Evaluation

In what ways does my media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Early on, while getting a feel for the music video genre as a whole, I noticed that the most watchable, popular music videos were the ones with the most entertaining values, that is, following many of the conventions of contemporary popular films, instead of the videos which had a good (I suppose this is subjective, but as a general statement this holds) song, which is what you would expect to appeal the audience, especially in a medium aimed to sell the song. These music videos tended not to deviate from a simple idea, such as dancing on treadmills, or a puppet show. I put this down to the average length of 4 minutes not being enough to tell a complex story like the full film medium (for example, a recent film such as "Alice In Wonderland", features around 10 major characters, and the Alice visits several different locations throughout the film. A music video would not have the time to introduce us to so many characters, or take us to so many locations), and so use a simple narrative and an idea was what created the basis for many videos. In my video, the extreme sport "parkour" was the central idea pushing my video, and the narrative was told using the light trails and romance story. Additional proof for this are the videos created from other members of the class, who probably did research in different ways. One video used the idea of a love story, and used narrative structure for flashbacks which blended into the present. Another group used the idea of a skateboarding, and used a narrative revolving around the theft of the bands drumsticks with this. The "idea" is often also a hook, adding another dimension of interest for the audience to get into. Anyway, time to discuss MY production.

My advanced production is a music video created to promote the single "Helsinki" from the band "Temple Scene". They are an alternative rock/electronic band based in London and consist of two white males in their 30's.

Due to their location, I wanted to give a sense of regionalism in my video, as well as to film the band members who were not willing to come to Norwich to be filmed, wanting the video to promote the single more than the band members, which is unusual for a band, as many music videos will have a lot of footage of the band, especially in the rock genre umbrella, because the band members can be made into minor celebrities, thought advertising in magazine articles and adverts, which is very profitable. For example, even though I do not like the band U2, I know lead singer Bono's face due to it being heavily advertised.
It is worth noting that his characteristic glasses are a major part of this - I am not sure I would recognise him without them. His face can now be used to market products at me. The perfume industry uses this too, by releasing celebrity perfumes.

This is one of Goodwin's Theories: "Record companies will demand a lot of close-ups of the main artist or vocalist" The band did not seem to think getting their identities known to the world was very important, as an be seen from my emails with the band, as they claim to very rarely gig, preferring to be a studio band, which is growing less and less common, but this is something I attributed to their genre - many electronic artists hide their faces, including some of the most famous artists, such as Deadmau5, and Daft Punk to the lesser known Station X. In the end, I stayed to film in Norwich without the band, and focused on the representation of the city. The mise-en-scene had to reflect the themes of love and parkour in the video, so as well as planning locations based on freerunning potential, I chose locations that I thought gave a particular feeling.

A range of different locations was very important, as I felt it would reduce audience boredom, prevent locations from all looking alike, and also show that the protagonist had travelled a long way, from a crowded market to an apartment complex to a modern looking bridge. Showing him travelling a long way also works as a metaphor for his journey, and combined with the flashbacks, which tell the viewer more about the character, help to show how the character has changed, even from the beginning to end of the video.

One of the locations I used which I am most proud of is the urban housing complex from around the 1 minute to the 2 minute points. As well as being perfect for freerunning, I chose it to be the middle section of the film, as the thin, twisting pathways the character runs through are deeply symbolic of the character's feelings, which, after the flashbacks in that section of the film, we become aware of. The location signifies the confusion and emptiness of the character, and notice that there are no other people to be seen in the entire scene, which is strange for a residential area, to reflect this.

I focused on showing many of the more famous parts of the city, such as Norwich Castle, the City Hall, and the Norwich Market, to advertise the city. In a real production, so many major landmarks of the city presented in a positive way could have landed me funding from the Norwich City Council or the British Film Institute, as many media productions rely on product (including location) placement for funding. This and another BBC article explains how the films and TV shows can massively boost tourism in the areas films were filmed.

