EthanRandJFS5236

How have i used digital technologies in the research, planning and creation of my products?

research into music videos for inspiration

where we looked

After knowing the task on hand our first reaction was to watch music videos of different genres and see what best suits what we want to do. We used Youtube as the main source of research as typing in something as simple as ‘pop music videos’ comes up with thousands of choices for us to look at. After then deciding that we wanted to pursue the rock genre for our video we then went back onto youtube to look at rock music videos and wrote down typical conventions of them from youtube. Then deciding on a song was a mix of youtube and Spotify and eventually after looking at the playlists of legendary rock bands we stumbled on Lithium’s Nirvana and straight away we all loved the song.

who we looked at

As we decided on the grunge rock genre we straight away started looking at the song of the legendary rock bands. This included Nirvana, Ramones, Biffy Clyro and Foo Fighters to name a few. We believed that all these bands could help us decide on a concept and lots of features we could include in a rock music video as they are appealing to the same target audience as we have when they started.

How this influenced us

This massively influenced us and the way we viewed the rock genre. Before this research i personally just believed that rock music videos were just bands going crazy, playing instruments and dark colours. However, i realised that there was a lot more to rock music videos and many rock songs have important meanings that can be explained through a strong narrative in a music video. But also realised that there are many conventions of a rock band that we should look to stick such as clothing and colours.

How we used mobile phones to interview target audiences to gain an insight into what they looked for in an artist

In the early process of this we interviewed with our mobile phones by videoing many young people who are the main target audience in what they would want in a rock band. The main responses were along these lines: ‘Need to look like a rock band, with specific clothing and funky hair’, ‘playing instruments passionately’, ‘ the artists loosing their minds and going mental’ and ‘lots of black colours in clothing and makeup’.

how we used this information

This feedback was crucial and we always were able to reference to it as it was on our mobile phones. We included key things such as conventional clothes which was a common response as was the use of dark colours. Both of these were gathered from using our mobile phones to get feedback into what our target audience wants in an artist, which was extremely important to establish the right star image for our target audience.

How we used the internet as a research tool into genre and star image and how it aided your development

The main ways we used the internet to research about genre was through youtube. Visualising things is the best way of learning and applying and this is what we did. We searched up rock music videos and then watched videos from the legendary bands such as Nirvana and Ramones and noted down key common conventions that these videos always posses and also videos from rock bands we never heard of and see if they applied these conventions or went in their own direction. We realised that the majority of these videos being from a famous or not famous rock band contained very similar conventions so we applied these to our video to be an accurate rock band within the genre. Furthermore, a similar process for learning about star image by watching videos on youtube we saw how past and present rock bands presented their star image and we used many conventions such as dark colours to show rebellion to promote our star image.

How we used the internet as a research tool in locations and how this aided our development

When deciding on the main idea of the narrative of the mental institute we straight away used the internet to look into what they look like. After undergoing this research we quickly realised that the media suite in the school was the perfect place with the all white walls to film this. However, we always planned on using more then one location and we used google maps to find perfect locations in London specifically in town in funky tunnels for our artist to run free in. After finding some strong choices such as a graffiti tunnel and in waterloo station we came up with a more local location that worked perfectly. However, it was with this research that we came up with the idea of this more local location as it matched with the results of our research.

Using technology to create an animatic- how we filmed this and what it achieved and how it was more advanced then AS

Creating, filming and editing the animatic was a long but important process in the development of our music video. This required drawing out individual shots onto a storyboard that we thought would feature in the video at this early stage. We then took photos of each shot using an iPhone, and then cropped each one so every single photo took up one whole image. Following this we then used iMovie on a Mac which is what we filmed our main AS video on to edit the pictures into a video. Lastly we put the song lithium which is the song we are doing for the video in the background as the shots flow in order of how we saw them.

This helped us all get a better understanding and visual of what the video would look like once we actually filmed it. Furthermore, it gave us a reference point throughout filming to see if we had missed certain shots or wanted to change certain shots and this was really useful when filming the actual video became complicated.

This years animatic was more advanced then last years animatic for AS. This year it involved techniques such as cutting shots to the beat so the shots were at the right time of the music. While last year it was a one shot run through of our opening sequence. This helped us when editing the real video as we had already started to cut to the beat which is something we would have to do in the real video. The AS animatic was one shot and did not give us a lot of help when shooting the real video while this years being a lot more complicated it helped us to imagine and set out how we wanted the video to go.

Filming your music video- Explain how this was more advanced then AS

Filming this years music video was clearly a lot harder and more complicated then filming the AS thriller for a number of reasons. We had to film almost every shot through the whole song, which allowed us in post-production to have as much footage and choose what fits best. But also that made the process very long and every shot was time consuming. We used the same cameras for both this and last year so we were more familiar with how to use it this year, which made it slightly easier. Furthermore, many shots were actually taken with the camera on a tripod in the same place meaning we just zoomed in and out for different shot sand didn't have to move around constantly. Last year the narrative was very set in stone and easy to follow the shooting schedule and the order of what shots need to be filmed. In contrast, although we had plans going into this shooting session when you are there you come up with ideas you prefer more or shots that you had planned and don't like, by not being able to follow an easy plan like last year made filming this year a lot harder.

