HOW DID YOU USE NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES? 

FINAL CUT PRO

The side bar allowed me to see all of our imported footage at once. I was also able to organise my footage into libraries so that didn’t mix any videos up and get confused. Compared to iMovie the importing process is much shorted from 5 minutes to like 10 seconds.  

The most thing I found useful about Final Cut Pro was the tools like Blade and Trim, it just made it easier to create my video. The time line in Final cut pro was in a lot more detail. I was able to see minutes and seconds which made it easy to have certain clips start or end on the beat of the music.

I feel my skills developed so much just by using the software and I feel like I just used the basics and have so much more to learn about Final Cut Pro. 

FINAL CUT PRO

I have used an advanced video editing programme called 'Final Cut Pro'. This programme has a variety of effects, transitions, adjustments to meet the plans for my video. Final cut pro is a new technology that I was introduced to in my A2 year. It was a massive upgrade from iMovie that was used for preliminary tasks. Final cut pro gave a sharper and higher definition quality to video.

The range of effect has allowed me to experiment and see the best way to communicate my idea. I've decided that most of my music video except the end is going to be in black and white. I feel it highlight that some people are unaware of the problems within society; they see the situation as black and white, unconscious of the injustice to black women in society. The black and white to me looks professional, unlike using random colours like yellow and pink as those colours are associated with children, and that isn’t my target audience.

FINAL CUT PRO

I’ve been using 'Bad TV' effect to create a distortion effect over my work, to convey how the media constructs the idea of beauty. It helps communicate the ideas of a beauty society disruptive and negative. 
 

The style of my music video is fast and reversed and a lot of distortion to communicate the negative outcomes that the media and society has on the ideas of beauty and consequently the burden on black females. The reverse also suggests that our society is not progressing and is not moving away from this. 

FINAL CUT PRO

My music video is created in the style of montage collaborating;  distortion and subversion of society, references  and the outcome of living in a media saturated society. I wanted to make sure that the audience follows the video without confusion therefore I continuously watched parts of my music video more than once to examine the speed to reassure that it's fast enough for them to understand the concept of the video and the specific shot.

My video had a particular editing style to communicate in tend my video communicated my message to my target audience. I chose to go for is abstract, style of editing. I experimented with different effects, speed, cuts and colour adjustments to ensure that the all the effects used effect blended well and portrayed my message clearly. For example I wanted show how the media injects us with the idea of beauty and distorts our own views. I went through multiple effects and choose ‘Bad Tv’ and ‘Earthquake’ as I felt it communicated the idea and still looked appealing. I felt other effects like censor looked slightly amateur as the effect looked blurry and random.

FINAL CUT PRO

While editing I also choose not to use transitions, they looked very GCSE, and amateur. Also it looked like I was trying to excessive editing effects on my music video. The transitions didn’t fit well with my music video. When looking Hip-Hop videos like 50 cent ‘In da club’ Notorious BIG ‘Big Papa’ none of the videos had obvious transitions, I decided to just cut to different visuals following the beat of the song.

I wouldn’t have been able to do long shots as it would look so out of place due to the song being fast pace. I experimented with different paces for my shots, and realised the best speed for my shots was ‘2x or 4x’ as it worked best as it was fast enough to see and understand what was going on in the shot. At some points during the end of my video some shots were ‘8x’ as I was only wanting to show snippets of the beginning of my video. I also had a time-lapse so it was ‘20x’ as I needed the shot to faster to match the beat of the song, but it didn’t change the quality of the shot

BLOGGER

Blogger played a huge role in my entire project as it was great platform for me to share my work and music video. It was easy use as I posted my AS Media work on Blogger last year.

Customise and layout was what I enjoy Blogger the most, as I am able to use my house style, as I am aware that many of my audience monitor my Blog. Layout is helpful as it is easy to navigate my blog using labels.