I added to the film's feeling by filming at sunset, with a warm orange glow set over the non-flashback parts of the film. This was inspired mainly by action, horror and thriller films, which seem to often (normally more than other genres) use a coloured tint over entire scenes to give the scene a certain feel. In some films, this tint will stay throughout the film. This blog post from my AS blog is very relevant here. I do not feel that I really developed or challenged this convention, although I could argue that by bringing strong tints from the action/horror/thriller genres, I was developing the music video or sports genres, but I can think of videos, especially in the music video umbrella, where tints are used as I have done. There are far fewer in the "sports" category, however, due to the genre's focus on clarity - if football games were shown in monochrome to portray the emotions of the game, viewers would not be happy.

When planning my video, I quickly came to realise that my idea was not something done by many others before. The themes of relationships and breaking up seemed incredibly common, but freerunning seemed to be very rare in music videos. I found about four videos which incorporated it, including Madonna's "Jump", and David Guetta and The Egg's "Love Don't Let Me Go, (the latter was discussed in depth in an earlier post), and even fewer which made it a major part of the video. The only music video I found which used a similar light trail was an unofficial snowboarding music video set to MGMT's "Kids". For this reason, I had to create my own conventions to suit the style of my video, which as far as I know, is unique, and was built up from a process of researching the core elements of my plan. The thought process I had was to take various different styles and combine them together in a fluid way. This combination of youth, extreme sport and special effects gives my video a very modern feel, which is well suited to the modern style of music. I also feel the special effects and parkour are important for "wowing" the audience, For this reason, the influences I had for the love story, parkour and special effects were all different.

The love story had to be told in a very small amount of time, and so I strived to make it easily to comprehend, but still retain some complexity to keep the viewer interested. The love story is the most conventional part of my video, due to it being the least researched my a long shot. The use of flashbacks in a romance story is core to many romance films, such as "The Notebook" and to a lesser extent "Edward Scissorhands". Both of these films are told mainly by flashback, and were what inspired me to do the same. However, unlike the other elements in the video, there was comparatively very little research put into this section. Possibly because of the simplicity of the plot and narrative as a result of this, the representation of the girl in the video is a very simple one, and my video represents her as a target, or objective, which is a very outdated ideal, and continues to grow so, as women continue to receive more and more important roles in society as a whole. However, women are still marginalised in the music industry. I can think of many more major male artists than female, although recent years have been a breakthrough for women in the music industry, and now bands such as Paramore and La Roux and artists such as Lady Gaga are often high in the music charts. She has no personality and is shown doing very little, and therefore is not a character people would want to emulate, especially in comparison with the active and exciting lead character. This is often the norm in music videos, where women are represented as a prize, or passively, as, off the top of my head, music videos such as "Golddigger" and "The Scientist" and I have done (although all to different extents, the first video plainly shows the objectification of women, where the second simply makes the woman in the story a very minor character, where she could have easily had a more major role, in a more similar way to what I have done.). However, this is almost to my advantage given the male target audience for a parkour film. I think that the male character is one which would influence people, and convince them to take up parkour. Several of the comments made (including ones written on the evaluation sheets handed out) revolved around interest in the sport, and many people asked me how they could get involved. Not surprisingly, nobody asked how to stand on a bridge looking lonely and do very little.

The parkour itself was one of the much harder sections of the video, as I had to learn basic choreography, which I would need years to learn properly. I think a lot of it in the end was done on instinct, as inspired by the shows and films I watch frequently which are heavily choreographed, such as "Buffy" or "The Island". I think the massive difficulty of planning those scenes, which involved using locations, planning for the light trail and planning for stunts, which had to be decided by both me and Brendan, which made things nearly impossible to plan before we were at the locations we had planned to possibly use; were likely what led to me putting less emphasis on the narrative and more on the visuals. I realised in planning that realistically, I was not a competent enough director/writer to plan a music video which really affected the emotions of the audience, and that my equipment would not be good enough to create a video which really looked professional, so I quickly turned to wanting to make the audience feel awe and amazement at what they were seeing, so that the video could grab them from any point. This was an objective I kept to the end, and I think really shows, especially in the romantic scenes, where I still layered the shots with low opacity stunts. I feel this is very important, especially for a music video, where an audience member can tune in at any point.

