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

When beginning A2 media I hadn't half the knowledge I possess now on technology. Throughout the construction  research, planing and evaluation stages I have used lots of media technologies. Some of these technologies took a while for me to get the swing of things such as Photoshop,  during the panning stage of my digipak i wanted to create a rough draft on Photoshop and ended up giving up and drawing it because it wasn't letting me be fully creative because I didn't know how to work with it to benefit me. During the the planning stage of my music video I created this blog on www.blogger.com so I was able to make posts during all stages and keep to deadlines and not forget any creative thoughts I might have. During my research and planning stage of the music video I did posts such as genre research into conventions. I found out about my genre by using mainly www.youtube.com because i was able to watch music videos by artists of my genre and see conventions in them. I then used prezi.com to create a slideshow of print-screened conventions so I could keep all my research together. I found an application on the college computer called 'snipping tool' which made my life much easier when print screening stuff because it allowed me to select the area I wanted. 
Youtube was a very important website during the whole process of creating our video because we used it to find the artist and track we wanted to use. We also managed to find the manager of Tanya Lacey's email address on her youtube profile which made things much easier when emailing them. We used Hotmail to email directly to James, Tanya Lacey's manager. 

Fortunately he replied very quickly to our email. In the email he gave us permission to use one of her tracks however we needed to let him know which one we wanted to use. After the reply off James we then used Youtube to search for the one song of Tanya's we wanted to use. It didn't take us very long to pick it because after typing in her name it gave us all of her official songs. We chose 'Born To Fly' for lots of reasons however we liked the fact it didn't have a very interesting music video so we wouldn't be able to copy any and we wanted it to be entirely from our creativity.

Without web 2.0 we would have found it very difficult to find our artist and the track because although she is a mainstream artist she is still very unheard of although we think she is great. YouTube gave us a direct link to her official website which also had images, videos, contact and her blog. After contacting the manager and choosing a track with permission we were given the task to create a pitch for our class which we used slideshare.com which is like powerpoint and allowed us to create a slideshow. We included some information about our artists which we found out using Wikipedia.com, the track we were using and also some initial ideas we had thought of after listening to the song.
After pitching our idea I wanted to start looking for a model asap because I felt the idea for the video completely depended on the look of the model. A redundant feature i had found during my research on YouTube was that most female rnb/pop artists wear minimal clothing and have toned bodies so i wanted my model to fit this stereotype. I felt it would be easier if i used one of my friends because when it came to filming the would be much more comfortable infront of the camera around people she knows. I came to the decision that my friend Thea would be good for the role so I used Facebook to show my partner Syra our potential model.

After showing Syra, Thea's profile photo's she agreed that Thea would fit the image we needed her to. Thea was happy to model for all our products, digipak and music video which was a relief. After finding our model  I booked out a DSLR camera from college so I could take the photo's for my digipak which i had planned and researched in my blog. The specific camera i used allowed me to set it into portrait setting which would ensure the shot i wanted wouldn't effect the quality if i zoomed in on Photoshop. I also turned flash off because i had the lighting in the studio. My images were all taken in the studio so it didn't require me to change much on the camera. After my photo shoot was complete i used Photoshop to edit which took a while to get used to but i learnt lots by just playing about. I started by changing the images from colour to black and white which was very simple to do, i also enhanced the brightness on them. When adding text i used dafont.com to find the one i wanted, i then needed to upload the font using an application on the computer called 'Font Installer'. After doing this i was able to write all i wanted in the font of my choice. I changed the colour to a pink to create a contrast between the black and white images. I used the clone tool to make my logo's fit the background colour. I also needed to edit Thea's arm out of the inside left image because she didn't have any arm muscle so i had her pushing her skin to make it look like she did. This was fun to edit because i think the finished result looked successful.

 We used facebook.com to create a focus group to get feedback from our audience. This meant we were able to upload anything we wanted feedback on such as our initial ideas. We were able to add people from Syra's and my facebooks so we got as much feedback possible. I think this helped because we were able to get creative criticism and improve upon it. I uploaded the finished digipak asking for feedback which i got from some members through comments. The group was able to let me know how many people had seen my uploads and would notify me through an app on my smartphone so i would know instantly when i got feedback.

I used my iPhone a lot of the time when contacting my target market for ideas, i posted our final music video on twitter so people could share it throughout the social network if they liked it. It also helped when contacting my model to organise shoots. I also used my iPhone to take pictures of my drawn up rough draft of our story board and also my digipak design which i then emailed directly from my phone to Syra's college email so we would have a copy on the computer.
After drawing up our story board we created an animatic using our ideas but drawing new images, we took pictures of our drawings on colleges DSLR camera and on the camera is a setting which allows you to connect images together and created a motion video of them. After doing this on the camera we uploaded it to Youtube and put it on Facebook for feedback also just for people to see how we were progressing.

After finalising our ideas we created a shotlist on Microsoft Word because then we could choose exactly how many rows and columns we wanted. This was a very quick process because i am very experienced in Word. Finally finishing the planning and researching stages we were ready to start filming. We used a camera borrowed from college which was a panasonic HDC SD500. With this we rented 2 tripods, a dolly and a normal one. And also a light reflector to ensure the lighting was good. We used the camera in lots of locations such as the woods, gym and studio. The only tool we used on the camera was the zoom which we used when focusing on areas of the model and locations. After filming we came to the best part of technology, Adobe Premier Pro. This software was essential during this project because it was what we used to make our music video how we wanted it to be. Firstly we used a Youtube converter to create an MP3 of the track which i then uploaded to Premier Pro so we could start working on the editing. Our main editing tools we used were making the shot black and white, speed +/-, croping, rotating and opacity. We also used some effects to make some of the shots fit together better such as cross fade and cross dissolve, we kept this to a minimum because we wanted our edits to be seamless without using too many effects.
Some main effects in our video were the flashing jump-cuts  i got the idea for this off Youtube from Beyonce's video. Also we used a stop-motion effect and a 2 shot blend during the first 4-7 seconds.

We uploaded out finished video after exporting onto YouTube because we feel it will reach our audience on a website like that rather than Facebook etc. Also it means people are able to show their friends and share it if they enjoy it.