Media evaluation question 4

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

Charlotte Tipple

When doing my research into local newspapers I found that there was a vast amount of YouTube clips, I found out more information about the codes and conventions of all my media products; for example, I found out about ‘house style’ and how to make my media products correlate to each other through the structure and colours; for example, the colour purple is a constant theme through out all my media products, this again creates a type of brand, also the audience/reader can recognise that these 3 products all belong to the same brand.

I found YouTube to be one of the best application for research, as YouTube also has an App, this allows me to do my research whilst on the move; for example, on my train journey home I was able to use the app on my mobile phone to do my research.

The benefit of using YouTube for my planning is that when using Photoshop SC3 I was able to google different Photoshop tool and how they work, this made the production process far more easier to do aswell as allowing me to use my time sufficiently.

Blogger was one of the main technological applications which I used the most. I used Blogger to organise, structure and portray my work.

I also used Blogger an online planning tool, in which I could devise ideas and plans; for example, I planned my photo-shoot for my products through Blogger, this helped me to organise my thoughts aswell as to inform my model of what was expected and what I planned to do, in a sense it was also a method to make sure that the production process when smoothly.

Below is a preview of my blog, I was able to use Blogger a platform to use upload different technology and applications; for example, Voki and Slideshare, I was able to incorporate different medias into Blogger to make my work standout.

Whilst the ‘Blog Archive’ acted as a method for me to easily access my different posts, this also helped my teachers to access my latest posts and to give my constructive criticism.

However it did have a annoying method of moving images into unused space, this made it difficult for me to structure my posts when Blogger kept unnecessarily moving my images and charts.

I found Slideshare to be a good application to portray my ideas and thoughts through a different media rather than writing a post into blogger I could upload my PowerPoints into Blogger, I found that this made my posts easier to manage and understand rather than a mass of text to portray my ideas.

I used PowerPoint to upload images and descriptive text about the designing of each product, this helped me to organise my thoughts into chronological order as I could have a separate slide for each step of the process.

I specifically used Slideshare to upload my PowerPoint on my local newspaper front page, this is due to the sheer quantity of text and images, without using Slideshare and PowerPoint my production process post would have been confusing and jumbled whereas through using PowerPoint I was able to have the text along side the image, clearly linking image and text together, this is something which I would not have been able to do without both PowerPoint and Slideshare.

This is a page from my production process on Slideshare, as you can see I was able to clearly link text and image together through the different slides in PowerPoint, this made the text far more readable and enjoyable.

I used Voki to convey my thoughts and ideas in a aural way as I did not just want to convey my ideas through a visual method, as I realised that the audience will take in information through different ways.

Hence in the planning stage I put my production planning into a audio form as this helped me understand how I wanted and plan my media products to look.

I found Voki very useful when writing up my evaluation, it allowed me to condense my text into easier chunks to read also it allowed me to get used to another type of technology which again benefits me when doing media as I can use another method of conveying data.

Photoshop was a key component throughout my production phase, I used Photoshop to do my 2 local newspaper pages and my billboard.

Through Photoshop I was able to edit the images for all my media products; I was able to change the contrast, hue,

aswell as edit the image itself and remove any unwanted components; for example, I removed a unwanted sign from my image of the car for my webpage; this made my image appear more professional.

Photoshop did not play a large part in the planning, as I used a blog post as my to-do list, and I used YouTube to help me

better understand the tools and how they work on Photoshop.

Photoshop made the construction slightly easier than other applications; as I was able to easily import different images through the ‘place’ button; whilst the paste button allowed me to import my text from my other documents. The very fact that Photoshop is a online application means that my work is hard to lose; whereas if it was in actuality I would be bound to lose my work.

Photoshop did not help me in the research stage, I used it merely for the construction of my media products; on the contrary I had research a bit more into the methods of using Photoshop.

Wix was one of the applications which I used for my production; it allowed me to create my webpage aswell as two hyperlinked pages.

Wix had a limited use, as I could not use it for research or planning; however it was one of the main components in my production process. I actually stumbled upon this website creator accidently; initially I was going to use moonfruit.com, however I found that the application was very difficult to navigate; whilst Wix was easy to use since it was the first time in which I had created my own webpage. It had a simplistic tool bar in which to find the different tools the application offered with ease.

The internet was the basis for my research. Without the access to the internet my whole media production process would have been severely hindered. Through the access to the internet I was able to contact and group together my focus group.

However a pain issue with using the internet is that at school there is a large number of programs which are blocked due to harmful information; however Slideshare was blocked which stopped me from uploading my PowerPoint's until I was at home. Hence using the internet at school, slowed down the amount of research I could take and increased the pressure for me to compete the work at home, I found that I had to constantly send work back and forth across different PC’s due to the restrictions on the school internet.

The internet was the basis for my research. Without the access to the internet my whole media production process would have been severely hindered. Through the access to the internet I was able to contact and group together my focus group.

However a pain issue with using the internet is that at school there is a large number of programs which are blocked due to harmful information; however Slideshare was blocked which stopped me from uploading my PowerPoint's until I was at home. Hence using the internet at school, slowed down the amount of research I could take and increased the pressure for me to compete the work at home, I found that I had to constantly send work back and forth across different PC’s due to the restrictions on the school internet.

I found that using a PC was far easier to navigate than using MAC (which I used in AS), this made it incredibly easy and handy to use as I am used to using a PC at home, hence through swapping from MAC to PC made me far more comfortable in using the different applications.

However I did find that by not using a MAC computer it lost that creative benefit which I had in AS, however I do think that my work has improved since AS due to using a PC as I am far more comfortable navigating from different programs and also I know the shortcuts due to my familiarization.

I used my camera to take the images for both the ancillary tasks and my local newspaper pages, I could not have taken such quality images without the my camera as it had 42X optical zoom on a digital camera rather than a SLR. Even though SLR’s are meant to be more intricate and generally better when taking high quality images.

I found that my camera was of a good quality at 15 mega pixels also I knew my way around the different features, whereas if I did use a SLR I doubt that I would have appreciated or used the majority of its features due to my lack of knowledge, hence my camera was beneficial for my varied camera shots, the flash also came in handy as I was taking my images during the winter season the majority of the time it was not bright outside hence I flash option helped me to illuminate my surrounding to produce a good image.