Technology Skills Week

This week we have to identify and improve our technology skills then experiment creatively with different technology and hopefully step outside my comfort zone. I am fairly confident with: camera's, Photoshop and Premier pro as I have made a film in A2 film, this previous knowledge allows me to have a better understanding of the technology.

For our music video me and Beccy are going to have to be confident when using advanced editing skills and also various new technology and equipment. I have given myself three targets which I should meet by the end of the week, they are:

• Practise with Photoshop to create magazine layouts for the backgrounds for the clips then apply it to Premier Pro.


• Advanced green screen- learn and experiment the desired:background, lighting needed to create quality green screen.


• Do practise filming using green screen e.g. full body shot (including floor.) Then practise with Premier Pro to see what animated translations are available in this programme for our film e.g. split screen, wipe cut.
  

Examples of Pin up magazine fonts

These two print screens displayed are just a few of the many but I chose to display them as they and fairly different e.g. font.

When looking at examples on the internet I noticed that there seemed to be a running theme: bold, quirky, vibrant colurs and most inportanly

relates to the image being shown. I will add better examples in due course to compare how different or similar the titles cant be.

Choosing the: style and the colour to emphasise the word being displayed creates a thought provoking and visually striking contract of the cartoon text and the reality of the actress. Choosing an appropriate name for each individual magazine is also very important; I want each magazine cover reflect the character we are trying to portray e.g. if they are girly I would suggest using a swirly text to represent this impression.

I am going to use Microsoft word to create my own experiment titles for my music video. I thought that I would be easier if me and Beccy created backgrounds using Photoshop to then add in on Premiere Pro when we remove green screen to created more pin up/ pop art magazine layouts, as this will be very entropic and show how creative we are using the available soft we have.

My experiments using Microsoft word

Above are test titles and fonts for our music video. The theme of of our video is pin up so me and Beccy decided it would would look quirky if we created magazine titles and place them behind the girls in the video to create the look as though some of the girls are on the pin up magazines.

I have chosen different fonts and colours to reflect and emphasis the word displayed. Visually they all look striking but maybe I will have to come up with better titles? I will do this in the editing process, as I will then be able to visually see the colour code and font for each different character. I particularly like the SUGAR title as it looks like candy; both the text and font, this is a possible keeper!

For these examples I used the fonts:Baskerville Old Face, Bernard MT Condensed, Harlow Solid Italic and Broadway (very convenient for the theme of of video.)I will continue to create and experiment with different fonts and colour themes until am I satisfied.

Unfortunately I did not complete all three of my tasks due to faults with Premiere pro. However I did complete the second task; me and Beccy made our own green screen using green card and then experimented with the studio lights to create the desired effect. From our first practise we did we realised that the green screen must be lit up; I did this by positioning the lights to illuminate the who of the green screen evenly. When either me or Beccy stood in front of the green screen we had to make sure no shadows were casted on it; we did this by standing further away and strategically placed the lights so none were cast. I already had experience using these lights but Beccy did not so I taught her how to use them which I believe she now knows how to use them correctly. This practise has been a great experience for both of us as it will help us when we are producing our music; both of us know how to set up the equipment and we know how the environment should be lit when it comes to our practical work.

Once again we used the new HD digital camera to capture footage; we plan to use this for our actual music so getting familiar with it is essential because we do not want to worry about how to use when we are filming. This camera is great quality and will make our music video look music professional and polished; close up and extreme close up shot will be very effective, as we will be able to focus on the beautiful girls in the video. Being Light weight allows us to use hand held; we planning to do panning shots etc... and this is more possible with this camera. In comparison to the old tape cameras they allow us to create more advanced, desired effects. I am familiar with lenses this camera is not difficult to work with but of course me and Beccy will have to experiment with what the lenses do and which we want to use.

We filmed ourselves in front of our makeshift green screen doing various scenarios such as: weather report, lift and using a fan I pretended that I was in a windy, cold place. I suggested to Beccy that we should film our feet so we can see what happens to floor when we edit the green out on Premiere Pro; we did this. To replace the green screen I went outside to film the snowy scenery outside to complement the my cold impression. Sadly the Premiere Pro did not cooperate with us; it kept changing the size of the clip and cropping it down with out us telling it to do so. We closed down the programme several times but the same process kept happening.

As we were unable to edit any of the clips instead me and Beccy decided to use Photoshop to create backgrounds to replace the green screen in our music video. We only managed to create one which was only a practise and did not reflect a theme for our characters; I believe it is saved on Beccy's hard drive so I will try to upload it if I find it. In the mean time Beccy has created three backgrounds which I yet to see. I will continue to practise with Photoshop, I am not very confident using this software; I know the basic editing tool but If I am wanting to do more advanced editing eg. air brushing I will either teach myself or watch tutorials on Youtube.