Q4 Improved Evaluation.

Blogger is a blog-publishing internet site, that allows users to post entries any time they want; the site was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003.

Using the Blogs has allowed our tutors to evaluate our work and help us improve it. By posting comments you can see what improvements the tutor has suggested.  It acts as a diary for keeping track of our work so that others can see how we have developed and molded our ideas. As we have a lot of coursework for Media, Blogger has made it easier; it eliminates having to write out your coursework. Other users can comment on my blog and give me different ideas that they think would help improve my work. This really helped as it let outside participants give me a review of what I’ve done and allowed my work to develop from an outside opinion. Also I believe you view your own work in a certain way and sometimes its good to get a different perspective to view the posts.

The use of computers has allowed more people to develop their ideas. It allows you to use different formats to present the work rather than just one individual type. For example when using Blogger you can upload YouTube videos, pictures, presentations (like this one) etc. Its much more dynamic.

It helped with the creation of my music video greatly, it allowed me to review the posts I had made and let me develop them at a different time. A bonus of using this site, is that you can always go back on your posts when you have a new idea and change them. Its not set in stone

YouTube is a website created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, where users can upload, share and view new videos. YouTube is so popular that one hours’ worth of video is uploaded to the website every second.

YouTube was the sole website that I used to view different music videos for my analysis and research. For example I wanted to do an analysis on a While She Sleeps video and by using YouTube I was able to view the music video, pause, take screen shots whenever I needed too, which made it very easy to do. Also I needed to upload YouTube videos onto my blog to use as examples which linked to my music video, and YouTube allowed me to easily embed them onto my blog without any problems.  As comments are allowed on YouTube I could see what other fans of that genre thought of the music video too.

By uploading my music video onto YouTube you are able to reach a wider audience and thus strengthen a potential fan base. You can target the audience that enjoy the genre of your artist as the videos are collected to relate to one another when someone views a music video of the same genre, your video will also be recommended.  A strength of YouTube is that It can tell you exactly who has viewed your video, where there from and whether they liked it or not. Not many websites that you can share videos allows you to do that.

It connects you to people all over the world rather than just one specific audience therefore allowing me to get a more populated and diverse ranges of people viewing my work so I can see what specific people viewed it most and see if they had anything in common.

Also with YouTube you can edit your videos that you upload on the website. For example, you can change the lighting, add different effects and change the speed etc., which would allow you to add final touches to your video if you wanted.

With Adobe Premiere Pro, you can achieve so many different aspects to your music video. There isn't really anything you cannot do on this. For example I wanted a lot of cross dissolves between my shots and this programme allowed me to edit the length of the transition and where it would be placed etc., to achieve the correct look I wanted. By adding a dissolve into my shots, you create the effect of time passing by, but also you can create the effect of a flash back which was a big part to the plot of my music video – with the memory of the girl.

Another example is getting rid of the background noise in my shots as I had to speak to my actors when shooting to let them know what I wanted them to do and when I wanted it done. Adobe made this very easy for me, with just using one button to get rid of all the sound in the shots. It was very simple.

One effect that I found difficult to achieve was wanting only one colour on the screen in that shot. I wanted all the other colours that were there to suddenly fade away, leaving the shot with only one bright colour. It took a lot of trial and error to finally achieve that effect. I thought it was very effective as it directed the audience's attention to that certain feature in the shot.

Our tutor did give us a few lessons on how to use the software before we started our music video, and we practised creating a comical video before hand. I think this was extremely useful as it let us experiment with the different effects and see what the outcome would be so we had some idea of what we could do for our music videos. Also there is a lot of tutorials online that you can follow for certain effects.

I wanted to create both an image within a drawing effect. Therefore I had to scan in my drawings and then outline them on Photoshop. Thankfully it would let me create an outline with my scan without having to go over it again. This saved a lot of time. With the use of the layers I was able to put the image on top of my drawing easily. Photoshop allows you to create as many layers as you wanted so creating a dynamic image is very quick to do.

 Original Drawing

Outlined drawing scanned in.

 

Outline of scanned in drawing on photoshop.

Outline and coloured drawing on photoshop

In the first year of Media A Level, we didn't have the cameras that we used to create our music video. You could instantly tell the difference and that the quality of the new video cameras was much better. They were smaller and filmed in HD which was a bonus as it added that detail to our music video that made them look that more professional. They were very easy to use with a touch screen to allow you to flick through your shots at any point. They also allowed you to view what was being filmed, when it was being filmed through the camera screen as you could turn it around to face you whilst recording.

Like the video cameras, these still cameras were excellent for capturing an image for our print production. They were advanced and HD which again, gave more detail and a professional look to the image. With some camera's they don't capture the colours bright enough and the picture looks dull, but with these you could edit the lighting and the type of scenery you were in so it took the image with the right settings.