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

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

Throughout the course of creating my; music video, digipak and advertisement, I have used many different websites, equipment and editing software's. Everything I used was equally important, and it would have been impossible to create my products without the use of these technologies. It was also important to use the right technology’s for the type of products I was producing, in order to make it look as professional as possible. For example, using Photoshop for editing the digipak rather than Final Cut.

Question Four.Research:

Blogger: Before we started making any of our products, we set up a blogger website: www.blogger.com/ . This enabled us to create posts, and write down our research findings, ideas or anything else we felt was important for our blog. We created posts as a group, as well as ones individually. I could access this blog anywhere for whenever I felt the need to make a new post. This was updated regularly and we eventually built up a good list of posts that helped us with making our products.

YouTube: YouTube was helpful during several stages, especially the research stages. It enabled us to search indie-pop music videos and get an idea of what they look like in order to appeal to our target audience and give them what they expect from this genre. It was also important at the end of the construction stage as we were then able to upload our video onto YouTube and gain feedback from those on there.

Internet: The Internet was an important part of our research, as it helped us access sites like Google. Google was helpful during the research stages because I was able to look at chart information that helped us know if our music genre would do well in a mainstream chart. Also, we were able to go on sites like dafont and look for fonts for our logo and our promotional poster.

Microsoft Word: We also used Microsoft Word during the research stages as we created questionnaires and graphs on here. They were used to hand out to our target audience for relevant information that would help us with our overall research.

Question Four.Construction:

Final Cut Express: Final Cut is the main software we used to create our music video. It enabled us to cut, edit and green screen our footage. It was the first time I had used this, so we practiced before hand. This was the result of my first time green screening. I was pleased with the results, and this encouraged me and my group to go on and use green screen in our actual music video. Final Cut was the most important piece of software we used when creating out video, and it wouldn’t have been possible to make it without this.

Photoshop: We used Photoshop when designing the logo and the ancillary tasks. Since the last media project I produced, my Photoshop skills have improved drastically and I was much more comfortable on it this time. I have got to grips with the editing tools- and I used things like overlay, brightness/contrast and curves etc to edit our images. I believe Photoshop has helped us create a really visually interesting ancillary tasks and logo. Just like Final Cut, without Photoshop we wouldn’t have been able to produce professional looking pictures (like cutting out images correctly) if we hadn’t used it, and therefore was extremely important during the construction stage.

Click the picture above to see a quick video on how we produced one of our panels using Photoshop.

Question Four.Construction:

HD Video Camera: To film our performance shots in the studio, we used a HD camera. This helped us gain the best quality footage which would then make it easier for us to green screen our footage. The camera also made our footage look professional because it gave us images of the highest standard, which is something you expect to see in a music video. The HD camera helped us to create a convincing music video.

Lighting: We used specialist studio lighting when filming our performance shots and taking our ancillary task images. This was to give us well lit images that would appear clear when we uploaded them onto the computer. The use of the lighting helped us gain professional looking images overall as they stopped any glare or overly dark shadows etc. Because our genre was indie-pop we didn’t try to overuse the lighting and made it look subtle, as in this genre the lighting is made to look as natural as possible.

HD Camera: When taking photos for our digipak and advert, we again used the studio and used a HD camera. Just like the HD video camera, it enabled us to take good quality, sharp, professional looking photographs. To make sure our images didn’t come out blurry, we used a tripod to keep the camera still. This helped our final products look more convincing and like a real product because of the quality of the equipment we used.

Question Four.Evaluation:

Prezi: I used Prezi to create a presentation to question three of my evaluation, I also used it to create presentations on our audience feedback on our final products. It was the first time I had used Prezi but I found it surprisingly easy to use. I enjoyed using it, as it makes our presentations look more interesting and attractive. However, it did take a while to produce these presentations.

PowerPoint: I have used PowerPoint presentation before and therefore I am aware of all it’s features. I have used it for several of my evaluations, as well as some of my presentations for the research stages. I like using PowerPoint as it’s simple to use and gets across the information in a clear and well set out manner. I then used websites like SlideShare to upload my PowerPoint’s and embed it onto our blog.

Screenr: I used Screenr to record my computer screen as I demonstrated how we produced one of our digipak panels, that I uploaded to YouTube and added to this presentation. This was something I had never used before, yet it was very useful and was very simple to use. It again helps to make my presentation more interesting and shows me branching out and using different technologies.

Windows Movie Maker: I used this to take clips from our video and cut it down to pick out relevant parts to add to my evaluation. It’s a very simple footage editing software, but it did what I needed it to do and was very simple and easy to use. I was able to upload the footage straight to YouTube from the programme which was very useful.

Question Four.

Overall, all the different technologies I used helped to create a professional looking music video, digipakand advertisement. Every technology and software I used was important to creating our products and it wouldn’t have been possible to create them without the use of one of the technologies. They were all simple and easy to use, even the ones I hadn’t used before. In all I am very pleased with all of them and would definitely use them again if we were to reproduce our products.