The light streak was implemented for many reasons. In the first place it was because I became fixated with the flowing nature of it, and was one of the pieces of the initial plan I really wanted to use, and was in the same section as fire staffs or other light effects. This has been discussed in depth before. I also wanted to use special effects as I felt that while the quality of the camera I could obtain was limited, and my budget and knowledge would prevent some of the shots I really wanted, special effects were only tied down by how much work I put into learning how to use them, and potentially, could do anything, and look really, really good. The snowboarding music video mentioned above was key to this, as it showed me that anyone could create the effect (the creators were far from professional, even if they were far more experienced than me) if they put the work in. Another reason for their use was the lyrics of the song, which completely coincidently, talked about
"I'll chase the light,
to anywhere, to anyplace"
, which was much to crazily coincidental to ignore. This fit in with another of Goodwin's Laws: "There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.". So I spent several days training in the program, and more using it with my footage once I had established the limitations of the light, and how it should be used, although I continued to expand on the technique when creating the music video, in particular working the light with moving footage and using masks to make it appear as if the light was disappearing past objects. One shot where Brendan jumps in front of the still moving light, while the camera shakes, took several hours to create. The significance of the light is discussed in the short post "Symbolism in my video".

Overall, the dance genre has been most influential in my video, as can be seen from the use of lights, and high speed of the video, but the video was designed as a genre hybrid, incorporating much of the rest of what is seen from the alternative rock genres, as well as a bit of everything studied in this blog. Therefore, I would consider the video to use and develop the genre, and genres of the music video as a whole. The same can be seen in my print productions, but to a much lesser extent.

My CD promotional package, which can be viewed above, is much more conventional than my music video, but still fuses genres together, as can be seen from its main inspirations, which have been reposted from my last CD cover post.

The genre for "Death Cab For Cutie" is defined as "Alternative", and the band's songs tend to be quite depressing and soft. This mainly fulfils the slower, more acoustic side to my song.

UnderOath are a Christian Metal band, who also compose some softer, less heavy music. The CD cover here is fairly unconventional for the genre anyway, so I would not use this as a traditional metal music inspiration. It looks to me much more like a dance/electronic band, and to back this up, I showed it to five members of my media class and asking for what genre they think the band would be, who all agreed it looked like a dance/electronic track, although many of them noted it looked like a "softer" or "more mellow" track. This was clearly a huge inspiration to me, as there are many similarities between this and my covers, and the genre described for this CD matches Temple Scene's.

"Muse" are an alternative rock band, and have created a range of music, from very heavy rock to slow ballads. This CD cover was much less of an inspiration than the others, although the MUSE logo was very inspiring, as can be seen from the HELSINKI logo I used.

Taking inspirations from a range of genres develops my genre further. I will here discuss individual aspects of the digipak, and how these relate to my genre.

The digipak is was created using a mix between an urban cityscape at night and streaks of light created by cars. The front cover/magazine advertisement used this clearly and boldly, as I wanted the main parts of the advertising scheme to clearly mark the style of the rest of the digipak. The image for the front cover and magazine advert is the same, as I wanted to make the two obviously related, so if the poster was seen, the cover could be easily recognized, and vice-versa. This is very commonly done, and can be seen by the similarities between these two print productions.