The tool bar allowed me to import pictures and videos, for example screenshots and clips of my work. Also importing videos from YouTube to show work that I was inspired by. When you’ve finished creating your post can publish for everyone to see. I like the fact that I can correct my mistakes and update my post.

Blogger allows people to leave feedback; this was helpful as my teacher could tell me how to improve my blog, as well as getting audience feedback. Taking criticism and acting on it. It acts as a live focus group.

QUICKTIME 

QuickTime is technological software, enabling me to screen record. This software was very important to my video as a section of my video is two images being photo shopped lighter. I did this to communicate the idea of society constructing ideology of beauty.

The first image is the original and the one next to it is the fake. I brighten the image to represent Hooks idea of colour codes that lighter skinned women fit better in western society’s idea of beauty. Having them next to each other suggest that there is an on-going battle with society’s views and black women.

PHOTOSHOP

Media Man: I wanted to show that the media transmits the western ideology of beauty, so i decided to create a symbol/image to show this in my video.  At first I used a old school TV but when I showed it to my teacher he thought it was a bit cliché, that i should show it in a more modern way. So I decided to use Photoshop to create the 'media man'. As most media outlets are run and owned by white middle class men, I used a image a white male in a suit and replaced his head with photo shopped flat screen TV. I use the image of the 'media man' throughout my video to constantly remind my audience that beauty is socially constructed. 

PHOTOSHOP

AD&CD Cover: I took an image and used the magic wound tool to remove the background the models face etc just to have a silhouette of her. I thought using a model with an afro would be more appealing as it portrays the models I used and the women i am addressing in my video.

I then duplicated the layer to be above the layer of text. I used the ink tool to make the silhouette a shade of brown. I used the ‘Duplicating Layer’ tool to duplicate the text ‘the ideology of beauty-black is beauty- media saturated society-black is beauty’.

Slides

Slides allowed me to upload presentations and get the embed code which would enable me to put it into Blogger.

Slides was an upgrade form Microsoft  as I was able to make the presentations on it and share it instantly without having to use an external source. This made my uploading process a lot easier and faster. 

Powtoon

Powtoon was great was to present information in a creative way. The movement of text and images on the screen, helped to keep my audience engaged and stooped my information from being overwhelming and boring 

YouTube

During the evaluation stage, I posted my music video on Youtube, this allowed me share my video for free and get opinions on my video. YouTube also helped me during my research stage stage as it allowed me to upload videos quickly, for example my focus group video. Exporting videos from iMovie onto Blogger isn't great as it only works on certain computers. Using YouTube wasn't like this.I could just embed the code.  

YouTube

I also used youtube to get inspiration from professional media text and previous A2 work. 

Here are screenshots from the song 'I Bet' by Ciara. The extreme close-ups are perfect for my music video. When looking at A2 videos models were to shy to do close-ups, but close-ups help to convey emotion, so I decided to multiple close-ups.

iMovie 

I used iMovie to do a talk over

of me explaining theories I linked to my music video. Using this software was helpful, as I could record on it and trim parts I didn't like, meaning I didn't have to start again everytime I got things wrong.

Also I used iMovie to edit my audience feedback, I was able to to cut out the 'ummmms' and pauses. 

CAMERA 

I decided to film on both using a Cannon EOS 600D and NIKON D3200 DSLR. To see which camera was best to us. The Canon was better quality so I decided to use it. The NIKON when filming made some shots slightly grainy in certain lighting.  

iPhone

I used my iPhone to 

help schedule my recording dates, as well as planning shots.

I did shot lists on paper but using my phone was more convenient as my phone is more accessible as I always have it on me. Walking around with paper can be annoying, and you may forget them. 

Vimeo 

During my research and planning stage, I was able to watch 'Dark Girls' and 'Light Girls', these two documentaries helped me with explaining the concept of my video, also I was able to gather key issues i.e competition between black women. The videos were aren't anywhere else, so without Vimeo I wouldn't have been able to watch these documentaries nor get ideas.