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

In order to find a band and song that wasn’t copyrighted, I used unsigned.com. This is a website where people can put their songs for others to listen to and review. It was on there that I found A City Alive. They had two songs up, and after listening to them both I chose Still Time as it was the one that I found I had more ideas for.

Lyric Wordle for the song I chose

After getting my song, I searched on Youtube for songs like it, and ideas I could use for my video. I found Ed Sheeran's The A Team, and Love Like Woe by The Ready Set. In The A Team, the images of the girl are in black and white and she is sad and lonely. This was the mood I wanted for her side of the story. Love Like Woe had the idea of half performance and half narrative, the performance only being the singer rather than the whole band, which is what I wanted to do. The singer in it was also backed by bright colours, which was what gave me the idea of having him try to cheer the girl up, giving her colour from the colourlessness that was her narrative.  



Ed Sheeran's The A Team



An image from my vid that was inspired by The A Team



Love Like Woe by The Ready Set



An image from my video inspired by Love Like Woe

 These two were the main inspirer’s at the beginning, but as it went on and I started planning more, The Gorillaz also inspired me through their use of cartoons characters and animation.

When we went out to film the footage I wanted for my video I made sure I got a lot of it, taking shots from many different angles. I learnt from last year that you need to get a lot of footage as often you find, when you get back, that you didn’t have enough or what you had wasn’t as good quality as you thought it was. I also made sure that I used a wider range of shots, so that I could make my video more interesting rather than having a load of shots all the same.

In order to create the anime styled pictures and animation, I had to learn how to use Photoshop better. It was something that I just picked up through playing around with it, but I now have a better idea of how the program works. I also needed to learn how to import pictures in Imovie so that I could get the images from Photoshop into my Video. I have also learnt how to put footage together to create quick shots that interchange with the music. I had to think about this as if the shots were to long then the video would become boring and dull to watch.

Paint. This was where I created the 'animation'. 

Photoshop. I was able to create my Digipack Images and the Magazine artical using this programme.

I created my actual video on IMovie. It was simple and easy to use and I was able to get all of the effects, such as black and white and tempa zone, that I wanted on it.  



In IMovie, I found the easiest way to make it so that the lip syncing was as close as possible was by using Precision Cutter. I found this out through experimentation, but this technique allowed me to change the part of the footage that I wanted without changing the time that it took. This meant that it didn’t change the rest of the video and keeps all the rest in synch.



Sometimes in my video I would come across bits of footage that weren’t exactly in time with the music, and I would have to fiddle around with that while trying not to affect the rest of the video. This meant that I had to figure out a way of changing the bit of video without making it at different times. I discovered a way of doing so using precision cutter and was able to make those bits of footage fit without too much trouble.

As I was creating and planning my video, I would put the idea’s I came up with on Blogger. This helped me as it allowed me to see all of my idea’s and work in one place. I also found that placing my work on Facebook and Youtube was helpful feedback wise. It allowed me to see what people thought of my video and to see what improvements I could still make. It was also easier to see what bits and pieces still needed tightening up when I was watching it with other people as I felt more conscious of what it looked like. I found this helpful as I noticed more and was able to straighten it out so that it was right.

I used Blogger to post my ideas and thoughts and used it as somewhere that I could keep them all together. It is also the medium I used in order to show all of my work.