Tuesday 4 April 2017

Evaluation Question 4 - Technologies

How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware and online - in this project?

Throughout this entire year we have used different kinds of softwarehardware and social media to work with.

Software

Final cut pro X


This software is what I have used to edit my entire coursework. I edited the entire music video on Final Cut. I also used it to edit together my videos for the evaluation questions and our practice video at the beginning of the year. Also, after having used SoundCloud once for our weekly podcasts, I decided to just use the voice record tool from Final Cut to record our podcasts, since we could then upload all the podcasts to YouTube

This was the second year that I used Final Cut Pro X, after having used it AS as well. Therefore I knew how to use all the basic tools already. However, there were some things I included in our music video this year, that we didn't have in our horror movie last year. This included; Green Screen, Key Framing and Layering. As with many things, the first thing I do when I don't know how to work with new tools in a software is to watch some tutorials on YouTube, where the working of these different tools is explained. Also, another student had visited fim school during the summer holidays, so I was able to learn a lot about the different tools from him. 

In our music video, we have a pool scene in which we filmed some of the extra narrative scenes, which connote that our singer is drowning in his sorrows. There is also a link between visuals and lyrics with the pool, because they appear twice on screen when he sings "I was an ocean lost in the open". 

I also used another effect such as the "Tint" for the pool scene. The pool was supposed to look like a dark ocean and ofcourse a pool is usually a very bright and clear blue. Therefore, a lot of effects were necessary so that it had the effect we wanted to achieve. I used tint and then color corrected the Tint effected to a "blue greenish" color. I was able to adjust how much of the tint I wanted. When adding too much tint, it was nearly impossible to see what was going on on the screen, since it was simply too dark.




This is the shot of the pool scene, before I had put any effects on it. As you can see it is really bright and on that day the sun was shining, which you can also slightly see in the shot through the water. Ofcourse we knew that this wouldn't have had the same effect, because it did not look as ominous or as dark as the picture below. The shot with the special effects also just linked better with our genre. 



This is the shot after I had added the tint effect and regulated the color. I also added the stabilization tool to this take, since it was very shaky as it was filmed underwater with a GoPro, which was very hard to keep steady. 






The stabilization tool in Final Cut was really useful, since we had some hand-held footage such as some of the narrative. We had filmed the narrative hand-held on purpose, however sometimes it became a bit too shaky and wouldn't look good, which is when we added the stabilization tool.

As mentioned above, we worked a lot more with green screen this year, as we also had better oppportunities, since we went to film in a green screen studio. I used some green screen in the music video, and was also able to layer and use it for a lot of useful takes. I was happy, because I managed to integrate green screen, without it looking too unprofessional. Below you can see a quick 8 second video, which shows the same clip before the keyer effect is added and after the keyer effect is added. Ofcourse the background doesn't become completely black in every single take where you add the keyer effect. However, I layered some color powder or in some cases the water or the forest scenes behind the performer and then that fact didn't matter anymore.



I also learned how to key frame, which is what I included in our music video when our female protagonist slapped our male protagonist. It was a really useful tool to learn since it emphasised the shot even further on the slap and gave more drama to the music video. Below you can see a GIF I created of the slap scene, which shows the key fram quite clearly. I created it using GIPHY, which I will come back to later in this post, when I look at social media.


via GIPHY

Offliberty


This year, I used this software called Offliberty quite a lot. It allowed me to copy the URL of a YouTube video that I wanted paste it in and then being able to download it, which I have used for several videos throughout the year, where I show where we got our inspiration from. Also, I wasn't able to put a track from my iTunes under the music video. This was when I discovered Offliberty in the first place, because it allowed me to also just download Audio, which I then imported to my iTunes and I could then use it for the music video in Final Cut Pro X.  

Skype

This year I used skype more than last year, because sometimes we had skype conversations where we could then discuss what we should do next and when we should film next. Also, for the evaluation questions, Kristian and I created a radio interview together. Since, we didn't have time to do it at the same time together, Kristian sent me his parts over Skype and I recorded myself and then clipped it together in Final Cut.

Quick Time Player

I used Quick Time Player to screen record some things such as the Tutorials I have created and to record a part of our music video if i wanted to upload just that part to YouTube. Also, most of the posts that I have done on Digipack, includes a screen recording, which was done on how Bronwen created the different parts of the digipack. 





Apps

Throughout the year I have used several Apps on my phone for the coursework, which include Facebook, Twitter, Blogger and Wix. Bronwen was the one who was in charge of our Instagram account, so I won't talk about that, because she used that App and I didn't use it. 