Editing our music video- Explain how this was more advanced then AS

Editing was probably the biggest and toughest challenge from last years experience to this years. Firstly last year we used iMovie on apple mac which is very simple compared to Adobe premier pro which we used this year. This is a very professional and complicated programme although more advanced and harder to operate it was needed for us to get the required effects and quality of editing. We were able to add lots of effects that we wouldn't have been capable of doing last year such as using a colour balance effect to look as if the patient is having hallucinations. This year we had discontinuity effects such as the quadrant effect with four shots in four different frames by resizing them and playing them all at the same time, adding to the narrative an performance element. The advanced programme that we used this year opened up the amount we could do to a whole another level to the point we could manipulate any shot, while last year it was very general such as background noises or colour filter on the whole video.

Audience feedback- survey monkey

We created a survey monkey to send out and receive feedback on our video that we could then go and implement the necessary changes if they were required. We asked 6 questions so the survey was quick and easy and that nobody would skip questions.

Q1. How old are you?

Q2. What did you like about our music video?

Q3. What did you dislike about our music video?

Q4. Do you feel our narrative reached out to the alienated youth?

Q5. Anything else you’d like to comment on?

Q6. What would you rate our music video out of 10?

This was very easy make as that is what survey monkey is for to make questionnaires such as the one we made.

The main dislikes about the video in the responses was people wanted even more editing on some shots. One response said ‘Maybe fill in some of the non-edited shots of the lead singer with an effect or colour distortion’. So in post-production we went through shots we felt that we could add effects to that wouldn't over do it and this made positive changes to our video.

Planning, research into similar digipaks

We did lots of research online and through CD covers at the school to get as much knowledge and understanding of what makes a great digipak, specifically for a rock band. We found two CD covers at our school one from John Isbell and the other from the Felice brothers and we used features from both of these to inspire our final product. We edited the digipak on a photo editor called Befunky, to put all the pictures into frame and used photoshop to created the black and white filters that can be seen on the digipak.

Planning and research into similar websites

Similarly, to the digipak we went through extensive research into similar websites of rock bands. We specifically analysed the websites of nirvana, Ramones and Biffy clyro to see what is common in all their websites and as aa fellow rock band we should defiantly include. The main conventions we took was the black background which is associated with the rock genre which all of them had. Also to contrast this with bright colour fonts to make the writing clear and to stand out. The website Wix is what we used to make our own website and this was very helpful and easy to use. We were able to choose the template that suited our idea the best, also able to have all the different pages on the website such as a shop, about page, social media links, tour lists and enquiries. This was very creative and far more creative then anything we did last year as we had to use our imagination and through the layout, colours and content make our website look as much as a rock band website with at the same time being different as a new organic band.

How we made sure our website linked to other online technologies

The website six allowed us to create links to all the social media pages we made for the band including facebook, twitter, Instagram and youtube. This was vital as a new, modern and organic band the best way to gain popularity and a fan base is through promotion and interaction on social media and as we are targeting a younger fan base social media platforms such as twitter and Instagram is majority of young users and its important this was clear and easy access as why it is at the top of the homepage and clear for everyone to see.

Online Research Into Target Audience, Narrative, Star Image

we looked for these bands on Spotify by looking at grunge rock playlists

We used youtube to look at the music videos of grunge rock bands,

then used google to research any event that happened to learn of their behaviour and the way they present themselves as a visual image, for dyer explains that this is what a star image is.

Filming Animatic - What we learnt from this

We used our iPhones to take pictures of our storyboard, we then used iMovie to cut each shot to the beat

This helped establish a timeline of shots, and also helped us gain greater understanding of when we should include narrative or performance shots when in post-production.

Filming Our Music Video - How we used the camera more creatively than in AS

We featured a wider variety of shot choices than in AS, using the same camera, a Canon XF305

Examples of these are far wide shots, quad shots, over the shoulder shots, tracking and panning shots.

Editing - How you edited more creatively than AS

This year we used the programme premiere pro, which is an extremely advanced platform for editing videos of any sort, this allowed us to implement advanced effects into our music video which enhanced its professional qualities and its narrative elements.

For example we created a colour shift effect on several shots to enhance our narrative as it looked like the visual hallucinations of a schizophrenic patient. This was done by adding a colour balance (HLS) effect to the shot and changing the hue/saturation levels at different key frames in the clip.

Last year, we used the programme iMovie. This is less advanced than Premiere Pro, therefore there was limited capabilities in adding effects to individual shots, rather we could only apply effects such as filters across the entire video, which we did by creating a red hue over all our shots. The change in programmes aided us as we could implement more advanced and creative ideas into our music video.

Digipak and Website - How we created a cohesive package that ran along 3 different platforms

We created a cohesive package than ran along 3 different products to effectively sell our star image to the alienated youth.

For example we used Befunky software online, this allowed us to adjust the colours of our images and thus we could conform to the conventions of grunge rock bands, and by using these same colour adjustments across all three platforms we were able to build up our star image of rebellious and dark emotions, therefore we created a cohesive image across the platform.