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

In the research stages I used a plethora of media technologies to help me capture the idea of my work. For my music video I frequently used YouTube. First of all I used to it to view the original video for the song I had chosen, not something I would really do but I had been told by a friend it was quite an interesting and unique/controversial video and thought it well worth a quick watch, which it was. I also used YouTube to re-watch certain parts of 'Control' a black and white feature length film about the life of Ian Curtis, the film was a massive influence on my piece and it was handy to be able to go back and look at key parts of it such as CU of eye's and so on and how they bridge an emotional gap. I also used my family's Sky+ to record a documentary on the top 10 music videos of all time, which was running on VH1. I found watching this and the behind the scenes footage and interviews with directors to be very helpful towards thinking about planning ahead much further in advance than I usually do, which resulted in a higher standard of work. The other internet based media technology I used was Google along with GoogleImages. I used google to search for the lyrics to 9 Crimes which helped me in coming up with a basic storyline for my music video to revolve around. I recieved one comment on how the story line made it almost sort of feel like a short film, whilst not taking away from the performance or the overall music aspect, which was very pleasing to find out. I used google images to search for and collect other hand drawn album covers/digipacks to help me brainstorm ideas for my own digipack. I found this to be incredibly helpful drawing a large influence from a Thom Yorke solo album cover entitled 'The Eraser'. I would never have found influence from this album cover without this resource what with music downloading becoming the major way of acquiring music nowadays.

In the Planning stages I used a fair selection of technologies to help me, although mostly mainly for my Music Video as my ancillary task planning came about mostly from sketching and practicing my drawings for my final piece. To star out with I used E-Mail to communicate with Damien Rice's Record Label, 'Vector Records', however I received no reply. I also used FaceBook to organise and confirm my actors, this was so helpful as my mobile phone at the time was barely capable of sending a texts to one person let alone 3 or 4! I then used my MacBook to watch the start of Pulp Fiction on DVD to help me come up with a story structure for my piece, which prompted me to begin the music video with part of the storyline from the very ending, but not quite all of it, just a we see in Pulp Fiction. I also used popular website Blogger.com to help me track my progress and give myself targets and list of things to do for certain days to try and keep in due with my deadlines and responsibilities. FInally I have also used my iPhone to take a picture of how went about my planning for writing this, which is a big mess on a large sketchpad basically.





For the Construction stage I believe the technologies available to me to help me do this were undeniably key to the high quality outcome of my film, without them my project have been incapable of some of the stunning Super-CU's on the eyes and and depth of field focusing. For the filming part of the construction we were trusted with Cannon HD, FlashDrive Cameras with the all important manual focus ability. Whilst filming I used my MacBook to play the song as playback for Will as he had to mimic a performance of the piece and sing along, this was very helpful in the editing stages as in some parts I could simply match the background audio with the track audio. To edit I used the iMovie software that came as standard on my MacBook. The software is brilliantly intuitive and respectfully powerful for it's nothing cost. A good knowledge of the software and a combination of persistence and patience resulted in the fine detailed and very fast paced editing sequences of my music video. For my ancillary task I used a software called 'LiveScan' that works as part of an industrial photocopier/scanner in the Art department. This software brilliantly scanned in my drawings and used a precision grid like software to help reproduce my drawing in as higher detail as possible, I was overly pleased with the result. I then used PhotoShop to organise all of my drawing on to a template for my digipack that I had downloaded from a quick Google search before hand.


For my Evaluation I used a plethora of computer based technologies to obtain audience feedback to help fuel my evaluation. I started of Uploading my video to YouTube and receiving a few comments there from friends and receiving a good rating. I then posted the link to it on my FaceBook and asked for people to comment on it to help me in my coursework, which many people happily did. On top of this I also exported my music video to a QuickTime file and displayed from a projector on to a large screen in class and asked a large selection of my peers to fill out audience feedback questionnaires on my behalf.