Evaluation Question 4

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

You TubeYou Tube was used very frequently when planning and researching into this project as it abled me to view different types and styles of music videos and real media texts. When the research stage began I was able to look at videos and link them to Blogger and type up an evaluation attached. This technology enabled me to instantly watch any genre of real media that possible could help contribute to my final product it also offered things such as editing tutorials for Premier Pro and Photoshop.

GoogleGoogle was used a lot in my project for planning and research as is the search engine that I used to access different forms of technologies such as Sound Cloud, and the software used to successfully download our chosen song ‘More’. Using Google we could also research typography, layout ideas for digipaks, instructions to hardware used in the making of the project and it was heavily used for storage. Google also has Google Drive which allowed me and my partner to store all information, research documents, Target Audience Data, photographs and schedules and they were easily accessible.

Sound CloudDue to not being able to used a song with any copyright laws attached to it we had to go in search for a song with lyrics and vocalist that was copyright free and an artist who was unsigned. Sound cloud was very helpful in looking for artists that have not copyrighted their music that we are able to use for this project. The was a wide variety of songs and artist to choose from but me and my partner decided that Mylezia King’s More was the best option.

BloggerBlogger is the online software used to display all my research, planning, designing, making and final texts. However when researching and planning I was able to display all of my research on to one layout the read chronologically and fluently which helped during the making process and time management stages. I was able to post my work onto blogger when it was completed and I was able to get feedback from my tutor and my peers as what to improve and modify in order to achieve a higher standard for my final media texts.

Slide Show Software'sPowerPoint I used when in school as this is what is installed on the school computers however when working from home I used Keynote which was compatible with my Mac. Both these programs enable me to present my research and planning in a presentable way to which the information gained is understandable to the 3rd party reader e.g. my tutors and peers. In order to add my presentations on to blogger I had to upload my presentation slide shows to Slide Share which gave me an embedding code that I could then add to blogger so all slide shows were instantly visible on my blog page.

Instant Messaging SystemsWe used a lot of iMessage which is compatible with all iOS Apple products to contact each other when making this media text, myself, Louisa and Simrita all have iPhones and were able to message each other what costumes and equipment we needed for that days filming based on the filming schedule. Facebook messenger was also used to contact people that we did not have the telephone number for, for example Jordan and the people we sourced some of the equipment from, such as the lights.

Premiere ProPremiere pro was probably the most useful technology used for this project as this allowed us to edit all the filmed footage and piece it together to create the final video. We were able to manipulate the images, slow them down, speed them up, add effects create transitions, sync movement to the sound and create lots of typical music video conventions that were specific to our genre such as ghosting and flash cuts. When using this program we imported all of our raw footage in individually and labeled it then pieced everything together as and when we needed it. It was an easy piece of software to use and it was used for planning and research when making the Vox Pops, the Vox Pops gave us a warm up to this software and made it easier when developing are final piece as we were familiar with what to do.

PhotoshopAll of the editing for our print advertisement and Digipak was edited using Photoshop. Photoshop is an easy photo editing software which allowed us to create a collage of manipulated images to create our Digipak and print advertisements. When research and planning we used this program to gain an understanding of what typography was available and we were able to build up our editing knowledge based on last years coursework where this software was dominant over anything else.