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

New media technologies were used extensively across all stages of our project; research and planning, construction and the evaluation. 

Research and planning 
During this stage we ensured that our group were kept in the loop, with regular meetings at school, decided in advance, and created a group on facebook to enable us to speak to each other through social media; making it easy to share ideas, or flag up issues.

The very first step to research and planning; deciding the song, was done through the use of playlists on spotify, looking through songs on youtube and posting them to each other on our facebook group, as well as listening to our own music on our iTunes. 

Once the song had been decided we had to brainstorm ideas for the branding of our band, so we looked on fashion blogs and searched videos of other female bands on youtube to inspire us. Using the internet in our initial research tasks was crucial. During the pre-production stage it was also vital because we used websites such as eBay and Amazon to buy props (straitjacket, needles and doctor costume) along with another site called Freecycle that we looked at for free old beds for our hospital scene.
 

This is an image of a moodboard created to identity the style and identity of the band. This was an initial mindmap made.

 
Construction

Music Video
The construction of the video was the most time consuming and the one that strayed from our original idea the most. We had to play around using new media technologies to get the end result with our desired effect. We used professional software and media equipment to aim for a professional looking music video.



The slideshow above talks about which camera we used to shoot out music video. We used the HVR-V1E for the majority of shots, however also ended up using the Canon 5D for our opening focus pull shot of Arianna, because our technician advised us it would be the best camera for a focus pull. For shots that we were not all in, we were able to take turns filming eachother, however for group shots we instructed our camera operator on our desired effect. 

We began post-production by capturing the footage into Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. Adobe Premiere Pro gave us a wide range of editing possibilities, including our shots where we made Kai disappear and making the video look very dreamlike. We were also able to draw on skills we had learnt in the past, to make simple cuts, and transitions.

This gif shows our shot at the end of Kai disappearing, which we did through Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. During the shoot we took a still shot of Kai running, and a still shot of the road empty. On adobe we then cut in between each shots to make it look like Kai was disppearing and using Abobe After Effects added a zoom to both shots. 





Website

The website was crucial as part of our marketing campaign, as it is the 'hub' of the campaign. We took inspiration from Lady Gaga's website. Her use of a washed out image of her in the background was something we liked as a group, so I set the background to our website as our album cover 
image, washed out, however this

looked bland on every page so we later change this to an image of our album cover inside our album cover name, which made the website look more alive and more eye-catching.
The introductory page from our website, which links to the home page, uses an idea we took from Lorde's website. On Lorde's previous website design she used images within the text and our group really liked this style, so we used it on our introductory page, with an image of the album cover appearing through our album name 'I'. This image was made using the album cover image attached with a clipping mask to the I symbol.



Wix: Our website was created on Wix which is a flash based website, rather than an HTML based website. This makes it much easier to use and navigate to create our website, as well as enabling us to create an interactive, visual website. However HTML does also limit the possibilities, as you are not able to code your website and are limited to adding to your website only what Wix offers.

Here is a Prezi of how we used Wix:


We wanted to harness the use of social media as much as possible, so we also created a twitter, facebook and instagram page for our band, in order to promote the band and attract our target audience as much as possible and using modern technologies to target them. These new media technologies are integral to marketing campaigns and all artists use new media technology to promote their band establish their artist image. 

Here is a youtube video of a screencapture I did showing how the links of our website flow easily, and how the website is made interactive through the use of links to other pages to keep the audience interested. I have also showed in the screencapture the use of social media on our website.

Album Cover

For the album cover we used Photoshop and although we were all already quite advanced with the use of Photoshop, from GCSE and AS level projects our skills were developed even further and we had to learn how to remove shadows from a persons face, and ensure our pictures all fit within the digipack template.

Our promotional and inside album photographs were shot in the Seward studio, each photo taken by another band member, as we were never all in one shot. We used the seward studio to enable us to adjust the lighting easily and give us enough space to splash some water around.

One effect we used designing our album cover, was the 'skin smoother effect' on Adobe Photoshop. This was done by applying the effect to each person individually, and the programme automatically smooths their skin and makes it look softer. We wanted this effect to make every band member stand out, but at the same time looking neutral. 






Evaluation
All our group members used Web 2.0, have facebook accounts and are able to access twitter and instagram. This was useful in the evaluation stages of the product as we were all able to promote our video across different social media sites. 

We wanted to get feedback from our target audience, as well as our secondary audience (males, aged 15-45). This was done through using surveymonkey, a survey site on the web that you can share on social media sites and email to friends and family. Surveymonkey also enabled us to turn our feedback in visual answers, such as pie charts and bar charts. 

A trailer was made by other members in my group to promote the screening in the media studio, to encourage people to come to the Seward Studio and watch our videos, enabling us to gather audience feedback in the process. On top of this, posters were also put up around school that had been made on Adobe Photoshop, to promote the screening. 

The poster made by members of my group to
promote the screening.

A facebook event was also created by our whole media year, on which we then invited other members of our school to promote the screening further and increase the number of people attending. Our group all posted the video on Facebook and twitter to use a multiplatform marketing strategy.