Firstly, I had to find an artist since I didn't know anyone who was in a band or who produced music. To do this I used the internet and found a website called Unsigned.com which has loads of artists on it looking to be signed up and to expand their fan base. It was here that I found Arty's profile page with a link to his Facebook page and website. After listening to some of his tracks I quickly fell in love with the song Heat and contacted him through Facebook about using the song for a fan made video. He said I could use the song but wouldn't be able to take a big part in the planning and construction stages since he was busy producing music in New York. Even though not having Arty's input would be a setback I was confident that I could put some imagery together to go with this great song. It was from here I used the worldwide video site youtube to browse music videos of electropop artists like David Guetta and Nero to get some inspiration of what features made a great music video of that genre.
Although I was lucky to find an artist who was willing to cooperate it took me a lot of time to do this sending lots of emails to different people and at the same time making sure that their music was something I thought I could make a music video out of. In addition since Arty lives in the USA I couldn't feature him in the video or do a interview with him which is also a downside.
I also used Microsoft Word to type out the questionnaire for my audience research. This was important because if I didn't know what the audience wanted in the video it would be destined to fail. Another product I used was my Samsung Galaxy S2 mobile phone to take still shots of things like my storyboard (no I didn't get given it I have a part-time job). I also used my mobile phone to text my friends James and Karima. It was important to keep in contact with them so I could plan ahead dates to film, tell them what to wear and I even texted their lines to them for the start of the movie!
I also used Facebook in order to message James and Karima about filming dates and times etc.. I also used it to connect with Arty through his Facebook page and listen to his music to see if it fitted with my ideas for the video.
I also used youtube and Google throughout all three processes but mostly in the research where I watched video's to find more about electropop and I watched videos about software like Photoshop in order grasp how the program works. I used Google to found out more about artists like David Guetta. For instance, I would research where they got there inspiration from and what things they consider to be associated with their music.
Construction
To shoot the film I used two camera's. My Samsung Galaxy S2 which shoots in HD1080P and my Flip Ultra HD camera which is great because it fits nicely into your pocket. Even though I have some old digital cameras at home I chose to use the flip Camera since it comes with it's own computer software Flipshare which is great for cutting down clips ready to be edited. I also chose this camera because it has great image stabilization and comes with optical zoom which means I didn't have to move in closer or further away that much. The ultra HD also shoots at 50 fps (frames per second) which means that there is virtually no lag on the camera even when objects are fast moving. After you film a shot is comes pre loaded into the computer in H.264 format which is a very high resolution video format. However, the best thing about this camera is it's connection capability which means that can work with any program like Imovie, Powerdirector and Adobe Premier Pro. It also doesn't use a connection wire and instead has a USB connector in the camera which plugs straight into the camera. This meant I didn't have to worry about loosing any connector leads.
Some bad points about this camera however are that it is very hard to keep still especially with a tripod. Therefore, this meant I had to edit out a lot more jumps in the music video. Even though video in the night is bad on most camera's I found it especially bad on the Flip Ultra HD - a lot of the video was fuzzy or even unavailable in the dark. In addition the still shots it takes aren't very good which is why I used my Samsung to do these.
To edit my film I used Powerdirector 10 Ultra 64 Bit edition. I chose this software over Imovie which I used last year because the interface is much more clearer and I find that there are more options to play around with. For instance, Powerdirector has over 50 transitioning effects and has it's own audio editor included.
The tool I found most useful on there was the power tools option which lets you determine the speed of the video. It also comes with over 300 video tools including dual core video rendering. You can also free hand draw over video clips to add information in. I used this to add the writing at the start of my music video which I found very effective. One of the best things about Powerdirector though is it's ability smart fix videos. It can use its true theatre technology to fix impurities like noise, lightning and it can even up scale SD video in HD quality which is something Imovie can't do. One other tool that I played around with when editing my video was the WaveEditor tool which allows you to edit the music so that certain parts of the video have louder audio than others it also allows you to speed up parts of the audio as well. I implemented a speed up effect at the start of the video in order to match the visuals with the music. Finally the last tool I will point out that makes it stand out above Imovie is it's export to devices tool. This meant that I was able to export the video to my Samsung Galaxy S2 to show people the video instead of having to carry around my Laptop or USB.
A couple of bad points about Powerdirector though is that you have to download most of the effects and tools to use on the software from their website. This is time consuming which meant making the video took a lot more effort. In addition because it uses such a user friendly interface the software unintentionally hides more advanced tools that can make the video much better and to get to these I had to do some research into the software.
Another piece of tech I used was Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 Extended Edition. I used this to produce my print work which included the CD cover and magazine advert. I found this software very helpful since it let me erase bits of the picture I didn't want using the crop and magic wand tools. It was also very easy to adjust the size of the image so that it would fit into a CD case. Another thing I like about Photoshop is it's layer functionality which was very useful when creating my front album cover. This meant I could drag the cropped picture of James over onto my pre-made background without worrying about him turning a different colour or looking more transparent. Another tool I used throughout my print work was the distortion tool particularly on text. I found the concept of distortion to be a very important aspect of electropop since it goes with the whole funky idea of pop music. In my print work I used this tool to distort the writing on the front page on my booklet and on the back cover to make Arty's name stand out above everything else.
Although Photoshop is the most advanced tool in it's market I found that for me personally it takes a lot of time to get used to all the tools and effects that can be produced with it. When I first used Photoshop I was overwhelmed by all the buttons that appeared on screen and I had to spent several hours watching tutorial videos on youtube to get the gist of it.
Evaluation
The main piece of technology I used here was Blogger which I have been using throughout this project. I think I was able to get the most out of Blogger this year since I had used it last year as well for my AS project. I found out how to import youtube videos in and how to upload pictures from your hard-drive or phone onto Blogger. I again also used my phone to take a shot of the post-product questionnaire and my computer to take screen shots of my work where necessary.
Even though Blogger is a nice piece of software for recording your work I find that it can sometimes be very slow. For example, when I was trying to upload my print work onto Blogger it took a very long time and wouldn't let me put pictures close together. Also compared to slideshare.net I found Blogger wasn't as interactive and the layout generally looks more dull.
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