Evaluation
Q.4 – How were Media technologies used in your music video?
The major technology we used was the
editing suite Final Cut Pro. This allowed us to cut shots to the beat of the
song, and create a timeline for our music video. The first important tool we
used was the opacity tool; this tool allowed us to show two shots at the same
time and fade one into the other, this helped us show that Caitlin was inside
Matt’s head. The eeriness of the song made it impossible to have lots of fast
cuts so the speed tool in Final Cut Pro was also very important. By slowing
nearly every shot down from its original speed, we could make the cuts of each
shot match the beat of the song; the song was too slow to leave the shots at
their original pace so this particular tool was very important. For all shots,
we added a special filter to give each one a certain effect. The filter we used
was a pastel style, we drained the color for Caitlin’s shots in the park to
give a more grainy effect, we found this was quite abstract and this summarized
Caitlin’s character. The tools we used to move from shot to shot were the cross
dissolve tool and the pen tool. Because a lot of our shots were on top of each
other and we had used the opacity tool, the pen tool allowed us to pinpoint
where we wanted particular shots to start to fade off the screen, and leaving
another shot underneath it meant one shot faded into the next one smoothly, for
example when Caitlin and Matthew are on the stairs. The cross dissolve tool was
one of many dissolves we could have used, we positioned this at the end of the
shot and after rendering the file, we saw that this was useful as it allowed us
to cut from one shot to another smoothly and effortlessly.
Another program we used was Motion. This
program is similar to Adobe Photoshop but it allows you to achieve very
specific filters and styles on Final Cut Pro files. We used it for the
performance side of our video. The shots we had weren’t too bad, but they
needed something extra to give them a more unconventional style. We added a
spotlight on every performance shot of the band, either in the corners of the
image or the center. This gave Matt are more important stance in the shot,
showing he is a key character as the light was shed on him rather than the
other band member, the fact he was lead singer helped to show his importance
too. The best thing about these spotlights was the fact that we could have them
any color so we chose a midnight blue, with the brightness fading out into the
corner of the page making the shadow darker and darker. We felt that a midnight
blue effect worked very well with the main lyrics in the song “dark side of the
moon”,” especially seeing as though these lyrics were always lip synced in the performance
shots and the effect was therefore when the words were being sung.
Finally for the media technologies were the
equipment we used. Firstly was the camera, an HD ready standard video camera
with a micro SD memory card. The quality was satisfactory, but we were
impressed with the fact we could record and take photos with the same camera. Either
way, we managed to get all of the footage we needed and that’s what matters. We
also had the Fig Rig camera stand. This was a handheld device which allowed us
to record shots of unique and different angles for the performance side of our
video. This was extremely effective for close ups and getting shots from high
and low angles, it was easier to use this than to record such shots using just
a handheld camera, and we found it very useful. We also used the recording studio
in college for our album cover photography. The studio had a black screen we
could take good band shots of and this is seen in the front cover of our digi-pack.
There is another recording studio in college where we shot our band footage and
this was useful as the equipment such as the guitars and drums were already there
so all we had to do was play. It was a conventional style band room and this
was something we said we didn’t want to achieve, but in the end it worked well
to mix the two styles of unconventional narrative and conventional performance for
our music video. We used the tripod for the camera on a number of shots such as
the panning shot, it gave us a straight and fixed image to work with and was
important for a number of medium and long shot sin our piece.
For our CD cover we used Adobe Photoshop
Elements 8, a program which allowed us to player images and create specific effects
such as shadowing and filters on pictures to create a classy and professional
piece of work. We filtered the images of the band to give them a more abstract
and less conventional effect, and also used screenshots from our video and put
them in Photoshop to edit them and use them as backgrounds for the front and
back covers. This was a good idea as it helped us a keep a consistency about
all the pieces of work we had produced. Had we not done this the digi-pack
would have looked random and out of place compared to the music video, it is
important to get a clear link between the CD cover and the music video itself.
Directors Commentary
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