POST #56 - EVALUATION QUESTION 4
This entire A2 project has been heavily reliant on modern technology and practices, many of which weren't even possible 20 years ago. Digital editing, online street views, and small scale storage are all commodities now that hadn't been accomplished in the 1990s. In each stage of production, I used many different technologies.
RESEARCH
PREVIOUS A-LEVEL VIDEOS
Before we started going full into this project, we had a look at some A-Level videos that were made by previous years. These weren't strictly limited to just from our 6th Form, we also had a look at some publicly available videos from other schools as well. When looking at these videos, we were given sheets to fill in where we put down the strengths and weaknesses of each video, and then a score out of 40. This exercise really helped with identifying what we wanted to try and avoid, but also pushed some elements which could be effective in a different context, if we wanted to use them in our own videos.
VIDEO SHARING PLATFORMS
When researching into other music videos, we mainly used YouTube to find them. YouTube, being the most popular video sharing platform on the planet, is host to millions of music videos from practically every major artist since the start of music videos. We looked into music videos from a variety of artists; the key ones I remember being OK Go's "Here It Goes Again" and Scouting for Girls' "She's So Lovely". During independent research, I also looked into videos by Mika and twenty one pilots, the latter evidenced in one of my earlier blog posts. YouTube was also where I found my directorial influence, being Jack "Jacksfilms" Douglass, a YouTube content creator who creates comedy videos.
PREMIERE PRO
When we were given practice tasks to complete, each one to teach us a different technique used by different directors and genres. When editing each task together, the program used was Adobe Premiere Pro CS6. Working in a group for these tasks, the job of editing was shared around. Some of the edits were relatively easy; the one shot practice involved just overlaying music on top of the visuals. Some involved a little bit more editing, like the Wes Anderson task, where the visuals were designed to seem symmetrical. I also used Premiere Pro last year, for the final piece as well as a variety of practice tasks.
PHOTOSHOP
Another variation of practice tasks we were given was to recreate ancillary products for films and music. For both the tasks set in this variety, I opted for Adobe Photoshop CC. The program features a number of tools for image manipulation, and is used professionally for magazines. The recreations of the poster for "Her" and the album cover for "Aladdin Sane" were created in Photoshop, using magic wand tools to remove backgrounds, text creation tools for anything that needed to be read, and paint bucket tools to fill entire areas with colours. Colour manipulation tools were used as well, where we played with the Hue & Saturation to increase the brightness and intensity of colours.
PLANNING
ITUNES
iTunes was especially useful in getting the song ready. While I could've used a YouTube to mp3 converter, I had already bought the song of my own volition before the production of the music video started. I wanted to support the artist, and buying the song was the best way I could do that. My other song kept for consideration, All Star, was also one that I had bought and had on iTunes already.
MICROSOFT WORD
Before filming, I used Word to write down my rough ideas for the filiming day. My process for filming is having rough outlines of the scenes, but then letting the actors influence what goes into the video as well. The loose feel is evident that way, and it lets the actors have more fun on set, giving a more genuine performance. I used bullet points and just wrote down points; for example, one bullet point written was "- Have Elliot dabbing". On the day, we then interpreted that as having one regular dab, and then one "deep dab".
GOOGLE
I used Google to try and find potential props and locations to use in my music video. For the props, I went window shopping online for DVDs that I could potentially use; Shrek DVDs specifically. The ones I found were good, but not perfect. But I then remembered that I had a DVD from my childhood, and it had just the cover I was looking for. The locations were also found using Google Maps, which turned out to be more helpful with my original idea. When I was planning on filming in Norwich, I needed to find the addresses of certain places that I knew, but didn't know the exact details. I used the first person mode and acted like I was walking through the city, finding what I was looking for.
CONSTRUCTION
FILMING
When filming, the main technology I used was a digital camera. I used an 8-megapixel iSight camera, with 128GB of internal storage. It recorded everything in 30FPS, which is a suitable speed for a music video; 30FPS is the standard for films, TV shows. I could've opted for 60FPS, but that would've made the raw footage a significant amount larger in filesize, as well as having difficulty capturing light entirely right. I didn't use a tri-pod, I went completely handheld with this music video. The more loose feeling camera movements matched the more improvisational and fun tone of the video. The camera saves videos in .mp4 format,
EDITING
When editing together the music video, I opted for Premiere Pro CS6. I also used this program when I was working on my AS project, but the skills I used for that are far more primitive to what I was using for this project. This project has many techniques that are brand new to me, including keyframing.
