Evaluation Question 4 - Technologies

How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware and online - in this project?

This post I will discuss the software, hardware and online that we used to create our video, website and digipak.

Software

Final cut pro X

This is the editing software that was used for most of the editing process, I had no experience with it so I had to learn how to use it for the first time. I used the basic tools in the program when I edited the music video.

Adobe Premiere Pro

This was the editing software I used in my AS course and what I was originally going to use when editing our music video this year. Due to that we couldn't transfer the project between these to editing software's I ended up not using Premiere Pro when editing the music video. However because I had Premier Pro on my computer I used it to edit together all my other work, such as my Vodcasts, Lyric Video, and Podcasts. As I didn't use it extensively I didn't learn anything new through this program but I did have to learn how to use a different program.

When I created the first lyric video I used a techniques called color correction which lets you change the video to black and white but have a few key colors stand out. You can read more about it here.

Offliberty & SaveFrom.net

These two software's let you download YouTube Videos, this was very us full for us this year as it was an easy way to use YouTube footage in vodcasts and examples. I have used SaveFrom.Net before and but it was blocked on the school computers and thats when I found out about Offliberty.

Skype

As I was working in a group of 3 we used Skype as an easy and cheap way to communicate. We used it in the start of the year to talk about ideas and what we needed to to, later on in the year we used it for the evaluation question as I send some sound files that I had recorded over to Sophie where she then edited the radio interview.

Apps

This year I used a lot of apps to help me throughout the year. The apps I used where Facebook, Twitter, Wix, YouTube, Spotify, Polaroid Zip and the Internet. For our band we created a Facebook page, a twitter page and an Instagram page as well as a website. I would say that I used Facebook the most as I used it to communicate with my group members as well as the other actors that helped us. I also used Facebook to update our Facebook page. I also used the Twitter app to look at what our twitter account looked like as well as to add a comment. I didn't use the Wix app that much all I used it for was to check out what our website looked like. I used the Internet app on my phone a lot throughout the to search up information about the band. I used spotify as research for my Vodcast 3 and to listen to the track we used for our video. I used YouTube to look at BMTH actual music video to give one of the actors a better idea of how to create verisimilitude. The Polaroid Zip app was used when we created the Polaroid Photos, the app connects to a small Polaroid printer that prints out any photo on your phone.

Photoshop

I am not very familiar or good with Photoshop but I learned some of the basics so I could create some of the merch. Bronwen used Photoshop the most as she has experience with it, she used it to create the digipak as well as the merch.




Here you can see an example of when Sophie created some merch for the website



Here is also a video where Bronwen goes through creating the digipak.

Hardware

iPhone 6S

My group members have this phone and we used to to record some footage, the camera on the phone isn't as good as the camera we used for filming the video but it was good to use when we needed to film behind the scenes moments. We also used this phone to take pictures that we then used as the Polaroid pictures.

Samsung Galaxy S5

This is the phone I have which I had all my apps. I also used my phone for some behind the scenes filming. Originally we used both phones to film slow-mo for our first video idea but later we decided not to use it.

Green Screen 

This year I used a lot more green screen then last year. We had originally planed to borrow a green screen from the school but we went on a school trip to a location in Luxembourg where they had a large green screen room. You can read more about our use of Green Screen here.

Camera - Canon 70D

For most of our filming we used my camera the Canon 70D. We used this camera for a few reason, 1 being that the quality on the camera is better then the school cameras, the other reason was because we shared cameras with other year groups and sometimes there where not enough cameras.

Camera - SONY A58

This was the camera we borrowed from school, we used the camera for our practice video for "Follow You" as well as for "Throne".

MacBook Retina

This was the computer Sophie used to edit the music video on. I borrowed her computer when I had to edit the music video because she had the editing software on her computer.

Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro

This was the computer I used in class and for most of my blogging. In the start I used this computer for editing until I had some computer issues and the computer had to be send in for some repairs.