I decided to use the "light trails" in photography theme already discussed for the main part of my CD's front and back cover (which is also used in the magazine advert). I also wanted to take a photo showing a very urban theme, so to fit in with the theme of the video even more, so I set out to try some long exposure photography in the city. Norwich has no areas of sprawling skyscrapers for an epic city shot, but there are some smaller buildings and roads which I thought would serve the purpose. I was also inspired mainly by the three albums covers shown below (although there are many others which contributed to the results), and I find these had a major impact on the finished works. Shooting at night was a necessity, as the light streaks were created by car headlights. I had the option to create the light streaks in Photoshop and shoot in the day, but the black night contrasts powerfully against the reds and yellows in the image, and makes the light stand out much more than it would have without. As is clear from the images in the CD covers post, I took several images using the same long-exposure effect, and some worked more effectively than others. I chose the ones which filled the space most efficiently, while still clear and bold, so the entire image could be taken in at a glance.

Designers will aim to create striking album covers, so that they stand out, or stay in the viewers mind. Here are some examples of how CD covers aim to be as striking as possible.

This cover shows the Offspring logo as boldly as possible. There are no details on the cover that can not be seen from a distance, and the cover is clear on details, telling a viewer exactly what they are looking at. The logo used here was used on a lot of merch due to its simplicity, including hats, shirts, stickers, keyrings, and more.

This cover must have been created to prove my point. To draw the eye, the opposite colours of bright green and purple stand out like nothing else. The font is clear, heavy and as large as possible, and the title "Songs about fucking" is rude, and obviously proud. To tie the cover together, and providing a memorable image of the album, is a woman's head, clearly in sexual ecstasy. The cover could not be simpler, bolder, or more memorable.

This single by Metronomy is a great example of how effective colour can be at drawing in the eye. It may tell the viewer next to nothing about the single, and is not all that memorable, but would definitely draw attention. The lack of information may even get a potential buyer to pick up the single to find out more about it.

The location chosen for the main image used for the front cover and poster was mainly chosen for its boldness. The bridge the photo was taken from allows a clear view of the two very defined roads leading under it, and the location is very symmetrical, which adds to the boldness and power of the image. The many lights creates a strong contrast with the rest of the image, which is mainly on a black background. The large, clear text adds to this effect, and the band name contrasts strongly with the night sky, and the album name stands with the rest of the image due to the lighting effect on the word, making it look like the same lighting as the street lights.

Two of the images used in the digipak are much brighter and more surreal. These were created because they were interesting, and so were used in the blank panel, and also because they made it easy for text to be seen on, as can be seen from the lyrics page. I used the light streaks created by the cars, and layered them until they were hard to recognise. This means that the theme of light streaks is still followed, but in a different way, creating more or a background image than a photo, where different elements can be clearly distinguished.

How effective is the combination of your main product with ancillary texts?

This was something I put a lot of thought into. I wanted to find out if real media products linked the music video with the single cover in the same way a single uses similar graphics to the parent album. In fact, in many real productions the single cover (which is created with the same style as the rest of the advertising campaign)
is created after the video, and so the video often reflects the style of the single, and this level of similarity differs hugely depending on the song. In many of the videos I watched as research there were no links from the video to the album cover at all, although some bands, such as the virtual band "Gorillaz" not only made huge links to the video using the themes and motifs from the cover art, but tied songs and albums together by creating a story for the fictional members of the band. Due to the use of this story element, a huge emphasis was placed on the videos, so that the cover art for the single cover was based on the video, probably because the creators expected the video to have a bigger impact on sales than normal. Other bands, often regardless of how important they consider the video to be, will create videos which are completely unrelated to their advertising campaign, for example "Coldplay", who use a stylised human head on a white background for their "A Rush of Blood to the Head" CD and singles, and yet this motif does not appear in any of their videos. Our class created the video before the graphics for the campaign, and so had to create a cover which would (if we chose to) reflect the video. From the start I knew that I did not want the video to link strongly to the CD cover, as I thought it devalued both pieces artistically and (more importantly) would have made the cover art confusing to anyone not familiar with the video, and given that my research into music videos showed that very few people actively watch them, this is a bad idea. To avoid creating a strong link I decided that I would not use freerunners or the light trail in the cover due to their direct irrelevance to the band, and instead would use what they and other motifs in the video signified or suggested, such as flowing, urban locations, use of lighting, and a surreal tone for the same reasons these were chosen to be used in the video in the first place. This led to me using long-exposure photography to create surreal, long, flowing light effects of traffic for the front and back covers, and even more surreal light effects for the booklet insert, as well as choosing an urban location, as in the video. Personally, I think this creates a solid tie between the art and video without forcing a clear similarity, which combines the advertisements well. I did consider superimposing a photo of Brendan from the video in an energetic pose on top of at least one of the images, but decided against it after attempts to do so failed due to the low resolution of the video footage. I probably could have worked with resolution issues, but that the motion blur of the parkour made the images even less sharp made this impossible. Another reason was that the positions of the parkour in motion were never perfect for photography, working much better in film. Here is one of the images I attempted, which proves this. If superimposed stills of the video had been possible, I would have considered linking the video and digipak more closely, although the reasons mentioned earlier would likely still have stopped me.