For our BMTH Facebook page, I created it so that we could all be the owners of the page and that we could all post on the Facebook site. Kristian and I were both in charge of the Facebook site and we mainly posted the same things on Twitter and on Facebook. It is a useful App to have, since it allowed me to carry it around with me anywhere. For example, when we were filming I was able to take pictures of the band members while performing and then directly post it on our Facebook page, rather than having to wait until I got home and could post it by using my Laptop. 
I was in charge of our Twitter account. This year was my very first experience with using Twitter for our coursework. I personally have never had an account and therefore I needed to find out how it worked first. However, as with most social media it wasn't very hard to figure out and was pretty basic. Again, when we were filming I was able to take pictures of the band members while performing and then directly post it on our Twitter, rather than having to wait until I got home and could post it by using my Laptop. It really just had certain advantages since I was there that moment. We had some people on Twitter who followed us, but we had more on Facebook, because the main part of our friends have Facebook and not Twitter. So all the people we have on Twitter to follow us, were random people, which we didn't know. Throughout this year I have learned the advantage of Twitter. It has allowed me to see how useful a tool it actually is for other things such as following other news and music groups. I found that information from bands was often first posted on Twitter rather than Facebook. 

Since, I am a fan of being able to post something whenever I am on the bus, just by using my phone, I tried to search whether wix had an app for the IPhone that I could then use. I found that they did and downloaded it immediately. For small changes to the website, it was easy to use the Wix App, however for the bigger changes I found that I quickly lost the overview by looking on such a small screen on my phone. Therefore,  I used wix on my laptop for all the big changes for our website. 




Already at AS I used the blogger app and I found that it was very useful so I kept using it this year. Again, same as with all the other apps I thought it was very useful, because I could then post using my phone as well. However, I mainly used it if we were filming somewhere for our music video or our evaluation questions so I could look up the notes I had written down in a blog post. 





Photoshop

Throughout the year we have worked quite a lot with Photoshop. We used Adobe CS5 Photoshop to design our digipack and to create all of our merchandise. Bronwen was the one who mainly focused on creating the digipack, whereas I created the posts for the digipack and mainly focused on our music video. Therefore, I only created one T-Shirt for our merch on the website, which was the wolf T-Shirt as you can see it on the  left. I generally hadn't used Photoshop that much ever, so for me it was quite a new experience to design this T-Shirt.
Below you can find a screen recording of when I created the T-Shirt using photoshp.




iPhotos

I have used iPhotos this year, to just import the videos and the images from my SD card to my laptop. Usually, it is possible to import the footage directly into Final Cut Pro X, however after several trials, failing each time, I decided to use the iPhotos approach. Since, I have a MacBook at home and a MacBook Retina as a laptop, I have been using the softwares produced by Apple mainly, including iTunes, iPhotos and Final Cut Pro X. Using iPhotos I was able to create loads of differnet albums for each shoot that we did so that I could seperate the different footage and that it would be more organised. I created one for all of the footage that we had filmed in the forest, one for all of the underwater footage, one for all of our fire scenes that we have added at the end of the music video, once that had some GoPro footage.

We also created different albums for each narrative shoot that we did. And created one that included all of our color powder scenes. It was also a useful tool because I was able to look through the footage and delete the scenes that we wouldn't have used. Some of the footage I deleted included footage that was too dark because the lighting had changed or just footage where the camera had recorded and we hadn't done anything besides talking.






Hardware 

iPhone 6S

I have an iPhone 6S, which I used some this year when we went filming. I found that even though the quality wasn't as good as Kristian's Canon 70D camera, it was still very useful. I only used it for filming the slo-mo scenes which we have included especially with the running sequence. We also filmed the last scene of burning the pictures but didn't include it in our music video because it was too slow and didn't look good. I wanted a fast and smooth throw of the picture so slo-mo wasn't the answer, which I also found for some of the other footage I had filmed in slo-mo such as the balloon scene, which we ended up not including. 

Green Screen

We included a lot of green screen in our music video, which we got to do because we went to a green screen studio as a school trip. I created a post on our trip and the green screen, which you can find here

Camera - Canon 70D

For most of our filming we used Kristian's camera Canon 70D. We found that it was easier to use it since we share a lot of cameras with other students in school and sometimes there wasn't a camera. Also the filming quality of the cameras was different, which is something we noticed when doing our practice shoot for Throne. Therefore, we decided to just use one camera so that you wouldn't be able to see a clear difference in quality on screen. 



Camera - SONY A58


For our practice video for "Throne" and practice video for "We Don't talk Anymore" and the first music video we tried to do for BMTH's track "Follow You". It has been very useful to have cameras that we can access when we need them and we often also used the SONY A58 to film our audience feedback in class. 



MacBook Retina


Throughout this year I have worked mainly on my MacBook Pro Retina, 13-inch. It has been very useful to have my own MacBook, because I have been able to edit at home whenever I could, using Final Cut Pro X and also I have been able to bring in my laptop and use it during lessons and my study periods. Mac is a very good tool to have and it works well to edit on Apple's software, Final Cut Pro. 

iMac


At the beginning of this year, our school received completely new iMacs, which were there for Media Students to use all year round wherever we wanted too. They have been very useful as well since we have had a shared library on there called "Media Studies", where we have been able to upload clips and share them in beween students and our individual group. 

