Firstly, in order to present my construction, research, planning and evaluation in a way are different to the pre-Internet era, I need a platform to showcase it on, and one that was easy to access. That drove me to use Blogger, a site which allows users to create their own detailed blogs for any purpose necessary. The media course requires us to create a blog to showcase our products on because they encourage technological development. On Blogger, I have been able to present the development of my products, along with anything I have learnt theoretical during the process of learning through the year.
A significant part of my blog was research; it was the first thing I had to compile before I could even come close to producing a product or and idea for the cohesive package.Without the research my products wouldn't of been successful. I was first tasked with creating a presentation of my idea using a specific technology specializing in presenting ideas. Because of AS, I was knowledgeable of the technologies used to present anything. Ultimately I wanted to use a range of technologies to present my ideas so I took advantage of popular platforms; Microsoft Powerpoint, Prezi and Sway. I chose them as all function as slideshows so you can interact with them when viewing my blog as the public. These technologies are user friendly and extensive with designs and themes, so that they can appeal to whatever type of presentation you wish to make. In addition, the convergence compatibility was extremely beneficial because it demonstrated portability, which I took advantage of by editing Prezis and Powerpoints using my tablet/smartphone in situations where I was unable to access my computer. Because these technologies are so easy to use, it translates information to the audeince in a way where they can understand it easily as well. The most interesting parts of Prezi and Sway are that they are both animated slideshow's, with multiple themes, therefore I found it the most attractive and user friendly to work with. Although Powerpoint does the same, Prezi is an updated construction and I forsee a rising increase in the use of Prezi over PowerPoint. The advantages of Powerpoint are that it does encourage convergence, with support from SlideShare, where users can upload powerpoints to the internet and then share them. The ability to share things on the internet has also been a huge part of the research,planning and evaluation of my products. In order to showcase these technologies on Blogger, I have had to embed several posts via codes into the HTML prompt, which translates to text/image/videos etc. Embedding shows how easy it is to share the products with anyone in different types of formats.
I used these tools to present my music video ideas and research stages to my classmates. To present details of my research on Blogger I used for example, conventions, video analysis, album cover analysis, rock/indie/alternative artists and conventions, and evaluation questions. These tools ultimately contributed to the researching, documenting and understanding of how my product would eventually look.
Another tool that I used frequently throughout the coursework blog was YouTube. It is the most effective tool for uploading videos to the internet and for sharing them to people. YouTube is a service where artists will upload their music videos because it's the most popular website for such activity, so because of this I knew I was going to upload my video to YouTube. As well as uploading videos on YouTube for the research and planning part of the blog, it also proves to be an educative service, which taught me things I needed to know about during the development of my products as well as research and planning. For example, YouTube has taught me and inspired me to use a vast amount of features on Adobe Premiere Pro since AS-Level and has furthered my understanding of presenting immaculate flowing products through the use of other products that are free to watch. It has also extended my understanding of the importance of Photoshop and the usage of the Sony FDR-AX1E Digital 4K Camcorder with adaptable lenses. It also helped with the parody I was creating, because I needed to constantly watch live performances from the past in order to base my video on this nostalgic theme. When I completed my video I uploaded it to YouTube on the 4th January 2016. Just like Prezi, YouTube videos can be embedded onto websites (such as blogger) for people to view and share. In addition, I shared the video multiple times on multiple platforms like social media. I encouraged, friends, family and my teachers to view and share my video. As of today there are 906 views with 8 like and no dislikes. This once again shows the power and strength of media sharing through digital technologies. The advantages of YouTube are that it is a free service, meaning that there was no cost of uploading mt videos. I also used YouTube to upload my new ideas so that people could feeback their thoughts of the process of the development/research and planning, which helped towards the quantitative and qualitative research. Most of these videos were filmed on my smartphone or laptop which were easily uploaded from the devices which again demonstrates the convenience of convergence.
My mobile device (iPhone 6 running iOS 9) was an essential to the construction and planning stages of my products. Without the device, I wouldn't have been able to upload videos or edit presentations on the go, or take pictures, or communicate with my media team/group. It was a crucial part when it came to convenience as the applications in the newest software iOS 9 made the process of uploading, communicating, capturing, and researching almost instant. Using Facebook Messenger to communicate with my group was a key importance to the video shooting days. All the members of the cast and filming group have iPhones or Android's so they have access to the Facebook app so we had group chat rooms that were faster than SMS. This advancement meant we were punctual and worked together throughout the course, without constantly having to be together.
'Yh', 'ye' and 'skl' are all contractions of the words 'yeah' and 'school'.
The internet as a whole is a tool that I used both directly and indirectly. All the tools that I've already mentioned are indirect examples of internet. Direct examples of Internet use are search engines such as Google. I used Google to search for any of the tools used for my product as it has a sole purpose to find. I also used it to do research such as looking for artists similar to mine and their media products, conventions of my genre and the videos I was basing mine on. This involved a lot of extra research on elements such as Star Image and Target Audience (for parody/alt.rock). Because of the Internet's easy access, I was able to find this information quickly, thus allowing me to add extra detail within the process of making my cohesive package.
