During research and development, we got ourselves into groups (ours consisting of 3 people) and began to plan our pop video. We made extensive use of the internet to research existing bands and pop videos, using YouTube and various music websites such as NME and Ultimate Guitar.
The front page of NME.com
During the creation of our band and pop video idea, we used our schools intranet system to look at a list of pictures of students, enabling us to pick out those that most fitted the “image” of our band. We also used school email accounts to help circulate and pass on information that we gathered together in the planning stage. Another system that we used for storing information was our schools SharePoint software, which allowed each member of the group to upload our download files in a communal folder. This meant we could each get on with a specific aspect of the task, then upload to SharePoint it and allow others to download it and make revisions. After making the idea concrete, and selecting members for our band, we decided to camera test them. The purpose of a camera test is to make sure that a person looks good on camera and will “look the part” in the finished product. We used a Sony PD170 digital video camera for our camera tests, due to its portability and its ease of use. While we were constructing our set in preparation for our shoot day, we took pictures using a digital still camera in order to keep track of what we were doing for later on in production.
A still from one of our camera tests.
Our shoot day would have been an almost impossible task in the days of analogue filming, but was helped along through significant use of new media technologies. A central part of our idea was the split screen, and so decided to use 4 cameras to shoot on the day. These cameras were 3 Sony PD170’s and 1 JVC1500E.
A picture from our shoot day showing our 4 camera rig in action.
If we were using traditional analogue technology, each camera would have needed several operators and would not have been able to shoot for several hours at a time as we did, as the cameras would have overheated and the film inside may have melted. Luckily, using these new cameras we could operate all 4 with only 2 members of dedicated camera crew for extended periods of time without stopping. In a normal film, shots are usually about 7-20 seconds in length. In a pop video however, they are much shorter, usually averaging at about 4 seconds. When shooting, a production crew will usually work out the “shot ratio” – the number of shots you need to shot compared to the number you will actually use in the final product. Due to the fast nature of our video we decided to use quicker shots and therefore needed more footage. We worked out our ratio to be about 10:1, and shot over 600 shots on the 4 cameras during the course of the day. These high ratios are possible only due to the ease of use of modern camera technology, as the cameras we used were light and portable, so we could set up for each shot very quickly and start shooting almost straight after setting up the tripod. Another piece of new media technology we used on our shoot day was a blue screen, enabling us to add digital effects during the post-production process.
Using a plasma screen TV as a live monitor during our shoot day to ensure proper shot composition - another example of using New Media Technologies in the production of our Product.
After we shot all the film we needed on the shoot day, we moved on to post-production, which we began minutes after we finished shooting. On the cameras we used, the tapes could be digitised onto the computers we used for editing with ease, and we began this process soon after shooting. This would have been inconceivable using old technology, where the film would have had to have been sent off to a lab to be developed, and then sent back to the filmmakers for editing. We then set to work on editing the actual video, using Final Cut Pro to piece all the footage together into a rough timeline.
The editing screen in Final Cut Pro
We then transferred our footage into Adobe After Effects, and used this to stitch the footage into the 3 piece shot in the background of the video. We also used After Effects to add the moving close up of various members of the band and the effects on the blue screen footage that we shot. In order to keep to the strict deadline we had set ourselves, we used mobile phones and email to keep in constant contact and arrange when we were next going to edit our product. After completing our video, we uploaded it to the popular video sharing YouTube, in order to gather feedback from the wider viewing community. We also created a magazine advert and 4 page CD Digipak using photos we had taken on our digital stills camera during the shoot day and editing them on Adobe Photoshop. The Digipak that we made was all in black and white and featured the 4 members of the band prominently. The use of black and white with shadows gave the band a dark, menacing image.
The front cover of our CD Digipak
We also used new media technologies to record and produce an audio commentary to accompany our video, which you can watch below:
The whole process of creating our product relied heavily on new media technologies, as I have documented. To say that we would not have been able to create our product without new media technology however is untrue. Filmmakers have been using analogue technology for over half a century and many incredible and timeless pieces of cinema have been made using analogue systems. However, the analogue method of producing video is very slow and consumes huge amount of resources. In today’s financial climate, the market for pop videos is rapidly dwindling, and therefore it is very important to make pop videos fast and cheap to make. New media technologies allow us to speed up the whole process of creating a pop video, and allow a very small team of relative amateurs to create something incredible that would have taken a huge team of industry professional’s months to do on older technology.
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