Alienware m15x

This was the computer I used when I worked at home, because it is a powerful computer I used it to edit most my videos. I used this computer to blog on when my Lenovo was having problems.

iMac

In our class room we had new iMacs to work on, some students like myself had our own laptops to work on but we still used the iMacs if we needed to use a programs the school had such as Photoshop. I was not very familiar with the the iOS software so i preferred to work on Windows when I could.

Portable Hard-drives

Throughout the year we used hard drive to share footage and files within the group. We used from 4GB USBs to 2TB harddrives. We also used them as back up storage incase we lost anything on the computers.

SD cards

We used from 4GB to 64GB SD cards. The 4GB SD card was just to small for the quality film we shot and therefor I got a 64GB SD card. Sophie used a 32GB SD card so combined we didn't run out of space. We also used a Mirco SD card for the GoPro.

GoPro Hero

I have a GoPro Hero that we used to film close ups of the bass guitar playing. In the start of the year the school got new GoPros which we also used. We used mine for filming when we couldn't get a hold of the school GoPros.

GoPro Hero 4

We used the Hero 4 with a waterproof case to film underwater, because I knew how to use a GoPro i tough Sophie how to use it. The good thing with the Hero 4 compared to the Hero is that the Hero 4 has a screen so you can see what you film. The problem was however that we did have googles to see what we filmed and it was also hard to film steady underwater.

GoPro Hero 5

The Hero 5 was completely new and can shoot in 4k. We used this GoPro to film some of the Green Screen footage. We hadn't properly prepared for filming with a GoPro so we didn't have a gorilla Pod so the footage ended up being to shaky to use.

Tripod

We used a tripod for almost all of our filming, we didn't use a tripod for the underwater or the running sequence, we also didn't use a tripod for some of the couple scenes. The tripod really helped us and made the footage a lot better.

Dolly

When we filmed the green screen we got to use an attachable dolly. I did a post on the dolly which you can check out here.

Polaroid Pictures

For the scene when the female protagonist burns the Polaroid Picture we used Polaroid Zip Instant Printer. I did a short post on it you can check out here.

Drone

For some of the Follow You scenes we used my Parrot Bebop Drone. However due to some wind on the day we couldn't get the framing right and the shots where a bit shaky. When we changed track to Throne we decided on filming in the forest and because im not a very skilled drone pilot we decided against filming with it due to the high risk of crashing.

Social Media

Facebook

We created a Facebook page for our band as Facebook is the most used form of social media and every band has a Facebook page. We where all admins of the page so we could all post but I was in charge. We all posted the same thing on each social media as we found that that was often done by real bands.

Twitter

Sophie created a Twitter page. The Banner and Profile Picture where the same for twitter and Facebook. The content of the tweets where things that other band have or would say.

Instagram

Bronwen was in charge of the Instagram page where she has posted photos of the the main singer and the band.

Blogger

This is the same blogging website we used last year so I knew how to add links list and how to navigate the website. We used blogger to show our journey and give evidence of everything we have done

Soundcloud

This year we used soundcloud to upload some of the podcasts, I am not to sure how soundcloud works so Sophie uploaded all here Podcasts to Soundcloud while I added them to YouTube.

YouTube

Seeing as the music video editing was done on Sophie's computer she uploaded the rough cuts but all the Podcasts, Vodcasts and other videos that I created I uploaded to my YouTube channel.

Crossword

I also used a website called crossword labs which lets you create and try other peoples crossword. My crossword was filled with terminology which other people could use to test themselves. You can try it out here.





GIPHY

I also used the website GIPHY which lets you create gifs from youtube videos or videos you've created. I created some of my own gifs for use of reference.

WIX

Wix.com was the website maker we used to create our website. Wix was easy to use when you leanred the basics and created professorial websites. I started creating the websites and started added the foundation needed for as our website and as time went on we had all contributed to the website, here you can see a screen recording of the final website as well as a video where i go through different parts of the website in more depth.