Technology was the pulse of creating the material we have in this task. Software that we used played the core part of constructing the final pieces. Final Cut Pro was used to create the music video from the many individual pieces of footage that we had. We were able to take over 125+ pieces of individual shots and create a four minute music video without too much stress (there was some at times, admittedly!), it played an important part in creating certain aspects of the video.
All of our shots outside of the studio were created in natural light and in the studio shots we had some assistance from studio lighting - however it is Final Cut Pro where we applied the necessary filters to take the video through the four-part process we were aiming for. The video has full color at the beginning slowly reducing until near the end where it fades to a black and white bit then it is restored to full image quality in full color at the end to show the cycle of emotion. This four-part change in colour was made possible by the use of Final Cut Pro where we were able to apply filters to add the darker affects to the shots and change the transparency levels.
Final Cut Pro allowed us to change the pace of some of the footage where it was running a little bit slow or too fast, we were able to either slow them down or speed them up by adjusting the speed to a different % figure with 100% being the natural speed - dropping it to 80% would slow it down and upping it to 150% would speed it up. This allowed us to include all the shots we wanted to whilst keeping the lyrics in sync to the actions of the video.
Photoshop was the second piece of key software which aided the construction of the print media items. We used Photoshop to create all of our print media products - the CD covers, the magazine advert and our web advert - Photoshop provides an advanced pallet of tools which allowed us to take our photoshoot photo's to the next level and create high quality print media as a result of the capabilities of Photoshop. It allowed us to crop Maddie out of the photo's and on to the piano which was a separate photo. It allowed us to adjust colouration and add text or images where necessary - it provides a much better set of tools than a basic software such as Microsoft Paint.
Aside from technology, the hardware we used was a vital part of constructing the work. We have used three high quality camera's in the studio along with the software on the systems in the studio which allows us to create the studio quality work we were working for. These facilities that we have access to within college really aided our final piece and the print media - it allowed us to achieve high quality shots which we used appropriately in the video and high quality photo's which we could use in our print media. It certainly felt like a privilege to have the ability to use such a facility. In addition to the studio camera equipment - we had access to the standard camcorders which allowed us to do the filming at a variety of locations. These camcorders also had additional equipment such as the handheld jib, a handheld frame to mount the camera, a tripod for still shots or shots with panning movement and finally the dolly which the tripod can stand on which allows the camera to be wheeled about with ease.
Research was made very easy with access to the Internet. We were able to scout out potential locations with the use of Google Maps and Street View - this allowed us to look at potential locations rather than wasting time visiting them to find they would be of no use to us. This came in well for finding all of our external locations. We were able to use Street View to look at Piccadilly Gardens on a computer and eye up any potential filming spots for the night scene, which we did and have used that footage in our final piece.
We used Google Maps to scout out a potential building nearby collge which we could potentially get access to so we could film the lift and stairs shot - luckily this building also provided us with access to their roof for our roof shots. We managed to find Manchester Science Park (Technopark) which is only 5-10 minutes away from College and they gave us access to film our shots.
We then wanted to research potential green areas not too far from College that we could do further filming in - we found Alderly Edge on the National Trust website and this provided enough detail to satisfy us that it would be a good place to film at - http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-alderleyedge2
The Internet as a whole has proved to be a great resource during the research stages - we have been able to access detail via Google and study content on Wikipedia to aid us in this task. We were also able to apply for licensing permission via the Beggars Group website.
Due to issues with computers in College on our first planning meeting, we were unable to write our initial meeting notes straight to the blogs - we managed to compromise by taking notes of the meeting on an iPhone on the 'Notes' feature of the phone to later refer back to to put them on to the blog.
For travel arrangements, we were able to make use of the Traveline and Transport for Greater Manchester websites to plan and time our travel to filming locations precisely - these two online features played a vital part in ensuring we timed ourselves well and didn't waste any time.
We were able to make use of Photoshop during our initial print media planning to plan potential designs for our print media. Because Maddie was the only person in the group who knows how to use Photoshop, we were able to sit down as a group on a college mac to work on some mock designs and discuss these together before Maddie completed the designs on her Photoshop at home - this proved to be vital in ensuring all group members were on the same page at the same level of understanding.
The use of Facebook as a means of messaging eachother to plan filming and other events during this task worked well. It allowed us to have a group discussion setup and did not cost anything like a text to multiple people would have done.
During the evaluation process for this task, we have been able to use various websites accessible via the Internet - this included Google which has a large bank of websites and also a strong use of Google Images search to allow us to search for other CD covers to compare to. We have also been able to use YouTube to make comparisons and take inspirations from other music videos that are from a similar genre to that of this song.
But the major piece of technology being used during the process has been Blogger.com - the website which this blog is hosted on. This blogging service has provided us with a full bank of resources to make the process much smoother of logging all these posts as the task has unveiled itself. We have been able to update it from home and not just in college, which has proved to be a huge benefit of the service.
No comments:
Post a Comment