Question 4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Hardware used.• Canon Legria RF406

• Dr Dre Beats Pill + portable Speaker

• 21.5” iMac

• Flashing strobe lights

• Nikon D3100 with standard 55mm lense

• Tripod

SOFTWARE USED.• OS X Yosemite Version: 10.10.5 (14F2009) (Processor and security status of

iMac)

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• Final Cut Pro Version: 10.2.3

• Adobe Photoshop CS5

• YouTube

• Wordpress

• Safari

Computer power.• The importance of using a powerful computer such as an iMac, and a good software engine

was vital. Our video was made on Final Cut Pro with hundreds and hundreds of layers and so it needed a lot of processing power.

• Quad Core Intel "Core i5” processor with four independent processor cores on a single chip, a 4 MB shared level 3 cache, 8 GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 SDRAM, a 1 TB hard drive, and an Intel Iris Pro 5200 graphics processor with 128 MB of shared system memory. These specs helped us because they allowed us to run programs such as Abode Photoshop and Final Cut Pro at an advanced speed with next to no lag and crashing.

What we used in planning and research development.

Google was the search engine used to get any photos, planning research, access to Wordpress for the blog and also YouTube.

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Safari is the free pre-installed web browser, which I used to access Google, YouTube and Wordpress.

Youtube was the website used to look at existing videos for inspiration, but also to help come up with a concept for our video, which I could master and make look as professional as possible. (For examples see next slide).

ordpressWordpress is a free blogging website. We used it to show our planning and progression throughout our project. We also used Wordpress to present our Music Video, Digipak and Advert. Below are screen shots on how we used word press.

• This is 2 clips from Nines – “Trapper of the Year” video which I watched on Youtube. One screenshot shows expensive gold chains round Nines’ neck in a nightclub, and the other; an aerial view of London. These are both expensive and unrealistic shots for our budget.

• And this is from 67 x Dimzy – “Illegal 2”, where there are a group of youths in hoods, and there’s a Vauxhall Astra in the background. This is still stereotypical grime but it’s a lot more affordable for a music video, and so his research and development on Youtube was crucial.

How and why we used the beats pill.• One common flaw we noticed with previous students’ videos was that the lip syncing wasn’t

always in time with the music and the performer didn’t always look as though they really wanted to “be there” in the filming. We thought about how they would’ve filmed; get a camera rolling and film their artist miming over the lyrics. Behind the scenes filming this could potentially create an awkward silence. Miming in front of your friends creates two potential problems – awkwardness, therefore making your artist look awkward and not realistic, and the miming just causes the potential problem of lip syncing being out of time.

• So how did the beats pill come into this? In the background of us filming we had the beats pill playing Spirit Bomb. This meant that while filming there was no awkward silence as the music was playing loudly in the background, and so Joel [our artist] could get into character. This, therefore allowed him to rap over the top of the music instead of just miming, this was extremely effective as facial expressions and gestures made by Joel were all genuine, as he genuinely rapping the song. This eliminated the possibility of mis-timed lip syncing as he was rapping, but also the awkwardness as we were all ‘vibing’ to Joel’s natural talent of rapping rather than an awkward silence. This made everything feel comfortable and come off more genuine, in turn making a more realistic and conventional music video.

So how did the beats pill come into this?

filming• To film we used a Canon Legria RF406 and a tripod. Predominantly just the camera was

used, and because of how compactible it is we were able to get effective close ups and move it smoothly with the artist. [Such as the shot below]

• The one scene where we used the tripod was the scene at “Clocktower”. It was used to create the effect of using a crane high up over the artist, which was effective as it gave us a range of different shot angles.

Shots shots shots.• Our shots for our digipak and advertisement poster were composed with a Nikon D3100

DSLR camera, a white background and strobe lights linked to the camera.

Here is a sample shot of Joel on the white background taken with the Nikon. This photo wasn’t chosen for our digipak as the edge of the background is visible in the photo, however it was a good draft photo and our inspiration was taken from Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Boy In Da Corner’.

This is another archive photo of Joel using the same equipment, but this time it was an extreme close up. In order to get this extreme level of focus, I first half-pressed the shutter down in order to get it focused on his face, and then pressed all the way down to take the photo.

The strobe lights were linked up to the camera by timing the flash with when the shutter was fully pressed down. This meant that when we took a photo our artist had maximum focus and the background was pristine white, looking both more professional but also easier to photoshop out if necessary.

This was a very much ‘trial and error’ process, trying to get the strobes in the correct place in order to achieve the desired lighting. As you can see from this photo the strobes were placed too high and so half of Joel’s body and background have a cast shadow.

After changing around the position of the lights, this is an example of a successful photo with the strobes. This wasn’t used for the digipak or advertisement but it was useful to use as a draft piece or example to compare different stances for our artist, and shot angles.

How Photoshop was used.

Here are the final products we made using Photoshop.

For our digipak we used the templates provided. I started by getting all the text on before adding any images as you can see below.

To get the image of the artist I had to cut it out from the white background from the original photo.

The tool we usedwas the quick selection tool.

Around the artist we had a red and blue aura below is how I achieved this.

To get the aura I put a drop shadow on both images. With the distance at 7, Spread at 37 and the size at 75 on each.