Portable hardrive 

Throughout the year we have used different portable hardrives to faclitate the sharing in between our group. I have also had libraries on my portable hardrives, because at some point the storage on my MacBook had reached it's limits and therefore I took the libraries over to my portable hardrive so that I could remove them from my MacBook and have more storage available. 


SD card

Last year I was always reliable on someone elses SD card, which I didn't want to be this year. Therefore I bought a San Disk SD card, which had 32 GB available. This is the SD card that I have been using all year. I found that for my particular use it was just the right amount of space on an SD card, so that is definitely the one I would recommend for anyone with media coursework at A-Level. We also used Kristian's SD card, which was 64 GB, so together with that we didn't experience any problems with storage as compared to last year where we had SD cards of 4 and 8 GB. We also used a Micro SD card, for the different GoPro's that we used. 


GoPro Hero 

At the beginning of this year our school also received new GoPro's. The GoPro Hero, the GoPro Hero 5 and the GoPro Hero 4, which we have used for our music video. We used the GoPro Hero to film close-ups of the bass guitar, since it was Kristian's own GoPro, which then allowed us to use it for as long as we wanted instead of having to rent it out from school 


GoPro Hero 4

We used the GoPro hero 4 with a waterproof case to film underwater during the pool scenes. This was my first time with using a GoPro, but Kristian had good experience with it and he learned me how to use it. What was an advantage was that compared to the GoPro Hero the GoPro Hero 4 has a screen so that you can see what you are doing with it. On the other hand since we filmed underwater it was hard to see it as we didn't have any goggles and also it was very hard to film in a steady way. 


GoPro Hero 5 

The GoPro Hero 5, we used to film some of the green screen footage. However, we ended up not using the footage as it was quite shaky, since we hadn't brought a gorilla pod with us when we went to the green screen room. Even though we didn't use the footage it was a good experience to try and work with the Hero 5, since it was the newest version and shoots in 4K, which is why it has become one of the most popular GoPro's.



Tripod 


This year we used the Amazon Basics 70 Inch Pistol Grip Tripod, which was very useful. We filmed nearly all of our scenes with a Tri-Pod except for the pool scenes, running sequence and some of the narrative, which we one purpose decided to film hand-held. 




Polaroid pictures

We created some polroid pictures for our last scene where our female protagonist had to burn the pictures.

Drone


For some of the scenes in Follow You, we used Kristian's Drone to film, which was an experience since I had never filmed with a drone before. We decided not to use the footage in the end, since it was a bit shaky, due to a lot of wind on the day. This was also the reason why we didn't include the drone as a technology for Throne. However another reason was also because we were filming in the woods, having very little space for the drone to fly before it would hit a tree. Due to these reasons, there is no drone footage in our music video. 



Social Media

Facebook


We created a Facebook social media account, because we found that together with Twitter it was the most used social media for the real BMTH. Kristian was in charge of our Facebook account, where we mainly posted the same things, which I had posted on Twitter. We were all owners of the page and so we were all able to post. 


Twitter


I created a Twitter social media account. It was the first time ever that I had to tweet so I looked at other examples of Tweets from other rock bands, including BMTH and found that they used their Twitter to advertise their newest products, but also to thank fans for showing up at their concert and advising them on where they can get their last minute tickets. 



Instagram

Bronwen was in charge of our Instagram, which unfortunately I wasn't able to acces on my PC for indefinete reasons. She posted some pictures of the lead singer and the band mainly to capture some behind the scenes moments, rather than advertising such as Twitter and Facebook.

Blogger

Same as last year we used blogger to set up our entire blogs and create blog posts on everything we have done throughout the year. I enjoy working with the blogger tool as I find it very easy and simple to use. I also enjoy blogging and creating my links lists on my blog. I think it is easy to discover everything that you can do with blogger. At the beginning I thought it was only good to include links lists, but then I also discovered that I could include things such as the guardian music news feed, which I find very helpful as I can then read the articles that I know will interest me, whenever I access my blog.


Soundcloud

Last year I used sound cloud a lot more, whereas this year I only used it once for podcast 1. This was mainly because I found that soundcloud became hard to access in our school and I discovered it would be a lot easier to "just" record it in final cut pro X with the record voiceover tool and then add a picture that says vodcats and upload it to YouTube, This also allowed me to create a playlist called podcasts that includes all of our weekly podcasts. 

YouTube

Speaking of YouTube, I found myself much more organised with my YouTube channel this year as I immediately put my videos into different playlists each time I uploaded a video to YouTube. I created playlists called: Vodcasts, podcasts, rough cuts, evaluation question etc. and found that it was much easier to find everything for myself but I believe also for other people who will go take a look on my YouTube channel. 




Giphy

This year I used something new called Giphy, which is an online tool that allows you to create your own Giph's that last up until 9 seconds. I have used this a couple of times throughout the year and now also for some of my evaluation questions to emphasise of some points that I created in our music videos such as the key frame slap. 

1 comment:

  1. Your illustrations are almost all generic; you mention some specific things you did, but don't actually demo this, whether through screen recording/shots or sample footage (eg drone, gopro)
    i think you have much of this?

    ReplyDelete

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