Keyframing is when certain aspects of imported elements can be manipulated in the middle of playback; for example, audio can have it's volume gradually increase and decrease, and visuals (such as images and videos) can be moved around the screen, be rotated, and have their opacity value shifted up and down. The best point in the music video where keyframing is used is when Debra is texting Alan. I had the asset for her text bubble, and as both the actress and camera moved, I kept moving the speech bubble across the screen. I had the "tail" of the bubble as my reference point, and always moved it so the tail was touching the corner of the phone.
I used overlaying as well, during the scene where Alan dabs. I took two separate clips of my actor performing the action, and placed them one on top of the other on alternate layers. The top layer's opacity was then reduced by 50%, leading to the impression of there being two dabs happening at the same time.
Colour balance tools were also used to create the VHS effect for the flashbacks. This was done by creating two copies of the footage required, leaving me with three clips total. I assigned a colour value to each, and then moved one slightly to the right. Since it was the red one I moved, everything on the right side of objects got a slight red outline, and everything on the left got a bit of a blue stroke.
Colour balance tools were also used to create the VHS effect for the flashbacks. This was done by creating two copies of the footage required, leaving me with three clips total. I assigned a colour value to each, and then moved one slightly to the right. Since it was the red one I moved, everything on the right side of objects got a slight red outline, and everything on the left got a bit of a blue stroke.
YOUTUBE
YouTube was especially helpful during the editing stage. For all the help that keyframing had, I had to learn it all especially for this project. I found various YouTube tutorials teaching me how to do it, but the most helpful one came from a user under the pseudonym "tutvid". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRI1cjM1UHE
POWERPOINT / GOOGLE
This wasn't used too much, it was just to create a few memes to edit into the video. I didn't want to just pick up some that people had already made, I wanted to create memes that were specific to this scenario, so I used a simple program for editing pictures to make the memes. I used two templates in particular; the Drake meme where he's denying something, then approving something else, as well as a meme of actor / director / writer Jordan Peele sweating, from a project he was acting in. I used Google hand in hand with Powerpoint, but only so I could find the images required.
ONEDRIVE
OneDrive is a cloud based storage device created by Microsoft, which functions similarly to Dropbox; as long as you have an internet connection, you can access any file you upload to it from anywhere you want. The school account I have comes with a terabyte (1024 Gigabytes) of OneDrive storage, which is more than enough to store my raw footage. Another advantage that OneDrive has is it's lossless compression; when files are uploaded, there's not drop in quality to save on space. This made the service ideal for storing and transferring my footage.
PHOTOSHOP
My two ancillary tasks, the poster and digipak, were created using Adobe Photoshop CC. The professional program had all the appropriate tools I required to create the products, with one of the most useful tools being the magic wand tool. This particular tool selects areas of similar colours, which is especially useful when removing a background. I used this on every image I imported for the poster, which got rid of the town background, leaving only the person. I also went through manually with a lasso tool, making sure to remove anything that the magic wand didn't pick up on. This was especially helpful when the magic wand identified a section of Elliott's hair as a piece of wall.
I also used colour overlays for the logos of YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify. I wanted to keep the visual language I had going, with the white with black outlines. With that in mind, I found some transparent logos and used the colour overlay effect on their layers. I set the colour to white, and then added a 17 pixel edge.
EVALUATION
QUESTION 1
For question 1, I used Audacity and Premiere Pro. Focusing on Audacity for now, it's a free audio recording and manipulation software. Personally, I've been using it to voice my own original cartoons and side projects, while using a Yeti microphone. A similar setup is not uncommon for podcasts, such as "My Brother, My Brother & Me" and "Shmanners". I recorded for about 10 minutes, while reading the question onscreen at the same time. After recording the audio, I exported it to a .mp3 file and took it into Premiere Pro. From there, I slowed down my video and repeated it a few times so that there would be something visual onscreen; if I lulled at any point in the recording, there would at least be something to keep the listener engaged.