There was, however, a much stronger link between the front CD cover and my advertisement poster. The two feature the same image, using the same text. The advert differs slightly, firstly in size, as a portrait A4 size, and also as it features slightly more text selling the CD. I did this as the poster needed to sell the CD as well as possible, and so I had to somehow feature what the CD looked like. I considered using another image, and showing a picture of what the CD looked like, but this seemed less direct, and the CD cover blended with the background image, which had to be a similar style so to fit in. I therefore chose to use exactly the same design on the poster, meaning that the two were instantly recognisable, and would have the same effects on the viewer as the CD cover.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

A quick questionnaire handed out to my media class after viewing the finished video was very useful for finding out how successful the video could be if shown to a real audience. The video was incredibly successful in my class (which is nice!), and the results are shown below.

From a class of 11 mixed gender 17/18 year old media students

How much did you enjoy the music video?
The video scored a 91% approval rating, calculated by adding up the scores given by each interviewee (out of 5), dividing this number by the max score (55). This is the system I will use for all the questions. I would say this is a very pleasing figure, and enjoyment of a music video is possibly the most important factor of how well the video sells the single.

Did it hold your attention?
The approval for this was 95%, which is incredibly pleasing. I like to think that the constant action I ensured my video had contributed to this high figure, showing my plans really paid off. Although I did not divide results in this way due to lack of interviewees, it is worth noting that the males of the class gave 100% approval. As my video is aimed at males, this helps to prove the accuracy of my assumed target audience.

How do you rate the camera work and editing?
This received a 93% rating, which I think is mainly due to the editing (encompassing the special effects, which the comments showed were a big hit, even if not understood fully) part of this question, and less the camera work, which personally I find fairly average due to the few successful more interesting shot types, and the few close ups, which I think the video would have profited with more of.

How do you rate the mise-en-scene?
This scored 89%, which is a still a very high result. The mise-en-scene was admittedly some of the worst part of this video, as I was tied down by areas which would allow the free-running to be showed off.

Was the music video too short/too long/correct length/unsure?
100% of interviewees thought the video was the correct length. At 3 minutes exactly, this is the average length for a music video, so this was another success.

Would you watch it again?
10 out of 11 said they would, with one person unsure. That the video makes nearly everyone want more is a massive success. Note again that all males said they would watch again.

Can you suggest anything that could improve the appeal?
Comments made "better costume to suit the music and more of the love story stuff". This is a just comment, as I spent little time thinking about costume due to the stunts being much easier for Brendan to do in his parkour gear. Perhaps if I were to redo the project I would try a more stylised costume, especially as most people in music videos wear very specific clothing.
"Narrative explored further". I agree that the story is unclear and not brought up enough, possibly due to it being very hard to judge, being in a situation where I know the entire story. It was very hard for me to judge whether the narrative would confuse people, and whether it was deep enough. However, I could argue that the incentive of learning more about the story might convince people to watch the video again.
"More closeups". Lack of close-ups is something I was all too aware of after shooting, and even though I used all the close-ups I filmed, I could still do with more.
"Could have had more shots amongst crowds". This was not something I really thought about when planning, or even filming, but perhaps some carefully selected shots of the protagonist pushing through the busy city would have added to the energy of the video.

