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

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

We used technologies in our construction by filming with DSLR cameras, a modern cheap and effective alternative to the more expensive professional film cameras produced by RED or Alexa. Our footage is recorded onto class 10 SDHC cards because they are a widely accepted storage medium.

In order to keep filesize down and our editing time short, we chose to record in 720p. this is because we did not feel 1080p was necessary as we are not a full scale production company and working to a deadline. 1080p takes three times longer to process and render, And not everyone can actually play it. 720p also gave us the extra ability to record at the higher frame rate of 60fps, which we used for three of our narrative shots that are in slow motion at the end of the video.

We did not see the need to use external microphones like we did last year because due to the nature of music videos, it is a rarity to use camera onboard audio in the final piece, usually because of the poor quality integrated microphones.

We used tripods to help us film the majority of our performance shots to ensure the camera was kept stable and still. It allowed me to film on my own when I needed to and granted us that extra flexibility of being able to record unaided.

We used iPhones in order to help us navigate to locations we had not been before, as well as to record videos, take photos for our preliminary shoots and to use as a secondary camera if needs be, as they have the capability to shoot in 1080p at 30 frames per second As you can see right now. We did not use these to film any of our shots, as we found that we would not need the second camera we initially planed to use after deciding not to shoot the ‘rave’ scene we discussed in our planning.

We used a variety of lenses to shoot our video. This was one of the main reasons we used a DLSR opposed to a camcorder; to give us flexibility in the effect we would achieve. This 70-200 was useful for some of the performance shots, as it gave us a better depth of field. This was used for my main performance shot in the alleyway, as it is an f/2.8 lens that has great low light capability. The 24mm lens I am using to record this video, was far too wide and not suitable.

We used Adobe software for the editing of our production. Audition was used to manage the audio you are hearing now, which we added to the video file recorded from this camera. If you were wondering why I clapped at the beginning of the video, it was to create a noticeable spike in the audio waveform, as well as a visual of my hands so that I can sync the two for perfect audio. This is good practice when recording from two different sources at the same time.

We used premiere for the main body of our editing. We used it for last year’s production and found it to be perfectly suited to our needs.

We didn’t use after effects this year, because we didn’t want to overdo our video. We planned to use twixtor for one shot, but it was omitted from the final cut of our video.

We have used blogger, slideshare, facebook, twitter and youtube to help us promote, document and showcase our video. Our twitter account was very successful and gained a substantial amount of retweets and followers as a result of sharing our video and images. This is an example of how well viral advertising has worked for us.

I feel that we have made good use of all of the technologies available to us. We ensured that we understood each one fully in order to use it to it’s potential and feel that our final video serves as an ideal demonstration of how well we have done just that.