Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and

research, planning and evaluation stages?

Blogger• Blogger was essential for all stages of my media

production. For the construction and research stage it was essential that I posted all findings and theories relating to them on Blogger, for future reference. Not only that but case studies allowed for me to build up my knowledge on how to apply certain theories such as Goodwin's Theory and Narrative Theory, to specific case studies. Not only that but with easy access to Blogger through many available devices, it meant that I could express my ideas as soon as they hit me. The open accessibility to my blog page also means that teachers can support me with detailed comments on what I can improve, to improve my mark, and overall leave me happier with my performance. For my evaluation which I am currently doing, it helped me to reference previous theories and case studies through intertextual references which have been the basis to my production.

• Blogger has been what has held all my ideas together to help me produce work with all aspects covered.

Sound Cloud

I used Sound Cloud for finding the track I wanted to use for my video. Sound Cloud allowed me to discover similar types of music to Scarlett Parade’s track Summer Song, due to the recommend section which suggests similar music of a similar genre, which in this case is Folk/Indie. Meaning that I could use references between the track I chose and similar tracks.

Artists Website

• The artists website was also very useful for the planning and construction stages. It was useful for the planning as it helped us to identify the genre of the music, and also similar artists/bands which we could reference in our planning and evaluation. It was also useful for the construction of my back panel, as I had to find out the name of other tracks they made to produce an accurate digipak for Scarlett Parade. Lastly, I used the website to find out how to get in contact with them to check whether we could use there track to make a music video with.

YouTube

• YouTube is a popular video website that I used to research the music videos of band/artists; the reason for this being that it contains videos from a variety of genres, and so through browsing this site in the preliminary stages of our production we were able to produce many ideas about how we wanted our music video to play out. In addition to this, being exposed to such a wide collection of productions allowed us to determine conventions that were specific to certain genres. It also meant we could establish many intertextual references in our video and to others of a similar genre.

• YouTube was key for the research part of my production, for example case studies and similar videos were used and analysed to identify the common generic conventions of my music video. For example I found that almost every music videos display women in a voyeuristic way. I only found this out due to being able to access YouTube to widen my understanding of the theory.

Camera• I used a Sony HD camcorder for my filming. It was obviously essential for the construction stage of my

production. Not only that but it was very small meaning it was easily portable, and therefore was also useful for the planning and research stages; especially in terms of finding suitable locations and experimenting with the weather conditions. The video recorder also consisted of many useful features, the most important was the zoom feature which is used in several of our shots.

Adobe Premiere ProI used Adobe Premiere Pro for the editing stage of my production, as it allowed me to store all my footage on one device, which meant I could select which shot to use and how long I wanted the duration of the shot to last for. It also had many effects which I could use such as blends and dissolves, meaning I could smoothen out my production between shots. Not only that but a black and white effect was also essential as it meant that you could see the difference between the present and past (flashbacks). Which was key to my narrative.

Adobe Premiere Pro

The use of dissolves and other effects could be found on the menu on the left side of the programme. I commonly used Cross Dissolve, Dip to Black and Dip to White to provide variation within my production and the Dip to Whites were used to signify flashbacks.

Here you can see a segment of the timeline which was all my shots put together in order. In this shot I use overlays and dissolves to give my production a nice edge and clean finish.

Overlays

Dissolve

Adobe Photoshop• I used Adobe Photoshop for my print productions. It was key for my construction as I had to adjust

most of my pictures to the correct dimensions. I also had to edit each picture to get the lighting correct, and portray the correct generic conventions for a Folk/Indie band.

For my front panel I had to adjust the colour to portray the correct message and for it to carry some appeal. Therefore I had to use the styles effect to find the correct colour for me to use. I also used text and fonts to insert text on Adobe Photoshop