Were there any aspects that you find offensive?
Fortunately no-one made any comments on this, as in a real world situation it only takes a few people to complain to get a piece of media removed. Even 1 in 11 would have been much too many.

Was there any part you found confusing or hard to understand?
Three people wanted to know more about the story, specifically, why the couple split up. This is something I should have given more thought to. I did film a few shots showing the couple arguing not in the finished video, but perhaps a clearer and more dramatic scene would have been better, considering how major a part of the narrative it could (and should) have been.

What was the best part of the production?
The comments for this were very varied, from specific shots (long shot of the girl on the bridge, an onlooker's face upon seeing a stunt) to entire parts (the light, the parkour, the editing, the camera work, the shots). It is good that there are no specific part everyone enjoyed most, as it shows that the whole video was a success, and that the video was for the most part, consistently enjoyable.

Does the video reflect the style of the music?
11/11 agreed that it reflected the style of the music.
This again is a very positive review, showing how my links between the music genre and mise-en-scene were accurate.

Does the video successfully promote the artist/band/group?
5/11 - this was less successful. And fairly so - I have already discussed how I chose to represent the band, and it is true that I did not do this very successfully.

Overall, how would you rate the music video?
This scored 93%, so overall, this shows the video as being a success among members of my class. As many of these class members were similar to what I had envisioned as my ideal audience, hopefully my video would have a similar review from other target audience members.

I later had the digipak and advert evaluated by a 5 member lower 6th class of media students, who had this to say.

Does the digipak successfully reflect the genre of music?
This voted 72% successful, which is a fairly average score, although I partly agree. While I quite like the designs I made, I feel that the main cover image does not capture the dynamism of either the song or the video. The inside covers and the most energetic images used in these were more successful at this. The main reason was that I wanted the covers to reflect the calmer, more Coldplay inspired feel to the song. I found that the odd combination of mellow and electronic in the song was a fusion I never quite captured in either the digipak or the video.

Does the magazine advert successfully reflect the genre of music?
This also received a 72% rating, I assume for the same reasons speculated above. Personally I would rate the digipak higher, as it has more variety in images, but possibly they were not seen to be as successful for this point.

How do you rate the standard of graphics in the package?
This received 84%, which is a much higher rating. I am pleased with this rating, and would probably rate it with this myself. As already discussed, the package was nowhere near perfect.

How successfully is the Britishness of the package established?
72% - I'm not sure how this got such a high rating, as really the cover only shows a cityscape, showing nothing about about Britain, or any other country. I suppose it isn't anti-British, but really this wasn't taken into account too much.

Would the magazine advert encourage you to buy the digipak?
5/5 people agreed that it would, which is a very succesful rating. Again, there isn't much to say about this, besides that it proves the success of the production.

Can you suggest anything that could improve the appeal of the productions?
Only one comment was made here, claiming they were unsure over the band name and the album name, were not sure which was which. Having the band name before the album name seemed to be the standard after some research, (as some quick "proof", here are the first three CD covers in my library

Notice the band name always comes before the album name)

so I would not change anything based on this comment.

Were there any aspects that you find offensive? i.e representation of race, gender, age, British culture?
5/5 agreed there were not. Concidering there were no people in the package, this is not surprising.

Identify the strongest feature of the print productions
There were mixed comments here, ranging from every part of the entire package, from photograph composition "My favourite part is the photo itself" to special effects "I really like the effect on the word "HELSINKI". Other comments include "I love the light trails - also how they create a tie with the video's light effects" and "I love the lighting effects like the lines of light and the effect on the text". As with the video, this range of features is encouraging.

