.
                    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki. Our final decision was the record company 'No hats no hoods'. The reason why we chose this was because of he reputation which was already there and the brand image. The UK's biggest grime label was No hats no hoods.http://www.nohatsnohoods.bigcartel.com/

Our prelims (which were a test run before our music videos) we used the Sony F3 cameras to shoot the footage we wanted. Also with these Sony cameras I used it to film the animatic too. This was another way of making a piece of work more creative and bringing it to life, with this also gave us a better insight of what the video was roughly going to look like. In order to cast the actors for our music video we used our mobile phones cameras and uploaded them to our blogs. It was a quick and effective way to capture picture of our actors.


A difficulty that we faced was finding the music track in a (WAV) format. We need this music file not only for the post production stages but also for the shoot day, so we could shoot in time with the song. Having looked all over the internet and looked for the hard copy in music shops such as HMV, it was no where to be found. So we e-mailed Mikill Pane himself asking if we could have a WAV file, but there was no reply. So in the end we used a high quality Mp3 file which worked well and had a good enough sound. 

Evaluation Task 1. Powerpoint