Just like PowerPoint, I used other pieces of offline software such as Word, where I was able to create documents for certain parts of production, research and planning and evaluation. An example of this use was for my stage setup, as I used word's pen tool to draw a setup before the shoot day. I also wrote all my questions to ask in the feedback and Task 2 interview videos. It was useful because it has several interactive features to make it easy to show people.
To film the video, I needed a professional video camera to make it possible to film. My school provided us with a Sony FDR-AX1, a 4K video camera with adaptable lenses such as 18mm for wide shots and 50mm for close ups. In AS we had older cameras so it took sometime to be able to use these new cameras, however they had the same principle and was easy to use to capture close up shots and great quality wide shots. I helped film a lot of the video and managed to capture every single shot from the timeline, including the panning wide shot which was easy to control and focus whilst moving compared to AS which was a lot more hands on. Because these cameras are digital it was very easy to transfer the footage onto another device such as a PC. These cameras have large storage SD Cards so it doesn't require wires or small VCR tapes to record the footage onto the computer like in AS. Our camera just required a small SD card device.
Once the footage had been uploaded to the computer, I started to transfer that footage to my new PC in which I downloaded a 30 day trial for Premiere Pro. Although our school provides this editing software free, It was very slow and could only be done in school and I wanted to do it during my free time and in the holidays. After transferring the footage I new what I needed to do to stitch the footage together due to my previous experience of editing videos from AS and my own little hobbies outside of school. Although the software was updated it was the same but easier to navigate and move objects. It took me less time to stitch together this video, as it requires less continuity editing like the thriller needed to tell a narrative, whereas our music video required less of this in terms of precise continuity to keep up a narrative. We didn't choose to to make a narrative so it was a little easier. However, we made a timeline so the editing process was continuous as I planned where I wanted all the shots to go to complete the planned order. Although our video didn't include a narrative, it didn't require shots based on the lyrics but I wanted to make sure that chorus included specific shots to show the band and the close up singing. In doing so I zoomed in on footage to get more emphasis from the singer. Also, to add a bit of spark to the video I added a few special effects where some worked and some didn't. The first one was meant to be a television set with our footage cropped into the screen. This idea didn't work as it was too obvious that it was just an image so we kept it full screen with the static effect. Also, as my editing skills had increased I added small tweaks such as the shimmer from the bass guitar to show glamour and that the lights weren't artificial.
On the subject of the shooting days, I was lucky enough to film the video in my school so we had a large amount of resources so all the footage from the camera was available for exporting as soon as we finished the filming, which made the process even quicker.
The next product I made was my Digi-Pak, which I enjoyed making just as much as the video. To create it, I needed to use Adobe Photoshop (CS6) which I had already used before on my computer at home as I use it as a recreational thing. As we wanted to make our digipak very simple and not look synthetic, most of the time spent was experimenting with fonts and colors. After around 10 fonts found I managed to find one called Floydian in which I layered several times and cut out parts of the font to which it made it look like a piece of graffiti on a wall. Apart from that, the rest I did was just changing the contrast and color of the image and cropping it into the right dimensions. The lighting of the photo was completely artificial from the software and the reason for putting the unique logo above the band on the wall is to suggest their entrance into the music industry and whats behind the wall is where the music begins. It doesn't relate to the video at all as it was completely niche and we wanted to be represented as different and creative.
We also wanted to look like we were signed as a debut album, so Google helped us find copyright labels (Domino and Beggars Group) and bar-code UMG labels to make it legitimate.
The final products to create from the cohesive package was the website. The most well known free online website designing software we used was WIX. Just like, Sway, it is extremely user friendly and also provides templates to help you create the perfect website for your chosen product/s. We made 3 websites to start off with as we wanted to conclude with one of them. The first two websites were not based on any conventions rather than a generic black color to show simplicity. The layout was completely improvised however they looked average. Our knowledge on the website making was limited so we thought by making 3 we would be able to become better at designing the perfect online hub for The Walls.
The layout of the first one was completely uneven and the second one was all one page and didn't have links. Because we had limited knowledge on website design technology we decided to form an inspiration from an alternative rock band Stereophonics. Here is our finished website:
The layout is similar to that of Stereophonics, but most elements are of our own ideas. I wanted to incorporate the conventions of alt.rock and parody in the website so by having the video as the first focal point almost forces people to click the play button so it immediately introduces us as a band and individuals. Also, we wanted to add new media technological advancements such as the video in the background to make it more exciting for viewers to look at. It acts as a teaser. Further technologies were included such as the prominent examples such as social media through; Facebook, Twitter etc. I was also able to create hyperlinks to websites where people could buy our tickets, find out information about our label. This displays how convergence is so important throughout the online age as the new technology gives the target audience all the information they need to know about the artist all in one place.
A key feature of the website was the merchandise. Many artists have their own merchandise on external websites. I put t-shirts, jumpers and hats etc as they have a continual use without completely being seasonal, therefore people would buy it for several reasons. I personalised it all on photoshop again. The technology enabled me to attach the logo to these products. Without photoshop I wouldn't of been able to do it.
In conclusions, I believe I have sufficiently used new media technology through a process of construction, research, planning and evaluation of my cohesive package of products for my artist. We live in a time where we depend on it to become a prosumer and can further help add to the consumer market and target specific audiences as large as on a global scale.
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