Evaluation:

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

I used many different media technologies to help me arrive at making my three different products, some were used during the research stages; questionnaires and audience feedback were used alongside online media programmes such as facebook, wordle and wallwisher. This type of technology helped me to gain a better understanding of what people wished to see in a music video and in the ancillary products which go alongside it. I used these programmes to upload images and also my video to receive such comments and luckily it worked, helping me with my research and construction. I used my Apple Iphone to take photographs for my ancillary tasks and also used it to play music whilst my actor was lip singing in time with it in my video. This also acted as a memory stick as I stored a lot of my work on it whilst working on editing my video and transferring information onto my blog. I was lucky enough to have access to an Apple Mac at school which had the editing programme ‘Final Cut Pro’ on it, this editing software is really effective and I took full advantage of this when constructing my video. I used the different effects which are included with it, such as a wide range of transitions, editing of the speed/ colour of shot as well as many other more complex effects. Although I only experimented with a few of these effects, I believe and judging from some of my audience feedback, that the ones I did use looked professional and tied all of my clips together nicely.  This programme also allowed me to easily transfer my music (the cover version) so that I could cut the clips whilst listening to the music, making editing a lot easier.

Production:

To film my music video, I used a new video camera, which had a memory card, instead of a tape, preventing me from having to change films. However, this did cause a few problems as only the new Apple Macs at school were compatible with this type of camera and so I had to wait until these specific computers were free until I could upload my video and start to edit it. I also used a tripod which when fixed to the camera made my filming a lot smoother, although there are a few jolts in my final footage, the tripod kept these at a minimum and as there was even a built in spirit level, which ensured that my shots would be straight.  When making my ancillary products, as previously mentioned I used my Iphone to take photographs which I then uploaded and edited using a programme called ‘Adobe Photoshop Elements 7’. This programme was great, it allowed me to manipulate my photographs and I edited the lighting effects to make the image more atmospheric and used different filters to subtly change the overall texture of the image. As I learnt from my audience research, I could have used this to make the writing slightly lighter and bigger and I would definitely adhere to this if i were to make it again.

Research and Planning:

In my research and planning I used a programme called ‘slideshare’ to make slideshows which can be accessed via blogger.com. This was an interesting way of presenting ideas and really helped me, especially when comparing existing products. I also used this for part of my evaluation, as once again I find it really useful when comparing items.

Perhaps one of the most important media technologies I used was ‘YouTube’ which I used to show the existing videos I was researching, as well as when uploading my own videos (both for my evaluation and as my finished piece). I uploaded my footage/searched for exiting videos on ‘YouTube’ and then transferred it onto blogger so that people reading my blog can see what I am talking about, look at my work.

I also used Windows Vista, in particular, Microsoft word, excel and PowerPoint to help me with my blog work, making charts from data gathered and forming slideshows to be transferred onto slideshare.

One other problem I did encounter was that as many programmes are filtered on our school internet, for quite a long period of time, my classmates and I were unable to access blogger.com at school so we had to write up our posts on word documents and then post them at a later date.