Question 4

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

When researching into the genre for our music video, we primarily used Google and YouTube, as they are very effective tools for finding out information. We also looked in some other websites and magazines.

When we filmed the lift door shot, on the first day of shooting, we had to make sure that the camera was locked down, on a tripod, to ensure that we didn’t have to deal with camera movement, when tracking the text onto the doors. It would have been possible, but it was much easier to just avoid the issue altogether.

I also made sure to put small pieces of black electrical tape on the doors, so we could track the points to add the text. However, due to the way the light reflected off of the doors, the tracking points did not work, so I had to go by every few frames, making sure that the text stayed on the door.

We used a crane for many of the shots in our video, mainly the bedroom shots. This allowed us to get a birds-eye view of the actor, making them seem smaller. We also used the crane for a shot of the car driving away in the car park.

Many of the shots were done with the Canon 6D on a steadicam. This helped us to get smooth tracking shots, lending higher production value to the piece.

When it came to editing the music video, we used Final Cut Pro X to put it together. Once we had finished editing the video, I started the visual effects for the lift door shot. We then realised that for one of the driving shots, we would have to split it into three parts to colour grade it, as we were changing it from day to night. After that was completed, we were told that it didn’t make much sense, in the narrative, having the clock saying half past six, when Ben walks up the stairs. I fixed all of these issues in the compositing software Motion 5.

To make my evaluations, I am using iMovie, with a USB microphone.