Use of Media Technology During The Construction of Project

During the construction process of our coursework I had to make use of various media technology to create our desired product.

To construct our print ad I had to make use of Photoshop. As I had not used Photoshop before, I initially found using it difficult! After watching some Photoshop tutorials on YouTube I gained some useful knowledge on how to make use of various tools on Photoshop. With practice I found using these tools easier and was able to design my idea with the aid of tools such as the blur tool, marquee tool, magic wand tool and the text tool.

During the early stages of constructing our documentary I had to make use of the camera and tri-pod. I was the main camera man during our construction process last year so using it for our documentary wasn’t as foreign to me as Photoshop. However, having used it the second time round I was able to enhance my skills with the camera and apply them to use more sophisticated and exciting shots. One particular shot where I was able to use my creativity with the camera was the zoom out shot layered with the title UK Funky House.

Commentry

A documentary is a film that attempts, in some way, to document reality. However as a group, we feel a documentary capturing reality could be criticized for being biased; portraying through one persons view point. Although the scenes are chosen accordingly, the script is not existent, and there are no real actors. We feel   In certain cases, a documentary will rely on a voice-over or narration to describe what is happening to the audience, in other cases, the footage will speak for itself. Documentaries often include interviews. Many of today's documentary films have a political or otherwise controversial agenda; like "Super-size me". Audiences have recently become more open to watching a documentary with a more serious agenda. Our task was too create an opening extract for a documentary; with our own individualistic agenda choice. Charlotte was in charge of editing, Bayo was in charge of filming, Shamara was in charge of research and Natalie was in charge of Blogging.  


We have both challenged an conformed to the typical conventions of an expository documentary; speaking directly to the viewer by using an authoritative voiceover and titles helping us to portray a sense of involvement and information to the audience (We used titles to illustrate the occupation of the interviewees, we used a voiceover during the introduction; establishing shots of London to introduce our documentary and hype up our audience; creating a climax). We felt creating a sense of enthusiasm was important because of the nature of Funky house music. Documentaries such as ours &  'Scratch' are reliant on shots being in sync with the music. 


We have also conformed to some generic media conventions 


From our audience feedback we have changed various things to improve the quality, such as including a voiceover. We added the voiceover during the introduction; people commented the introductory establishing shots of London were too drawn out and repetitive, so we added a voiceover to take up spare time, making it more entertaining and give our documentary a more desirable opening. The voiceover was recorded on the microphone and imported onto itunes where we converted the file so we it would be applicable on Final Cut express. 


Another change we made was add pictures during the interviews. The interviews were drawn-out and delayed with background information of Funky which may be puzzled the audience. We added images to help the audience understand UK FUNKYHOUSE, by using pictures of who and what the artists looked like when the DJS were talking about them. Furthermore, we added adverts to represent the different music genre events. 


We were criticized for not using different forms of editing to our advantage considering our topic was so volatile and fun. So, we included different kinds editing styles. We superimposed a slow zoom in image of Yates night club, which we faded over the top of the DJ who was talking about his experience working in Yates. We included  consistent cross-dissolves and shape dissolves. 


Our introduction was evaluated as being "too long and not in sync wit the music, it doesn't create the right buzz" Therefore, we altered our intro by cutting the clips every time the beat dropped. This made our intros shots in sync with the music which gave a dramatic affect, especially with the voiceover. The changes made to the introduction created a larger sense of anticipation to watch the rest of the documentary. 

Funky House Print Add for MTV BASE

Things We Could Change

There is a clip at the beginning when DJ Mikkie is saying he prefers funky house because it's a more jolly happy type of music. It's been suggested that we could play some funky music that would reflect this.
The titles could also be moved down at the bottom of the screen so all the titles appear in the same place and some more images of London can be added, especially trademark pictures. e.g. London Eye or Trafalga Square.




It was suggested that we add a dance scene to elongate the film and add interests. The dance scene suggested has been filmed and added.

Print Advert Publication

One publication which I feel will boost the circulation of our documentary is RWD (rewind magazine). RWD is a mainstream urban magazine which features a number of topics which our target audience are interested in, e.g. music, fashion, games, events, community and movies. This would place our documentary add within the reach of our target audience; those who we feel will be particularly interested in our documentary.

Film editing

I have been staying every break on tuesdays to complete the film. We had gone though hard stages where filing had been incomplete and our work unsaved or stored in an non accessible area - forced to redo everything. Fortunately, we are close to completion. I have edited the introduction, making it in sync with the opening music, I did this by giving the intro a pace. I made it gradually faster, which than was followed  by the title - Uk funk house. I changed the font of the title and size. It would go big, small, big small, big small, big, small than fade out, each time it appeared it would be a different color, following the wild funky house theme.

Bayo and myself than decided to add some more unique editing ideas. After the intro, we had the public enthusiastically shouting funky. Instead of having one basic shot after another, we would minimize the size of a shot, than create a freeze frame so it would stay on the same shot, whilst the other shots would appear on the screen doing the exact same thing - leading to 7 people who have shouted funky house in freeze frame all in one shot.

Furthermore, I added a few cutaways of DJ LOGIC, to prevent his interview dragging out and mumbling on, losing the audiences attention. I added a shot of his hands, an over the shoulder close up and a sound bridge so the music would help shot come in more gradually without a transition, as too many transitions make the video lack quality.  The footage of DJ logicz, was shot by Bayo and Shamara.

I have added subtitles of the interviewees names and profession, to add continuity, I made the headings the same font, color, size and way it emerges.

Shamara and myself ill be visiting ST MARTINS school to get some more filming of people 'skanking' We will add tutorials of how to do certain dances. The migraine skank, head shoulders and Tribal man skank.

Natalie and Shamara are currently working on the radio project. Myself and Bayo on the editing of the film. However, we are constantly giving feedback on each-others work and helping out. In addition, bayo and myself are creating a script for a voice over at the beginning - we will agreed on adding in the introduction.

Since the date for our first viewing has been pushed back to next week this has enabled us to make final changes and necessary improvements to our documentary. One of the tracks we used at the beginning of our documentary is offline which means we cannot hear it, so we will copy it back on today and make the necessary changes. We will convert the file so this corruption will not keep occuring.

Furthermore, we have created our Radioscript:

-Choice Fm * sound effect ( IMMITATING THE ORIGINAL CHOICE MOTTO)

- Are you a fan of Funkyhouse music?
Interested in how Funky has become the new in thing? * Sound bite someone talking about funky from our doc* Uk FunkyHouse:Behind the scenes; What everyone is talking about * Sound bite someone talking about funky from our doc*  Including new interviews with the hottest DJ Logicz and MIKKIE - music producer to Summertime and Ego remix * Sound bite someone talking about funky from our doc* Exclsuive information only in Uk Funky house;Behind the scenes; from how they made it to samples of their latest tracks. * Interview cut aways*

-We got public oppinions * soundbites of people shouting funky *
-We got informtion on how to add your own twist to the best skanks * soudnbite of different skanks*
- Released the 1st of January 2010 to your local stores. Be the first. * Interview*