Q4 – How did you use new media technologies in the construction

and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Jemima Chamberlin

Blogger is a social networking site that can be usedfor many different purposes. It allows you to create a domain, choose a theme and a title, and start posting straight away. A blog could be private or public depending on what you want to use it for, and is easy to use in terms of creating new posts and editing their content.

As you become more advanced you can edit your blog to look however you wish, people can also follow your blog. These are all important reasons in why blogger was used for our music video Media coursework.

Google Maps allows you to easily enter the address of your chosen destination, it can then show you the distance and amount of time it will take you to get there via walking, car or public transport.

It also allows you to see an aerial view of large areas of land and also street view where you can put yourself in the street and see without having to be there.

This was essential for us when choosing location because it not only allowed us to see appropriate nearby forest areas but also we could see exact meeting points on streetview.

We used a Sony Handycam HDR-CX115E. This camera has the playback quality of 1080p which is important for when we upload to YouTube because we want the quality to remain high. This camera also has steadyshot and 25x optical zoom which are both important components when it comes to creating a video.

This camera is easy to use and lightweight to handle. It is perfect for creating high quality videos without the use of things such as studio lights, and even tripods.

From the USB connection we could just drag our files on to the Mac computer which allowed us to easily upload and safely file our footage for editing.

The editing software we used after uploading our footage was Premier Pro. This was new to all of us in our group and was easy enough to get to grips with after watching some basic YouTube tutorials and asking for advice.

After uploading your footage you drag it on to the timeline. From there you can cut and edit it however you want, and add effects from the hundreds available in the video/audio effects folders.

Exporting from premier pro is an easy process also and the quality remains consistently high.

To edit our ancillary tasks we used Photoshop. Photoshop is an essential tool in creating good images for a media product.

Photoshop was something familiar to me from photography lessons but either way is relatively easy to understand. Once you have the image opened on a new file, you can add layers and to each of these layers an effect, such as changing the opacity of dark edges, or making it appear that ink has splattered on the picture, etc. The possibilities with Photoshop are endless, which is perhaps what makes it such an important tool in Media as it causes such controversy with what is classed as ‘realistic’ in an edited image.

Online research was essential at every stage for our music video coursework. It was useful for images for our digipak and magazine advert, and the Google search refine allows you to narrow down your search to achieve only results that are useful to you.

It was mainly important once we had done the editing of images and the video as we had to upload it to sites such as YouTube and Blogger.

The internet is such a key tool to use in any media task that it became second nature, however it is important to remember what sites you are getting information and images from and that you have permission and that they are reliable/accredited.

YouTube was a key site for our group because it allowed us to upload all of our videos from rough cuts to final cuts, and embed them on to the necessary sites.

YouTube is easy to use, once you have created an account with your email, you can upload straight away to your channel. You can tag your video to allow for more views, add the title and description, and change the privacy. The upload button is easy to see and it usually only takes a few minutes to do, depending on the size of your file.

Our video remained a high quality after uploading to YouTube which was of key importance to us as this is the platform in which it would be viewed.

Prezi was an internet site we were familiar with from last years media work. It is easy to use and allows you to immediately pick a theme/layout for your slides. Each individual slide can be easily moved around in whichever order, and on every slide there is an easy to use text box and button to add files such as YouTube videos and images.

This is an easy way to present information in a way that will eventually flow in to a great PowerPoint that requires minimal effort.

This was important for our group evaluation tasks as it is easily embedded on to the HTML of our blogs.

Each one of these steps has been essential in creating our music video and ancillary tasks. I have learnt so much from using this wide variety of tools. It has allowed me to learn different ways to present information, as well as the key skills of shooting and editing both pictures and videos to a high quality.

Each one of these tools can link to one another. For example, YouTube tutorials can help with understanding how to use Adobe Photoshop and Premier Pro – and the internet search engine Google allowed us to find images and use the Maps to find a location. Each step came together to create the promotional package we have for our Ben Howard music video, and I am very happy with the results and all that I have learnt along the way.