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

During planning and research a range of different media sources were used such as:

Blogger Youtube Word Powerpoint Slideshare Prezi Emaze

Google

Final cut pro

Research:

When conducting initial research for similar products I mostly used the internet and search engines via the apple mac. I used Google and YouTube to collate images and information about the artists that I researched such as The 1975, Aluna George and Lewis Watson. Search engines also helped significantly when dealing with problems and issues – searching the problem would generate a solution meaning I could resolve the issue. Similarly, to begin with I was uncertain on some parts of the project, such as what made up a digipack. Therefore to resolve and understand this I used Google to search for similar products and templates.

My phone internet also aided in spontaneous, quick research when access to a computer was unavailable. The was especially helpful during filming as we were on set, which was outdoors, therefore we used our phones to stream the song to help the actor with lyrics and performance.

Out of school hours when I was at home, music channels also helped my research as I watched different music videos of different genres. This allowed me to recognise features of different genres and apply this to my product. Similarly, this helped me to gain an understanding of different shots types, locations and narrative ideas.

Blogger – research and planning:

Blogger is our main source of collating all of our work. This was useful as it allows us to create different sources of media and then present them all in one document. We could also keep track of our progress thoroughly throughout as both our teachers also had access to the blog to give us any feedback or recommendations. Blogger also has the ability to embed pictures and videos, allowing us to exhibit where our different sources of inspiration come from. Blogger was used as our diary throughout this project as I constantly updated it was ideas and progress after filming shoots and editing.

Microsoft office – research and planning:

Microsoft Excel was a key programme which kept me organised throughout the project. On excel a tracking document was created by our teachers which had each task of the project in a chart which we could fill in when completed. As well as this, it contained a percentage feature which would update when you filled in work, this enabled me to recognise how much of the project I had completed, and what was left to be completed. Furthermore, this document also contained a feedback page where I could record feedback I received from my teachers and targets which I set myself. This was especially useful as the comments were saved and easily referenced in future lessons. This also allows me to reflect back easily at the end of the project to review strengths and weaknesses that I faced.

Microsoft word was used continually during the project to write up most forms of research, planning and evaluation before presenting them in a more creative way. This was useful as it meant the documents could be transferred via email from different computers which I would use such as the mac, school computer and home laptop. Similarly, the drafting process meant that ii could proof read and edit tasks before they were finalised.

Icloud, mobile phone, laptop, imac – research and planning:

My iphone also came in useful during the planning stage of our production as it was used to plan and organise meeting up with my partner for work planning and filming as well as to contact our actors.

During several stages of the project, I took pictures on my phone of different things such as feedback on post-it notes. This meant that I could create audience feedback posts which helped to improve my work. Also during the filming stage, I took pictures on my phone and sent them to the computer via icloud – this was useful to easily and quickly transfer images.

Construction –

During the construction stage, the mac was used to operate various software and editing programmes. The Sony Handycam HDR-CX280E camera was used to film our music video. We specifically planned to film during the day time so that we had the best possible lighting for filming as inside light often causes grainy footage. Along with this we used a tripod to keep our camera stable. After this, we uploaded our footage to the mac using a firewire and uploaded it to final cut pro. Here, we created a shot decisions list of footage that would make up the video, included it in our timeline and edited the video. Adobe Photoshop was also used in the project to create the album poster and to edit the images for the digipack. I also used a still Nikon camera to conduct a photoshoot with the artist which was used for the digipack imagery.

Editing –

To edit the video I used Final Cut Pro 10 which is a timeline based video editing software application.

Final Cut pro is good because it contains built in transitions and sounds which could be used in our video. However, some problems did occur. After a software update, the programme began to reject and not recognise our footage. This means that final cut will not allow us to export the video to other destinations such as YouTube.