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Blogger - The Beginning of our Research
Through our knowledge on music videos that we'd learnt in class, we begun our first blogging tasks which included our summer work and the basics, such as the function of a music video. We've used Blogger ever since this date, in order to document all of our research findings in preparation for the production of our final music video. -
YouGov Audience Profilers
To continue researching and compiling information, one of the tasks we were set was to use YouGov to find out the demographics for the English band/artist we were hoping to create a music video for, along with artists similar to them so we could learn about their audiences and the kind of things they'd enjoy. This influenced our decisions leading up to the pitch, as it helped us to decide what our target audience might like to see from us in terms of ideas, visuals, etc. -
Research into Music Video Theories
We were asked to use YouTube amongst a variety of other websites to find out more about theories involving music videos; Laura Mulvey, Carol Vernallis and Andrew Goodwin's in particular, and then make a post about our research on the blog. To do this, I used YouTube, Google and SlideShare to discover more and then made a Microsoft Powerpoint, involving gifs from music videos than related to each theory. -
Online Storyboard
I used the website 'Storyboard That' to create an online storyboard, alongside our hand-drawn one. This allowed better visuals, as nobody in our group thought that they could draw our ideas up well enough by hand. We recieved feedback on this when it was done and was told that this version was much clearer and easier to understand than the hand-drawn version - overall, we used this website to portray our ideas and help us when filming, so we knew what to film, where and how (angles, etc). -
Pitch
This is the day that we all compiled our individual research into one massive presentation, pitching our ideas to our teacher as well as our class, to ensure that we had adeuate feedback on our ideas. It also helped us to establish what else we should have considered or researched and get on with doing that, for example: we were advised to plan more in terms of what times we'd be shooting so that it's effective, along with consideration for costume. -
First Filming Session
We used a Canon 700D alongside an external iPhone monitored stabiliser (fig-rig) and lighting controller application (borrowed from a professional, as one of our group members had the connection through an internship). This equipment allowed our video to be shot smoother than most, allowing transitions from clip to clip to look more professional. -
Instagram - @arcticgaze
This is when I created the Instagram account for our band, Arctic Gaze, as we'd finally decided upon a band name the day before for the Pitch. We chose to focus the majority of our posts on Instagram as the initial band who sung 'The City' use Instagram much more frequently than any other social media. From here on, I posted updates and behind the scenes pictures and footage of the filming process, as well as introducing the group (and band members) for clarification. -
Twitter - @Arctic_Gaze
This is when my group created the Twitter account for the band, the same day as the Instagram account. We understood that social media is the key to attracting and reaching out to audience, especially for independent artists who have lower budgets and little money to advertise new releases. We intended to focus much more of our time on Instagram, however Twitter was the second option as our target audience tend to use that more than Facebook and commonly use hashtags. etc, to share news. -
First Editing Session
This lesson was the first day that we edited our work, as we started earlier than the rest of our class. We used the editing software Adobe Premiere Pro to import our footage from our first filming session, sort through each clip, and sync them to the audio track on the timeline. We also used HandBrake to convert the music video to an mp3 track so that we could use it when editing our video, to sync it to our base tracks. -
Pitch Revisited
The main criticism we got was about the pitch itself, rather than the content. We were told that as our individual pitch tasks were created/uploaded on to different technologies, etc (emaze, prezi, youtube, blogger), we had to put them all on to one platform/website to ensure that it was easy to view the pitch altogether, as opposed to having to click links to all of these different websites. This is the stage where we used a lot of different things to produce our work, but had to choose one. -
Camtasia
Camtasia really helped me present my work when evaluating different things, for example the effectiveness of decisions we'd made, my own personal view on feedback I've been given (e.g. blogging health checks) and express my views in a much quicker and easier way than writing out text posts on Blogger. -
Monologue
We used one of the college's more high-tec microphones that help eliminate background noise to record the voice over for the monologue that we were planning to use in our video, just to add an extra layer of meaning to the compilation of clips we'd edited. -
Behind the Scenes
This is when our behind the scenes filming ended, in which we used a GoPro to film the majority of the footage so that we could edit it into a vlog which we could provide for our audience to keep them interested. We also done this on the off chance that we could've used some of the GoPro footage in our actual music video. -
TimeToast Scheduling
Aside from using it right now, I used TimeToast before to create an updated production schedule to document the dates we begun filming, editing, etc, as well as explaining where and why. -
After Effects Editing
We moved our editing process to Adobe After Effects to help edit the overlay of moving cars for our music video. We used this programme to speed up the footage and mess around with the black and white filter, establishing which contrast would look best. This time was also spent testing several different effects that might look good, for example: I used YouTube tutorials to help me create a glitch effect in After Effects on sections of the monologue to highlight her 'corrupt' nature. -
Mindmapping
I used a website called 'Mindmup' to help me brainstorm ideas for the evaluation questions, for blog task 45. I found this much clearer and more effective and visually appealing than creating a mind map by hand. -
Wix Website
I used Wix to create my website for my ancillary work as it had the best and most simple template designs. I chose the template I liked best and then went about inserting screenshot images of the band, my digipak and so on to ensure that it was personalised, as well as incorporating the black and white theme. It also allowed me to embed videos effectively, along with create links to social media accounts and different pages of the website. I even made my own 'newsfeed' containing recent articles -
Adobe Photoshop to Create Digipak
I taught myself how to use Photoshop after watching several YouTube tutorials and playing about with the software to come to terms with it. This was the day I began my actual design for the digipak, using Photoshop as opposed to something simple like Paint as it allowed me to make it look professional and gave me more options to craft it how I liked. -
Weebly
I began my initial/draft website on Weebly, so that I could determine which one I preferred out of the two (this and Wix) in terms of how easy it was to make a website, the templates provided along with the different things you could do. I did end up deciding upon using Wix for my final website as it provided me with the most options, in terms of adding buttons, social media feeds etc. -
Photobucket
I used PhotoBucket in order to sort all of my photos for the ancillary together without clogging up Blogger with loads of images in one blog post, instead embedding my PhotoBucket album into the blog. This is one of the many times I've done this. -
Padlet
I used Padlet to link screenshots from my media products together to show the synergy between them. I found using this website over any other particularly effective, as it allowed me to add as many images as I wanted along with text and generally create an appealing layout so that it was clear and could be understood. This was also generally more interesting to use than say, powerpoint or blogger.
