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

Throughout our project, we used a great deal of new media technologies. This was not just for our own convenience but also as a necessity to create an innovative and engaging marketing campaign for our band that would become successful in an industry that is increasingly becoming dominated by web 2.0. I will tackle this question by referring to each of the stages individually.

Research and Planning

Right at the beginning of the project we set up a Facebook group called 'EOA' which we used continually to stay in regular contact whilst researching at home. This ensured that contact was efficient and that every group member was always in the loop of what progress everyone was making. We also used our personal twitters and also had a facebook chat called 'EOA'. We were able to organize meetings on these platforms to discuss the ideas pledged online face-to-face. The photo snack below shows screen shots from our facebook group:

One thing we used consistently was Google products, such as the search engine and Youtube. For example, if we could think of a style of song we liked (the example in the picture is Girls Aloud's 'Sound of the Underground') along the side were related songs generated.

Another tool that was invaluable to discovering new music was last.fm. This has the ability to find similar artists for any artist it has - some we may not have thought of.

Right from the beginning of the project we were also using Adobe Premiere Pro to make a voice over of our references. This video was made in the very first stages of our research and planning and was made to see whether the different genres worked together with the music. This also allowed us to consolidate our ideas further - one big question posed at the playing back of this video was whether the sleepover was a good idea. In the end we decided against it after collecting mediocre footage that did not compare well with our studio footage.

The internet was continually invaluable right up until the final stages of our research and planning, especially when it came to buying costume. We used cheap websites such as Missguided and Boohoo to order costume elements in. These websites were very easy to navigate, as we could filter by colour and garment. Therefore, once we decided on our colour scheme we could find clothing items immediately relevant to what we were looking for.

Construction

Within the production stage, we were continually using new media technologies for all three of our media texts. I have summed these up in the below table:

Music Video

Our music video relied upon shooting and editing equally, and was quite demanding to make in both ways. Therefore, we used many different forms of new media technology.

We used the Sony HVR V1E as we felt it was most suited to the style we wanted. For example, we did not plan to use any focus pulls and this particular camera had an auto-focus feature. As it is so user-friendly, it meant that it would be okay to have people film it that haven't necessarily done media A level. It also gave good quality footage. Whilst filming, if all of us weren't in the shot another member of the group would film it (for example, for close-ups). We always had a camera operator on call in case we needed someone for shots that we were all in, such as long shots.

The table below describes the lighting we did:

As evidence, we used the Canon 5D to take pictures of us. This allowed us to refer to them in things like our evaluation and blog posts.

As soon as we had finished one shoot, we would straight away start editing. Even if it was just snippets of the song (which it was in every case apart from rap), having these available for us when we began to edit was so much more efficient than starting from scratch. An example of one of these is below:

We used a range of effects that Adobe Premiere Pro had to offer. These were very important as a lot of the time they were signifiers of our genre:

This effect was called 3D. We used it because it made it clear that me and Olivia were together, and therefore Emily was the lead.

In this gif you can see our television effect. We created this in  Premiere Pro to add to the TV concept. You can also see some of the split screens, which we used in the girl band genre.

In this gif you can see the flashing shots. We also added a strobe light in Premiere Pro. This was to convey the mayhem of our rock band performance. 

Below is a tutorial of how we constructed the television channel changer effect:

Album Cover

Within our album we used many of the effects Adobe Photoshop had to offer. Our shoot took place in the media department against a black background. We were using a flash and two lights. The original pictures of us were separate (with the two members of the group not in the shot taking the pictures or doing hair and make-up), but we edited them together. The main Photoshop tools used were:

• Blur Tool - Our pictures were taken with a black background. This could not be perfectly black so when we added to an actual black background on Photoshop, there was a clear difference in color. Therefore, we blurred the boundary between the two different blacks to make it less obvious.
• Brightness and Contrast - As all of our photos were shot in different shoots, the lighting was not the same. We had to adjust the brightness and contrast levels to make the picture look believable.
• Clone Tool - We used this to remove blemishes on our skin. We also used this to put on/remove glitter when desired. A tutorial below explains this with a man's side burns.

Website

Again we used Adobe Photoshop to create our header. For the website, we used a flash-based web tool called 'wix'. The advantages of this were that it had great usability, and we were able to create a website product that matched the industry's current expectations, adding widgets and other additions wix provided us with. Most artists websites these days run on flash anyway, a crucial aspect that gains the audience's attention. We also didn't have to learn to code in html, which saved a lot of time. However, it was quite limiting in the sense that as we build up our website, it could become slow. Also, the applications it had available were not completely up to the times - there was no live twitter feed for example.

Evaluation

Social media became a massive part of our evaluation also, most notably when we were promoting our band for the screening. For example we created a facebook page and a twitter for our band: 

We also used our personal social media accounts to advertise the screening as you can see below:

These were advertising a facebook event our Media year was putting on:

On this same event we also advertised our survey, made on survey monkey. This made sure that we were providing relevant people with the link, before targeting the wider internet community also.

Facebook to those at the event

Twitter publicly (making people aware that the video has been released)

Providing the whole world with the link via an extract on instagram.

For our survey we used an online tool called Survey Monkey. There were many advantages to this program - it was easy to create a survey, it was accessible to all and it made graphs for us automatically. However, we had a 10 question limit and in hindsight we would've asked questions regarding the personal details of the survey taker, for example age, genre likes, genre dislikes.

Within our evaluation I also used web tools such as:

• prezi 
• gifsoup.com
• camtasia
• photosnack

Conclusion

Overall, we were very much enlightened to the importance of new media technologies not only when considering our own target audience's desires but also whilst recognizing ourselves as the user. Without the benefits new media technologies bring to the table, creating a strong innovative and synergistic campaign is not possible in today's technology-reliant industry which is why we tried to use it every step of the way from our initial ideas all the way to analysing the final product.