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

We used lots of new media technologies during all of the stages when making our media product. These technologies allowed us to obviously help in filming and making our music video, but also in stages of planning, research and in the creation of our website and album cover.

New Media Technologies during Research and Planning

During the research and planning stages of our project we used social media websites and applications such as Facebook and Skype. This helped us discuss and share ideas outside school to contribute more to the project.

 The Facebook screenshot on the left shows
how we were able to share information such as the location and date for the narrative shoot.

Below shows a Skype log between myself and Daniel calling each other about early ideas for the concept of the music video. We took breaks between calls to get on with research and called back when we had ideas that we wished to discuss.

Cameras and Lighting used during production

The Sony V1E

We used this camera to film the majority of our music video. The main reason we used this camera is because through research we found out that this would allow us to obtain our 'infinite black' look. It was very sophisticated camera, but was fairly easy to use and we had no problems through the process of filming of our video.

The Canon 5D Mark II

We used this camera mainly to take behind the scenes pictures that we would be able to include on our website. The other important use of this camera was when we took our promo shots of the band and album cover photos. The Various settings were useful in getting good high quality images.




We used a variety of Roof lights in our school Seward Studio

As well as general lighting of the band members. This setup allowed us to create loads of different effects during our filming process, such as back lights and spotlights.



Arri 650K red heads

The Arri 650K floor lights were very useful for allowing us to get any additional lighting that we needed. It was particularly useful on our outside school shoots in the narrative scenes where without the a Arri 650K red heads we would only have natural lighting.

Software and Web 2.0 that we used

This is a website that allows you to make your own websites, which we used to create the website for our band 'The Defiance'. It was a extremely helpful program that was easy use and allowed us to produce a realistic and professional site. You had to make a free account using your email, but then we were able to easily create the website with the technology it provided.

Adobe Photoshop is a very good software that we were all very experienced at using. It allowed us to edit pictures to include on various parts of our project such as the website and album cover. We also used Photoshop to create our album cover Digipack.

We used Adobe Premier to edit any videos that we created such as the Music video and the Behind the Scenes video. Again we were all advanced users of this software so found it easy to use.

Using New Media Technologies to assist in Establishing Band Image

We created a band twitter page for our band 'The Defiance' to make our band more interactive. It allows us to keep our audience updated with what is going on with our band. And also allows the audience to have a stronger connection with the band through interactivity of comments and tweets.

Below is a screenshot of our twitter page we created

We also made a Facebook Page for our band. As Facebook is the most used Social Network in the world it was good to use this as lots of people would be able to follow the page, therefore widening our audience reach. We exploited the popularity of Facebook by providing information on tour dates on our page and important notices and info about out band.

Below is a screenshot of the Facebook page we created.

Throughout the project and each stage we used a variety of different new media technologies that helped us make our successful media products. Without them as well as the quality of footage from less technologically advanced cameras, it would also have been a lot harder to organise tasks which we did through use of new social media like Facebook and Skype.

Teacher feedback on overall project

Feedback on our website:

• Branding needs to be throughout, a picture of the band on the banner needs to be added
• Photos need to be edited to make them interesting/quirky
• Replace Behind The Scenes photos with Promo Shots and only put Behind The Scenes photos in a Behind The Scenes gallery

Video:

Narrative-

• Scene of the person trying to buy the guitar is not clear, possibly cut that out and simplify the storyline

Performance-

• More Close Ups of Shobnam
• Cut to Shobnam before narrative shots
• With the shot of the mum coming in for Daniel's narrative, show Daniel first

Further feedback on the Music Video:

• Many of the band shots have too much space around the members, crop the shots
• First vocal shot needs to be big, maybe from the front, let the shot last longer
• Grading takes time so we need to allow time to grade
• Start the guitar shot earlier

Photoshoots

Our group had two photoshoot days. The first one went well we decided to categorise our shots into: Group Shots for shots of the entire band, Duo Shots: for shots of two members of the band together and Solo Shots: for individual shots of the band members. But, after gaining feedback from our teacher we saw that the group shots and duo shots had too big a gaps between the members. So, we organised another shoot day and printed out copies of some of the shots from the previous shoot so that the members could do the exact same poses but closer together. The feedback on our solo shots from the first shoot was really good so, we didn't focus on them.

Here is an example of a group shot from our first shoot that was too spaced out:

Now here is the improved version of the shot:

There is a real difference in the two shots as in the second one, the three of them have the visuals of a band and seem more united than the first one where Daniel was more distanced from the others.

Here are some other successful shots:

The last one is the band posing for the album cover. We wanted to make the look of them staring up "defiantly" and we tested out purposefully having space between them.

Narrative shoot feedback

Outdoor shoot 2:

After we had finished our second outdoor shoot, we came across the following issues:

• Lack of realism with busker seeing posters - Audition posters would usually be pasted all over a wall, not one randomly on a fence. This had to be re-shot the following week.
• Narrative sequence with someone trying to buy the guitar isn't clear - We simply didn't use this sequence and (Spoiler Alert) made a much simpler one of the busker just looking at his lack of money and looking dejected. 

Bedroom shoot 1

This test shoot was more a lighting test. The indoor lights were quite dim, and the natural lighting was not enough for our shots, therefore we used a portable lighting kit. The shots were successfully lit, however the narrative was slightly off as we did not have access to a drum-kit as we wanted.

Bedroom shoot 2

The lighting had already been decided and we had also decided to use an "imaginary" drum-kit to add to the meaning of our music video about the character having the dream of drumming. We also played with this footage and the actual performance drumming to convey this message. Furthermore, Aidan's mum was prepared to act as a parent in the video, and gave a realistic parental performance. We all directed the shots, giving her feedback when needed and the shots were realistic and successful. The feedback was:

• Well - lit
• Portrays meaning well and makes sense
• Good performance from both actors

Solo shoots

At times where all our group members were not available, we stuck to filming solo performances.

The hardest thing to keep constant was the lighting. Even though we had a lighting map and the colours and intensities of each and every light noted down, sometimes they did not look the same as before.

Performance shoot issues/Feedback

Some of our shoots were double booked, so we had to re-book or work around this. This meant that we had less time than we had originally though, so we had to work quickly. From previous performance shoots, we'd received the feedback:

• Lots of camera movement - good
• Improved performance from all 3 performers
• Better group dynamics
• Good lip-sync

We often experimented with handheld, and the result was shaky footage which we ended up using as it looked very conventional for music videos, especially of the rock genre, which often has very shaky fast-paced footage and editing.

Some of the targets we received were:

• More CU shot types (both faces and instruments)
• Too much distance between characters
• Lighting too dark at times
• Characters not lit properly (or dark faces)

In the end, we took all this into account for further shoots, and most of the final edit footage is from these later shoots.

First shoots

Here are some snippets from our shoots:

We started off by filming our solo parts in the music video. Sometimes, not everyone in the group was available for a shoot due to other A2 lessons, therefore we had to work around this.

Everyone filmed equally, and we encouraged each other's performance. Aidan and Daniel were especially keen to drop a beat.

Also, all of us have had experience setting up both our lighting set-ups using the lighting deck, electronic controls, and manual positioning.



We have an official The Defiance Drum decal!! All of us were quite keen to get started on performing.