Throughout the research and planning stages to the construction of my music video I have been using different forms of media technology from platforms such as YouTube, aiding in researching similar products, to utilising iMovie during the final part of constructing our music video.
Research
Being able to access a diverse selection of technologies was a great aid during the research stages of my project. Having access to television was useful as I could watch the music channels my target audience would watch, MTV2 or Q for example, to enable me to decipher what makes a popular, enjoyable music video. This process however was lengthy as not all music videos were appropriate for my chosen genre, alternative, and that is where the use of the internet and YouTube came in. This meant I could narrow my search to quickly access videos that were specific to what I was looking for and being able to pause them meant that I could easily analyse different still frames. The internet, Google especially, also meant that I had a vast amount of knowledge at my fingertips thus when doing research into different genres, directors, artists, record labels, theories and images I could compile a significant amount of relevant information, furthermore it was readily available to me whenever I needed extra information or to verify something. The use of the blog was also valuable as it meant I could constantly update it from pretty much anywhere - my phone, school laptop, library computer, for example - when I found something interesting instead of being restricted to where my scrapbook was located.
Planning
Jamendo, a copyright free website helped considerably with our planning as we were able to search through it using the useful tags people had attached to different artists so we could easily locate bands within our genre. Then using the music sampler we could listen to the tracks till we found a song that matched our criteria. We could then download it for free to iTunes and upload it to iMovie so when we came to constructing our video we knew the time space we needed to fill. Access to a video camera also meant that we could film in different settings and lighting to see which would potentially compliment our music video best before we made a final choice and based the rest of our decisions around it. This was a useful time efficient method as it meant on the day of filming we already had an idea of what would look good thus avoiding wasting memory on the camera. When planning my ancillary tasks having the use of a digital camera was helpful as it meant that I could take a selection of pictures before selecting the one(s) that would best fit in with the conventions I had earlier researched. What was also useful was the options on the camera as it meant I could use natural lighting or flash to achieve different results. Another technology which was useful in this aspect was my unlimited access to Photoshop which made it easy for me to devise a selection of possible choices thus enhancing my planning as I could develop ideas as I got response from my audience feedback ensuring that my products would appeal to my target audience .
Construction
To begin with the construction process we used a video camera along with lighting equipment to film the footage for our music video. Due to the lighting being quite low in some of our shots we had to use the night mode function. Also in order to create a realistic party atmosphere we used an iPod and speakers to play music with a similar beat to our song for our cast to dance to. Once we had obtained the footage we uploaded it to iMovie in order for us to being editing it. We used the effect 'Romantic' in order to create a slightly blurred 'beer goggles' effect and due to the fact we could select all of our clips at once we could apply it efficiently however due to the varying light in different clips we had to alter the brightness, contrast and saturation levels individually to make sure each clip looked as effective as possible. Throughout the editing we were backing up our work on an external hard drive however we encountered a difficulty with this piece of technology. After transferring some work from one Mac to another via the external hard drive we found that when trying to open it our files could not be located. To overcome this we used the yahoo forum and Mac help page to work out how we could rectify this problem and after simply renaming a folder we had our work back!
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