Question 4

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

For this evaluation question I will be covering the use of:Blogging sites,Social networking sites,Production software andHardware. In my research and planning, construction and evaluation of my coursework.

Blogger

With the blogging site ‘Blogger’ I was able to share and display all of my different work that I had created, it made it easily accessible to everyone around the world, making it a lot easier to store and to view. This made sharing between different technologies such as computers, laptops, iPads and smart phones, a lot better, so I always had a backed up version on my blog. With Blogger being accessible everywhere I was

able to upload my storyboards online and use my mobile whist filming to see which shots we needed, meaning less paperwork and more time saved. With the use of Blogger there were many ways that my work

could be viewed by many different people; comments from people viewing my blog can be added under each post I have created, recommendations from Google+ allow people to post on their Google+ home page and through other social media websites, my blog work can be shared. This all contributes to self-promotion, and people viewing my blog and sharing my work can gain more interest and more people will want to see

my work, including my music video.

Slide Share I used ‘Slide Share’ to upload PowerPoint’s of work that I had created to the internet. This made it easy for everyone to view, because I provided links on my blog to the PowerPoint's on slide share, meaning that it could be uploaded and seen by people who have been looking through my blog. This was a lot easier than exporting each of the PowerPoint slides as Jpeg files, because this way meant that they lost a lot of quality and did not look as professional as uploading it to ‘Slide Share’.

Memory Sticks

I used a memory stick as well as a computer and laptop hard drive to store and back up all of the work I had been producing. This was for files such as the advertisement, digi-pack and music video, so I could work on my promotional package in and out of college, being able to edit and refine each

of my ideas before transferring them fully onto my blog.

Social Media

The main social media which I used was Facebook and Twitter. This was in the form of promoting the music video created, so I would be able to get more audience feedback for analysis.

Facebook was used for communication as well as promoting the music video, so me and my group could decide locations and discuss different things we needed to do in relation to how far along we

were in our coursework. Also Facebook was used to get people to complete our survey for our research sections of the coursework.

And for Twitter I used it to ask ‘Arctic Monkeys’ Twitter page if we could have permission to use their song for our coursework and music video.

Research and Planning

InternetFor the research and planning sections of my coursework, I used the internet to find digi-packs and advertisements from pervious arctic monkeys music and albums. This allowed me to find their work but also the work of other artists of the ‘indie rock’ genre, so providing a clearer structure that I would follow the conventions of the band and also the genre.

I used YouTube to find videos that followed the indie rock genre, including those of arctic monkeys, to make sure I fully understood the genre and how each of the videos presented the band/artists and how they followed Goodwin’s theories.

I used many different technologies in the research and planning of my promotional package to fully collect the right amount of exploration that was at a high quality in order to evaluate it.

Research and Planning

A scanner was used for uploading all of our storyboards and mock up designs. I then had a digital copy of all of my work as well as a hard

copy, meaning it was easily accessible on a mobile device when filming and it was very unlikely that the information would be lost.

I used ‘Survey Monkey’ to collect research from a selection of different people, to calculate the results and to create an audience profile. This meant that it was very easy to gather the research that I needed and Survey Monkey easily produced the data into graphs that, which was time consuming and more reliable.

For a secondary source of audience feedback I used a microphone and recorded a fan of

‘Arctic Monkeys’ and the indie genre to get the right style of research that was relevant and

helped in deciding what conventions I needed follow in the promotional package.

Construction For the construction and production of our promotional package we used many different things,

such as software and equipment, that helped us to fully achieve the potential of the final piece, and create it to the best standard that was possible.

Cameras

I used a Song A65 for the photographing stages of our promotional package. This included photographing experimental pieces for both the advertisement and Digi-pack and then for photographing the final images for each. For the practice and experimental photographs for the promotional package, I did some studio set ups of cards and took a number of images from different angles and perspectives. This meant that I could use shutter speeds, ISO and aperture settings to find what lighting I felt was best for the package. When photographing the images for my final promotional package, I made sure that I took a high quantity of images, and because of the experimentation in the pervious photo-shoots, I was able to finalise how I wanted each of the images to look.

For the filming of the music video, I used a Canon 600D. This was because the Canon camera had a higher spec, so the videos that we would be producing would be at a very high standard. Because of the different settings on the Canon, I was able to put the focus on a manual setting, making it easily to manually focus what I wanted in each shot, giving a lot more control.

Construction

Production Software

Camera Equipment

For the Sony A65 I used an External Flash to properly light each of the images that were taken. This made the setting a lot more transportable, and I could set up and photograph my images in many different places whilst still upholding the professional studio quality that the flash conveys.

With the Canon 600D camera an LED Light Ring was placed around the lens of the camera to fully illuminate the settings that we were filming. Because of the limited lighting the light ring helped to add a lot more light to the subjects, and made the quality of the filming a lot stronger.

We used a MacBook with Adobe PremierePro downloaded onto it, to fully achieve the best designs that the music video could have. Because of using Premiere Pro instead of ‘Final Cut Pro’, the music video had the latest versions on the video editing software and was created to a professional standard. When using Premiere pro, it was very easy to edit clips together to create the music video because it was possible in a non linier way. This meant it was easy to leave the production of the music video to rethink ideas and then come back to it later and it still be accessible.

When creating the advertisement and Digi-pack of the promotional package, Adobe Photoshop was used. Because it was the latest version of Photoshop (CS6), all of the effects were the highest they could be and a lot more editing techniques could be used. Photoshop and its user friendly software made it easy to layer different sections of the promotional packages, and especially with the digi-pack, the creation of them was a lot easier.

Construction

Evaluation Stages

The final finished music video was uploaded to YouTube. This made it accessible to everyone around the world, making it easy for people viewing my blog in different country's to look at the video. Because of the high quality of camera and the high file size that I exported the video in, on YouTube, a higher resolution was added as a quality to the video, so people were able to see the music video the way it was intended to be shown.

As a group we posted a link on Facebook, to allow people to see the link, watch the video and either like or comment on the Facebook link, so self promoting the music video and getting more people to view it. This also meant that we could get a lot of feedback and comments about the video, and what people liked about it and how they thought it related well to ‘Arctic Monkeys’ and the indie genre.