By Sahir Ahmed

Evaluation Question 6 – What have you learnt about the technologies from

the process of constructing this product?

During the production of our film, we used many new, and different technologies which gave us and familiarised us with key skills in the media field, and ones that we could use in the future. Some of the new technologies we used:•Scribd•Blogger•YouTube•Microsoft Office•Slide Share

•High Tech Cameras•Tri – Pod•Mac book

CameraThe High Definition cameras we became familiar with are one of the most, if not the most important piece of technology that is associated with media projects nowadays. During our preliminary, I made sure the battery for the camera was fully charged in order to allow us to film, within the least amount of time so that not time was wasted on our part. I was assigned the role of the cameraman in my production group as well which meant that I had to be the most familiar with the camera as I would be the one involved with it the most. The camera we used was top of the range which meant that the picture quality recorded was HD (1080p), the best and highest quality of film available at this moment in time.

Tri-PodThe tripod was a very important piece of technology we used. Although the tripod may not be seen as technological as other things, it is just as important as the camera is to media production groups. The tripod enables the cameramen to hold the camera in a stable position, stopping the camera from being dropped and damaged, preventing thousands of pounds worth of damage. Before this occasion, I had never used a tripod before, which meant that I had to get used to it, and become familiar with the skills needed to work the tripod properly. I found this rather difficult, however I was able to eventually learn the ways in working a tripod, and I was able to secure and transport the camera safely with the use of the tripod.

Mac BookAlthough I was very familiar with this sort of technology, and use a Laptop almost everyday, I had never used a Mac Book before. This meant that, initially, I found it rather difficult when it came to working on the Mac Book, after a couple of weeks, I eventually became fluent in the use of a Mac Book, and was able to use it effectively. I found that although the Mac Book was much harder to use, it was much more suited to the needs of media production groups, and had a lot of software already installed on the hard drive that would be extremely useful to media production groups in the production of their media products.

ScribdScribd was a vital piece of technology we used to help import our work onto our group and private blogs. Scribd allowed us to import many files that were composed on our Pc/Mac Book, and embed them onto our blog page with the use of an embed code.However, we encountered some problems with the use of Scribd. We found that, sometimes, when uploading a file onto Scribd, it would alter the file, and make it invalid. In this case, I uploaded a word file onto Scribd, and found that it ended up reshuffling and deleting some of the words contained in that particular document. After a while of trying to fix this error, I found that by saving the document as a ‘PDF’ file, and re-uploading it onto Scribd, all the errors were eliminated and it had been uploaded perfectly.

Slide Share

Slide Share was an extremely useful piece of technology for me. It enabled me to upload the work I did on Microsoft PowerPoint onto my group blog, and allowed me to have an alternative way of uploading my work, rather than using the usual Scribd. One of the pieces of work we used to upload with Slide Share was the equipment list as it enabled us to give the blog viewer a clear method of analysing our work.

BloggerBlogger, I think, was probably the most important piece of technology we used. It allowed us to have an interactive online platform, on which we could upload our work and meant that there was much less paperwork involved, as you would get with other types of coursework. This was the first time I had used blogger, however I got used to it very quickly and found it very easy to use. Being proficient in the use of Blogger, applied to me more than any other member of my production team as I was in charge of maintaining the group blog, which meant I had to update, clean and continuously monitor the blog, and without being familiar with Blogger it would have meant that I wouldn't not have been able to do this as well as I could have.

YouTubeYouTube was the main tool we used to upload the video of our final production. There were many reasons why we chose YouTube. Firstly, it is known worldwide, therefore there is a higher chance of us getting a wider range of viewers on YouTube compared to any other site.Secondly, watching videos on YouTube is fast, easy and extremely reliable. This meant that more people could watch our production video without any hassle and hardly having to wait for the video to buffer. One thing that we came across was that the uploading time for a video was rather long, so this took us a while to get done. After that however, everything else was fine.

Microsoft Office

Microsoft office was used intensively throughout our production. Whether it was Microsoft Word or Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Office allowed us to get our work done in a very reasonable amount of time and allowed us to lay our work out in a appropriate way so it could be read easily.