4) How Did You Use New Media Technologies In The Construction And Research, Planning and Evaluation Stages?

We used a range of technologies throughout all the stages of making our music video,  including sites like Facebook and Pintrest to hardware and softwares like cameras and Adobe Photoshop.

Research and Planning

Web 2.0

With the proliferation of technology, we were able to use Web 2.0 to help us communicate instantly throughout our project.

Facebook

When the project started we made a Facebook group, which included all four of our members. This became really handy as we were able to send multimedia message to each other instantly and receive replies without haven't to wait until the next production meeting.

Juliette sending photos for costume and props

Writing feedback for people who were absent

Youtube Playlist

When we were researching era references, we made a YouTube playlist of the videos we thought were useful. This meant that anyone was able to access it at any time. From these videos, we took inspiration for our choreography.

Pinterest

We also used Pinterest to gather useful images for references of each era and for our band image. This was very helpful as we could see a handful of images for a certain era which we used to determine a final costume for each era.

Mobile Phones

Mobile phones now are all technologically converged, meaning we were able to use it in more ways than just messaging each other, which we obviously took advantage of.

We also used our phones as cameras to take pictures and videos of our process which we were able to post straight onto Facebook on our smart phones due to the proliferation of technology,

Since we were able to use our phones as cameras, it helped us greatly during the filming. For example, for the 90s scene, we had the cushions and the sofa set out exactly how it should be but after every take, we would have to re-adjust the sofa to how it was before, keeping the continuity. At this point, we would refer back to the photo we took of the set.

Construction

Album Cover

Photoshop

I had used Photoshop before, so it was quite easy to understand how to use the basic tools. This was a really useful software since we could put everything into layers which makes it easier to move around and manipulate. Whenever we tried out a new design for our album cover we were able to simply group all the layers and duplicate it onto a new file. We also used Photoshop to edit our promotional photos, getting rid of the background junk and slight imperfections using the heal tool, as well as for our banners at the top of our website.

Website

Web 2.0: Wix

Wix was a website I had never come across before, so I was really confused about how to use it. However after a while I was able to get used to it and it became really handy with such simple tools. One thing I liked about using wix was how easy it was to move things to where you wanted it. For example, if you wanted to move something so it would be at the top of every page, all you had to do was drag the image so it would be in the header section. I thought that feature would cause restrictions - however if you wanted an image to be in the body but it had to cross the header boundary, you could still do it.

The 2 images that crossed the header line are still in the body and not on every page

Evaluation

Screenshot from Surveymonkey

Surveymonkey was extremely useful since we were able to share our video and get feedback from anonymous people who can share their honest opinion with us without being biased. We were also able to look at the results overall and analyse them. It was easy to analyse most of the results since Surveymonkey automatically puts the gathered results into graphs unless it's written answers.

To make gifs, I used Adobe Photoshop. I preferred to use this software over websites like 'Imgflip' and 'gifmaker' since it didn't produce a gif with a watermark and the result becomes much clearer and cleaner. However the downside of this method was that it was quite time consuming. Also since I did not own Photoshop at home, I had to make the gifs at school.

However in desperate times, when I'm not at school, I would have to use 'Gifyoutube' to make gifs. The only problem with using this was the gifs that were created, was slightly sped up. Also it was harder to select the sections I wanted to include in the gif, whereas on Adobe Photoshop, I was able to look through frame by frame.

Made with Adobe Photoshop

Made with Gifyoutube

Adobe Premiere Pro

Another software I used from Adobe was Premiere Pro. I used this to make a short video of me narrating the analysis of our survey feedback. I used the skills I learnt from creating the dance sequence to be able to scale the images I imported and move the position of them so it fit nicely.

Screenshot of Prezi

Prezi was a very useful website online that allowed me to create an interactive slideshow. I really liked how you can freely move everything around, but it was quite time consuming.