QUESTION 2
For question 2, I used a digital camera to film my experiment. It's the same camera I used for the filming of the music video, but with a little less planning. I wanted fast, snappy, initial reactions, and if I spent too much time getting things in order, then the subject would've had time to think to themselves about what they would choose, thus losing the initial reaction I was seeking. I once again went handheld, but this time it was for ease of movement. I needed to pan quickly between the sheets on the table and the subject, so going handheld allowed for pans which are quicker and less distracting.
QUESTION 3
Once again, I used Premiere Pro and the same digital camera. Microsoft Word was used to write up the questions used in the final edited video, where two interviewees had the sheets with them to read from, and the other two had the questions read to them. I used music for this evaluation question, being the background music of the Wii Shop Channel, from the Nintendo Wii console. It's not too distracting, and the tune is mellow enough to fit as a generic background theme. I used some volume keyframing to make the dB value increase and decrease as titles appeared and disappeared.
I also used some manual zooms for a couple of comedic hints, especially when one interviewee reads out the question, stares down for a few seconds, looks up with a smile and just says "Yes.". By adding a zoom, it gives a little bit more character and personality to the video, making it a more engaging watch.
QUESTION 4
This question. While Blogger is the key player in this question, I first want to focus on bubbl.us, the website I used to create my mindmaps. It allows the user to access a clean workspace and create mindmaps with an easy to grasp UI, simple instructions and a more friendly feel. I created all 4 mindmaps in this evaluation question using this website, and it's definitely a resource I want to use going forward. When starting this evaluation question, I was just writing down my mindmaps using a pen and paper. Upon re-reading the question's suggestions, I went to the recommended website and found that it could save me so much time, and bring the risk of making mistakes down dramatically. I didn't opt for making an account, so I just took screenshots of the mindmaps and cut them down.
BLOGGER
Blogger is a Google supported website which allows people to create their own blogs by signing in with their Google account. With it, users can choose their own themes, titles, colour schemes, and make their blog personal to them. During the AS year, I tried to make my blog feel more home-like. I used a techno theme I liked, I added sidebars with my favourite movies and films I was looking forward to. Even my speech patterns in blog posts were more reflective of how I spoke in person.
But the A2 year, I wanted to take the blog a little bit more seriously. I still kept the speech patterns more casual, but I got rid of the movies lists (despite considering adding them when planning this question), the theme is more functional & less distracting, and the titles are more consistent. I utilised more skills this time around, especially when it came to sorting out HTML.
Using some techniques I was taught in Computer Science, I've managed to help make not only my blog posts more accessible and user friendly, but other people's as well. Embedding YouTube videos and fixing style sheets were two of the biggest things I utilised, especially when finding the correct points to place them in, as well as adding the right breaks using "<br />".
CONCLUSION
Overall, I'd say that my skills using modern media technologies has greatly advanced since last year. My editing has become more advanced since I learnt how to keyframe properly, adding more depth to my visuals and audio. My research has become more thorough, and has lead me to look into media products which I wouldn't otherwise. My skills in Photoshop have also improved, especially during the creation of the poster for my music video. Techniques like masking gradients will definitely help me in future endeavors. The only real loss of anything involving media technologies was losing the movies list on my blog; everything else is more advanced than last year.
POWERPOINT / GOOGLE
This wasn't used too much, it was just to create a few memes to edit into the video. I didn't want to just pick up some that people had already made, I wanted to create memes that were specific to this scenario, so I used a simple program for editing pictures to make the memes. I used two templates in particular; the Drake meme where he's denying something, then approving something else, as well as a meme of actor / director / writer Jordan Peele sweating, from a project he was acting in. I used Google hand in hand with Powerpoint, but only so I could find the images required.
ONEDRIVE
OneDrive is a cloud based storage device created by Microsoft, which functions similarly to Dropbox; as long as you have an internet connection, you can access any file you upload to it from anywhere you want. The school account I have comes with a terabyte (1024 Gigabytes) of OneDrive storage, which is more than enough to store my raw footage. Another advantage that OneDrive has is it's lossless compression; when files are uploaded, there's not drop in quality to save on space. This made the service ideal for storing and transferring my footage.
PHOTOSHOP
My two ancillary tasks, the poster and digipak, were created using Adobe Photoshop CC. The professional program had all the appropriate tools I required to create the products, with one of the most useful tools being the magic wand tool. This particular tool selects areas of similar colours, which is especially useful when removing a background. I used this on every image I imported for the poster, which got rid of the town background, leaving only the person. I also went through manually with a lasso tool, making sure to remove anything that the magic wand didn't pick up on. This was especially helpful when the magic wand identified a section of Elliott's hair as a piece of wall.