Rate the package overall
88% - This is a very high overall score which I am very pleased with, and hope that a larger sample would rate a similar score. Hopefully this shows that the package would sell. It is again worth noting that males gave the package 94%, and females a significantly lower 82%

This very successful audience feedback is (in my opinion) possibly to do with the sample of entirely media students, who have come (like me) to see how hard it can be to create a music video, and are impressed by what I have made, which is still very good, but makes me wonder how a mixed audience would feel about my video. That males in general rated the video more highly than female proves my target audience, showing that the video was a success when it comes to the planned target audience.

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

I used technology in different ways depending on the stage, and so will write about these separately, and in the order of study.

Research
My research was almost entirely conducted online, using video streaming sites such as YouTube and Vimeo to watch music videos or Wikipedia to find information about a band or video. I was able to gain an insight into the popularity and feelings of others of a video using fan sites or online forums. Google Images was used to find album covers. I used Temple Scene's website to find their email address, and then used email to contact the band, using hyperlinks and embedded images to show them relevant video/music/websites, and they did the same in replies to me.

Planning
I planned the video and print productions on this blog, allowing me to add content from almost anywhere using phone Internet services if not around a computer. I could send the URLs from posts to people to gain feedback, which was particularly useful when I had scanned in plans such as storyboards, or created special effects demos. I used Google Maps to plan a route for my freerunner, using Street View or Satellite to view locations without needing to visit them, and using my phone's camera when I had located some good spots and needed to see them in person. The NRPK (Norwich parkour group) website was also a useful tool for talking to people more experienced in the sport than me to help plan my shoot, and showcases some of the best parkour spots, many of which I used in my video. I planned my CD cover mainly on paper and through experimentation in Photoshop both before and after settling on the long exposure photography theme, using the Internet to find CD covers to inspire me.

Construction
I used a £150 handheld digital film camera to capture the footage for my video, recording onto Mini DV tape, which I uploaded into a recent version of Adobe Premier, which I used to cut the narrative structure together. I used this program to tweak the footage, such as enlarging footage to get closer to the action where necessary, changing the contrast and colour effects such as hue and saturation, and adding transitional effects, such as fading between shots, which I used regularly. I exported some clips in to After Effects, where I used time remapping for a better slow motion effect than I could manage in Premier, and is also where I created the light trails, using a powerful particle effect plugin (Trapcode's Particular). The latter was a very complex process, and required me to use several effect layers after creating the trail to create a light effect, motion tracking for when the camera was in motion, and masking when the trail went behind an object. The two programs use a form of synergy, allowing footage to be easily moved from one program to the next, which I made use of to import from Premier,


edit footage in After Effects and move back into Premier, where it was exported as a high quality version and lower quality version to be uploaded online, so it could be easily viewed on video streaming sites such as Youtube, where the video currently rests.

For my print productions I used Photoshop to tweak photos taken with a Nikon D-50 on long exposure, changing hue, contrast, brightness and saturation to make the light stand out more and appear more vibrant and surreal, and to make the sky as dark as possible without making the light too dark. I wrote all my text using fonts downloaded online, using layer effects to make them stand out, for example, I used "Outer glow" on the font of "HELSINKI". For some of the images I created for the booklet I superimposed several images on top of each other, using the "screen" layer effect to create an unnatural mesh of lights. The round effect used on a shot of the city in one frame was created with the "Polar Coordinates" tool, and was cleaned slightly using the eraser tool and blur tools. More information can be viewed in the CD cover post before this one mentioned several times in this evaluation. Its name is "Print Productions".

Evaluation
My evaluation was (perhaps obviously) written on my blog, which is a great time saver, allowing me to work from anywhere with an Internet connection and a computer. Sometimes even less - this sentence was written using a phone and mobile Internet. This not only allows me to write anywhere, but it allows people to read anywhere, which I guess is how you are reading this. Being able to do so saves having to carry around masses of essays in a folder, which I'm sure I would end up losing. Another advantage of using blogs over a portfolio system is that I can embed images, videos and PowerPoint presentations, as I have done throughout this post.