We used a selection of new media technologies in the planning and research process, in the creation of are media products and the subsequent evaluation stages.
Planning/research
In order to gain an understanding of the 'indie' genre we would be representing and the conventions of existing media products, we used a variety of video hosting websites, including Muzu, Youtube and Yahoo Music. This meant that we had instant access to existing videos, and were able to specifically search for videos from the indie genre. One of the advantages of using Muzu was that we were able to search for specific artists and study several of their videos, by browsing their 'channels.' Since we would be using an established band on a record label, we had the advantage of being able to access a library of their existing videos. Before the existence of such websites, we would have had to rely on music channels, which would have wasted a large amount of time and meant that we were not able to watch them multiple times in a sitting, pause or rewind- unless we had recorded it from the television. In addition, videos of the indie genre are aimed at an alternative audience, so are not often featured on the main music channels such as MTV, with the exception of some chart-topping 'indie pop' bands such as Kings of Leon. This would mean we would probably have have had to rely on the NME channel, making it very unlikely that the videos we wanted to see would come on.
We were able to ask the band's permission to use our chosen track through a message sent to their Youtube channel. Without this platform, we would have had to write to the band, which would have been impractical and taken a lot longer to get a response.
We also used new media technology for deciding on which song to use for our music video from our band's album "Wall of Arms", as they had given copyright permission for us to use any song from it. We used the downloaded free music programme Spotify listen to the whole album without having to make a purchase. Before the advent of this programme and similar music sharing sites such as Last Fm, we would have had to pay to download possible tracks or had to buy a physical copy.
Another advantage of using the interactive video website Youtube was that we were able to view comments from the target audience on existing videos, which gave us a greater understanding of their expectations. The 'star' rating and number of views also indicated which of the videos we were looking at were most popular and liked by the audience.
We also used 3G phones during the planning process, as this enabled us to transfer the our chosen track which we had downloaded between the members of our group, via the bluetooth feature on our MP3 phones. This meant that we did not have to 'rip' the track from the album or download it individually.
New media technologies were also a key part of the analysis process in relation to our ancillary texts. When researching into digipaks of the indie genre. Spotify allowed us to view the album artwork for the existing Maccabees albums for free, and the 'artist radio' feature meant that we could view a variety of album artwork from similar indie artists, in order to gain a greater understanding of the conventions of the genre. This would previously have involved purchasing or borrow the albums in order to see the artwork, so we saved a lot of time thanks to this programme.We were also able to widen our understanding of the target audience by browsing the website of the indie music magazine 'NME' and 'Uncut' as these are 'alternative' magazines that have the same target audience as our products, so would be a suitable outlet for our advert. It also allowed us to see which artists are currently popular, without having to survey people or purchase the physical format of the magazine.
Construction
We used blogging to organise all of our work and upload files. The 'follow' feature allowed us to share information such as initial ideas for the video and possible photographs for the magazine advert and digipak between our group easily, which saved us having to email them to each other or using a USB stick/CD to transfer them between computers. Another advantage of blogging is that it meant that we could work on our coursework from any computer, at home or at school. This was much easier than having multiple word documents or powerpoint presentations. We also used Fronter for transferring files between computers, as it is a website it was also easily accessible from any computer.
We used Youtube to upload our animatic and video production, which meant that we were able to 'embed' them onto our blogs without using a DVD. This also made it easy for us to share the videos between our group, which were uploaded on one of our Youtube accounts, without us having to add them individually.We were able to transfer the music track for our video onto the computer we would be using to edit using the bluetooth function from one of our MP3 phones. This meant that we did not have to use a memory stick to transfer it.
Our video was recorded using an high definition camera onto an SD card at 720p quality. This meant that the resulting quality was much higher than our previous projects, which was recorded onto a DV tape. Using Imovie HD meant that we were able to keep the high quality, although when we finally uploaded our video to youtube the quality was greatly reduced and pixelated, as we had compressed it when exporting it from Imovie. This meant that we had to upload it again at full quality, and thanks to the HQ setting on Youtube our video looked much better quality after this.
To create our magazine advert we used an online editing programme called Picnik and Abode Photoshop. This allowed us to layer images and create the 'polaroid' photos seen on the poster, without having to take actual polaroid photographs, as they are fast becoming a redundant format so the camera may have been difficult to get hold of. We used a programme called Paint Shop Pro 9 to create the digipak, which had a 'clone' function that allowed us to stitch images together to make the front cover look like a panoramic photo.
Evaluation
By uploading our video onto the interactive websites Facebook and Youtube, we were able to gain feedback from a wider global audience, rather than our peers and family members, as we had previously done at AS level. We had comments from a variety users around the world, and many gave more insightful and unbiased feedback than when we have done audience surveys in the past, as they had chosen to comment rather than doing it as a favour to us.
We again use the embed feauture on Blogger at the evaluation stage, in order to share feedback interviews we had each taken between the group.
Monday, 1 February 2010
3. What have you learnt from audience feedback?
I have answered this question in the form of a podcast:
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