I also used colour overlays for the logos of YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify. I wanted to keep the visual language I had going, with the white with black outlines. With that in mind, I found some transparent logos and used the colour overlay effect on their layers. I set the colour to white, and then added a 17 pixel edge.
EVALUATION
QUESTION 1
For question 1, I used Audacity and Premiere Pro. Focusing on Audacity for now, it's a free audio recording and manipulation software. Personally, I've been using it to voice my own original cartoons and side projects, while using a Yeti microphone. A similar setup is not uncommon for podcasts, such as "My Brother, My Brother & Me" and "Shmanners". I recorded for about 10 minutes, while reading the question onscreen at the same time. After recording the audio, I exported it to a .mp3 file and took it into Premiere Pro. From there, I slowed down my video and repeated it a few times so that there would be something visual onscreen; if I lulled at any point in the recording, there would at least be something to keep the listener engaged.
QUESTION 2
For question 2, I used a digital camera to film my experiment. It's the same camera I used for the filming of the music video, but with a little less planning. I wanted fast, snappy, initial reactions, and if I spent too much time getting things in order, then the subject would've had time to think to themselves about what they would choose, thus losing the initial reaction I was seeking. I once again went handheld, but this time it was for ease of movement. I needed to pan quickly between the sheets on the table and the subject, so going handheld allowed for pans which are quicker and less distracting.
QUESTION 3
Once again, I used Premiere Pro and the same digital camera. Microsoft Word was used to write up the questions used in the final edited video, where two interviewees had the sheets with them to read from, and the other two had the questions read to them. I used music for this evaluation question, being the background music of the Wii Shop Channel, from the Nintendo Wii console. It's not too distracting, and the tune is mellow enough to fit as a generic background theme. I used some volume keyframing to make the dB value increase and decrease as titles appeared and disappeared.
I also used some manual zooms for a couple of comedic hints, especially when one interviewee reads out the question, stares down for a few seconds, looks up with a smile and just says "Yes.". By adding a zoom, it gives a little bit more character and personality to the video, making it a more engaging watch.
QUESTION 4
This question. While Blogger is the key player in this question, I first want to focus on bubbl.us, the website I used to create my mindmaps. It allows the user to access a clean workspace and create mindmaps with an easy to grasp UI, simple instructions and a more friendly feel. I created all 4 mindmaps in this evaluation question using this website, and it's definitely a resource I want to use going forward. When starting this evaluation question, I was just writing down my mindmaps using a pen and paper. Upon re-reading the question's suggestions, I went to the recommended website and found that it could save me so much time, and bring the risk of making mistakes down dramatically. I didn't opt for making an account, so I just took screenshots of the mindmaps and cut them down.
BLOGGER
Blogger is a Google supported website which allows people to create their own blogs by signing in with their Google account. With it, users can choose their own themes, titles, colour schemes, and make their blog personal to them. During the AS year, I tried to make my blog feel more home-like. I used a techno theme I liked, I added sidebars with my favourite movies and films I was looking forward to. Even my speech patterns in blog posts were more reflective of how I spoke in person.
But the A2 year, I wanted to take the blog a little bit more seriously. I still kept the speech patterns more casual, but I got rid of the movies lists (despite considering adding them when planning this question), the theme is more functional & less distracting, and the titles are more consistent. I utilised more skills this time around, especially when it came to sorting out HTML.
Using some techniques I was taught in Computer Science, I've managed to help make not only my blog posts more accessible and user friendly, but other people's as well. Embedding YouTube videos and fixing style sheets were two of the biggest things I utilised, especially when finding the correct points to place them in, as well as adding the right breaks using "<br />".
CONCLUSION
Overall, I'd say that my skills using modern media technologies has greatly advanced since last year. My editing has become more advanced since I learnt how to keyframe properly, adding more depth to my visuals and audio. My research has become more thorough, and has lead me to look into media products which I wouldn't otherwise. My skills in Photoshop have also improved, especially during the creation of the poster for my music video. Techniques like masking gradients will definitely help me in future endeavors. The only real loss of anything involving media technologies was losing the movies list on my blog; everything else is more advanced than last year.
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