USEFUL TECHNOLOGIES: YouTube audience analysis

As well as branding your own channel, and using the other tools covered here, you can analyse your audience demographics and engagement (check the gender or age breakdown, the countries views are coming from, the sources (websites), and even how long individual videos are typically viewed for. You can also create graphs of audience engagement (subscriber numbers, dis/likes, comments) over a period of time you specify:

TO ACCESS: click on the 3 lines beside the YouTube logo; click on  My Channel. Then click on Video Manager and you can access your audience data.

FCPX freebies, guides and add-ins

The NoFilmSchool site announced an Apple offer: new downloadable content for learning advanced editing techniques. Go to the PremiumBeat link to find out more.

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USEFUL TECHNOLOGIES: Photoshop YouTube tutorials

See more on using Photoshop + digipak design in this post + this vodcast.

You needn't be a Photoshop genius to produce some incredible FX in Photoshop - there are 100s of ace designers out there who have shared their knowledge online, producing effective guides. Have a browse and pick out one or more that can help raise your ideas to a higher level, and just follow the step by step guides!

STUDENT EXAMPLE:
2015 IGS A2 student Amber got inspired by a tutorial that looked at an effect that fitted neatly with Lady Gaga's complex relationship with the press (post link):

Here Amber goes through the techniques she used:

USEFUL TECHNOLOGIES face swap apps

There are many tablet, smartphone and computer apps that enable you to blend elements of a face into an existing image; Masquerade, bought up by Facebook, is amongst the most recent and virally successful examples - chances are someone you know has posted an image from this on your timeline.

Find more examples with a simple search.

Mr Facebook himself promoted the MSQRD tool with a Transformers video.

 MSQRD website.

USEFUL TECHNOLOGIES gifs and vines

Instead of relying on screenshots, you can use gifs or vines of short sequences (max. 6 seconds) from your OR existing copyrighted (fair usage) texts; an especially useful tool for a standard blog post (and social media/website).

Vine has been forced to close - a useful example of the churn and uncertainty in the web 2.0/new media field

via GIPHY

A gif is a short animation built from still images, a vine is a short video clip, and both can be coded to play on loops - you WILL have encountered these on Facebook and the likes!

There are lots of sites for creating both, and lots of guides for doing so:

• Google gif-making
• YouTube gif guides
• Giphy is probably the best known site for these 
• Google vine-making
• YouTube vine-making
• Mashable guide to vine-making, comprehensive

Ol' Bill likes gifs!
via GIPHY

Create a gif and look for the usual embed code!

It's not complicated!

VINES ARE GREAT ADDITIONS TO WEBSITES/SOCIAL MEDIA TOO

Again, you get embed codes and social media share options

USEFUL TECHNOLOGIES greenscreen

In theory, you don't even need an actual green screen - just a flat surface with a uniform colour that doesn't match any you/the subject/s are wearing (ditto hair/skin tone). Chroma keying works by looking for one identified colour and removing it.

The video below is an example of how you might deploy this technology; I filmed my IGS Media Technician John against a greenscreen (having provided a script), then edited this into a guide on using the greenscreen technology.