Question 4

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research,

planning and evaluation stages?

Mobiles

• Throughout the production mobile phones have played a huge roll. They have helped to perform various tasks such as organising people, keeping dates, times, shot lists on etc. and actually uploading images and posts to blogger when on location by using the blogger app on a smart phone. With out the use of phones it would have been much more difficult to organise the cast and keep updating the blog.

Google

• Google has been used a lot throughout the length of the production. It was used for various things such as the finding locations, getting screen shots of locations, finding images, websites for fonts literally anything we wanted to find out was done through Google. It was especially useful when searching for example images when doing the ancillary tasks, gaining the information we needed to make ours look as good as possible.

Blogger

• Blogger plays a very important role in anything involved with our course, all the coursework is produced on blogger. Every element of our coursework is produced in a post on blogger on our own page. It allows us to produce multi media forms our coursework which is more relevant to the course. Being able to produce the post in a variety of multimedia options will help to gain the higher marks in the long run and using a wide variety of different display options keeps it a more interesting Blog. The way the whole program is laid out is very easy to use and is something that doesn’t cause problems when trying to upload the pieces produced onto the page.

YouTube

• YouTube is another internet program that was used a huge amount throughout the whole production. This is the tool we used to research all videos, the connotations, conventions, trends, techniques everything involved with a music video was researched by using YouTube. Without the use of YouTube it would have been much more difficult to gain the information we needed to try and make a more professional looking video.

Prezi

• Prezi is a much more modern and interesting way of presenting aspects that will be put onto the blog. It uses different layouts and effects to switch between different sections of the presentation. It is something we used as it’s a multimedia piece that will help gain higher marks in the course.

Twitter

• For some parts we used twitter to gain feedback, ask permission etc. It has been a useful tool that without would have made researching and the actual asking of permission to use the song more difficult but as twitter has thousands of celebrities using it, it was much easier to reach our artist.

Facebook

• Facebook was another social network site we used to ask for information and gain feedback from peers and people our age. It differs from twitter as feedback was from people more our age and there was more feedback from this than twitter.

Still Cameras

• Whilst out on location, and when images were needed to be put on the blog we used a variety of still cameras some being on phones but the majority was taken with either a Canon EOS 400d or a Fujifilm SS3300. They are cameras with good quality so we can get the best results from them.

Computers

• The computers have played a very important role throughout the course. All of the production and editing was done on the computers. They are custom built computers specially designed and made to make the tasks as easy as possible and to run smoothly. They have had to cope with huge amounts of work, images, songs and videos so it is important that they are to a high quality and feature the best components. Although they were custom built and had many top quality components they didn’t perform as well as hoped, and didn’t compare the previous computers which were the Apple Mac’s.

Sony Vegas

• The editing software we used for the production was Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 12.0. The software was very professional, easy to use and had a broad range of tools to use. The layout was very easy to use and the way the processes were completed on the program made the task of making the video a bit more manageable.

Sony Vegas

• Although the software had many good aspects, it let us down on numerous occasions. When editing the video’s the software crashed, paused, and was slow sometimes causing us to loose work.

Sony Vegas Tools

• Split screens, there is a certain sequence in our production where the video splits into three different sections.

Sony Vegas Tools

• Brightness and contrast was adjusted in the production, this helped to improve the appearance of some of the shots that looked to dark, ones such as the club scenes.

Video Cameras

• The video camera’s we used were a standard definition Panasonic NV-GS500B. This is a high quality camera and produces good footage with easy controls and functions that helped us when filming. The other camera that was used is the one we used most which was a high definition Panasonic HDC SD700. This camera was even better quality and is what we selected to use for most of our production as it was shot in low light levels and the HD level shooting kept the quality and resolution high in the low level conditions when the standard definition camera wouldn’t be able to do so.

Tripods

• The majority of our shots in the production were shot with the use of as tripod. This was to keep it perfectly steady and makes the filming easier, and the finished videos a more realistic and professional piece.

Adobe Photoshop

• For the ancillary tasks photoshop was used to edit the images used for the both aspects (Magazine advert and Digipak). The software is relatively easy to use and for both I and my partner it was nothing new as we have used it in other subjects before.

Adobe Illustrator

• This is another type of software that was used for the ancillary tasks, after editing the images in photoshop they were then loaded into illustrator where cropped, and composed to look like a professional finished piece.

Lighting

• For certain scenes in the production we used the professional lighting in school. We used the Chamsys Explorer lights set up in the hall. This helped to create a more professional atmosphere when shown as a final production.