Evaluation Question 4

Software

For the research purposes of the production of our music video I used a variety of software to help with my research. Firstly, a piece of software specific to Apple I used Safari. Safari was a massive asset in the research side of my production. Safari allowed us to find the focus websites which we focused our research on such as Kaleo’s own website as well as YouTube where we found the song.

Furthering this, YouTube was a massive part of the production for our music video. I used YouTube to get the videos I analysed. The analysis I did of the YouTube videos I focused on was very helpful because it allowed me to find the parts of the music video I liked to focus on. An example of this being lighting. This was something I picked up on a lot in my analysis’ and therefore when it came to the actual production of my music video I was very focused on making sure the lighting was right for the mood we were trying to portray. Additionally, we also used YouTube for inspiration. Particularly for me, indie rock was a very new genre and with YouTube I was able to watch different music videos from that same genre to give me a better idea of what the common conventions were and the style they typically followed. YouTube was also a platform I used to upload my music video on to as well as one of my other evaluation questions, my target audience magazine research interviews, my auditions and also testing the lip syncing on it. YouTube was a successful piece of software to use because not only did it allow me to upload my videos, it also allowed me to do it with ease and in good time. YouTube as a software is accessible and relative easy to use to upload videos on to. It also doesn’t ruin the video quality like some other video uploading software does.

Another piece of software I used in the planning and research stages of my media video journey was Tumblr. Tumblr was a software I had previously used and was what I used to help devise my mood boards. I did a mood board for indie rock as a genre, a mood board for my character and a mood for my target audience. With the help of Tumblr I was able to collate a collection of pictures which acted a symbolism for my chosen area of focus. Tumblr was a good piece of software to use because it has a broad selection of pictures which could be used to present any number of genres, types of characters or target audiences and this gave me the opportunity to be specific.

Survey Monkey was another piece of software we used which was of high importance in collecting data which became invaluable to create a music video which targeted our audience in a highly effective way and still portrayed the common conventions of the indie rock genre. The use of Survey Monkey meant I could reach a larger audience because it was more accessible and could be shared through my social media sites including Facebook and Instagram in order to get responses for a larger audience.

The two main pieces of software apart from Blogger that I used for presenting were Prezi and Powerpoint. I like both these pieces of software for different reasons. Firstly, I really like Prezi because it’s new, up to date and exciting to visually. However, I don’t think it is the easiest to use and it does take a while to understand but once you have done that it’s great! For Powerpoint I love how easy it is to use and the broad range of options you have to make your work really personalised. I used Prezi to present my journey through certain elements of the process or to segregate different information which all had relevance together. I think using Prezi and Powerpoint makes information look more interesting and often allows the audience to be more involved making it better for them to read. I also used Powerpoint to make my logo designs. I chose to do this because I am no wholly familiar with photoshop and don’t know how to use it to a standard where I could actually make something from it so I chose to do it on Powerpoint where I felt more within my comfort zone and could still do what I wanted to do but with ease. Another piece of software I used for presentation purposes was keynotes. Keynotes is a presentation similar to powerpoint but an Apple version. I used keynote to do lyric analysis as part of my research. I felt that in order to full understand the message our song was portraying I needed to full break it down which helped me a lot make sense of the song and with keynotes I was able to digitally add those annotations around the song with highlighting and arrows.

Google was a massive asset to my research because I used it to research most things. One specific moment when Google was particularly useful was when I needed to research schizophrenia. Schizophrenia was the hidden narrative behind our music video and was what my music video centred around. Specifically, the website Mind was very good in informing us on the condition so we could approach the topic sensitivity and with accuracy. Not only did I use just Google as a search engine but I also used Google Images and Google Maps. I used Google Images alongside Tumblr to find images for my mood boards. I used google maps when we were planning our filming days and research days. Specifically, when we went to Rochester, I printed off a google map before hand and drew on a map. This allowed for ultimate productivity because we had a specific plan of where we was filming, what we was filming and roughly how much time we wanted to spend filming in that location. This was very beneficially, especially as it was a cold night!

Our two pieces of software we used for the videos were iMovie and Final Cut Pro. iMovie we used for the smaller videos such as our auditions and our interview. We chose to do this because iMovie was a piece of software I was much more familiar with from year 12 and therefore meant I could piece together the footage together with ease and put the captions on top easily. It took less time which worked effectively. However for the main editing for the music video, myself and Emily chose to use Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Pro was a software completely new to both myself and Emily which was obviously a challenge at first but we did adapt to it quite easily. The advantages of using Final Cut Pro was that it such a larger selection of options for editing and gave us the opportunity to personalise our music video as much as we wanted to. Additionally, Final Cut Pro was so much more precise than iMovie which really helped, specifically when cutting the lip syncing clips in. Our whole experience with Final Cut Pro was a very positive one and it was a fantastic bit of software which was a massive influence in making a music video which we had envisioned.

Our main form of communication between myself and Emily was via iMessage. iMessage allowed us to discuss our ideas, show each other design ideas, create plans for travelling all at no cost at all. It made sharing ideas much easier and allowed up to do it even if we were out and didn’t require us to be together to make the big decisions or plan. Another piece of software we also used for communication was google mail to email the publishers for copy right issues. This was an effective way to communicate because similarly to imessage, it doesn’t cost money and it’s easy to do. It also works quickly and allows for quick and precise responses. 

The last three websites of software that I used were Blogger, the Atlantic Records website and the Southeastern Rail website. Blogger really helped me with my understanding of the coursework requirements. I spent a considerable amount of time analysing the work of previous students to understand what content I needed to cover and from the use of Blogger it was easy to access and gave me the opportunity to view it when and wherever I wanted as long as I had internet connection. The Atlantic Records website I used predominantly for research to help me build up a better image of who Kaleo were as a group and their style. Additionally, I could see which other artists were also signed with them and look for familiarities between the other signed artists and Kaleo. Our last website of use was the Southeastern Rail website. We used this website to plan our journeys to Canterbury and to Rochester, both of which we got to via train. It also helped us to look at the cost so we could work out pricing as we also paid for our other actress Paige who helped us by playing the second half of our main character and therefore needed to come to our locations with us.

Hardware

The only two bits of software we used were a canon 1300d camera to film our music video on and my iPad to film the auditions, the interviews and our lip sync task on. The camera was such good quality and provided the detail which we were really focused on providing. It helped making our footage more intense and this really helped portray the mood at such a harsh level. We used my iPad to film the other videos because although the video quality wasn’t quite as good, it was easier to use and require less setting up time meaning we could be effective with time management.