Question 4 - Media technologies

How did you use new media technologies in the research, and

planning, construction and evaluation stages?

Construction StageConstruction of Video

To construct the video I used an HD camera, a monopod and iMovie HD. The use of an hd camera meant the image was clearer and made the video look more realistic and professional. The compact camera meant we could hold it ourselves and get more interesting and otherwise awkward angles, making the video more unique and captivating for the audience. Also the HD camera didn’t use tapes, we could plug it straight into the computer and upload which saved us a considerable amount of time. The use of a monopod meant we could move the camera with more ease and improve our angles, for example it was far easier to get a panning shot with a monopod as the stiffness of the tripod made it quite jerky. iMovie HD – we used iMovie HD to edit our video. I wasn’t that familiar with iMovie that the start of the year but I use it with a lot more confidence now. Using this multimedia tool meant we could edit the colouring of the video so it related to the poster more and created a more obvious link for our audience.

Construction of Ancillary Task• To construct my poster I used word, Photoshop and the photo editing website Pixlr.• To construct my poster I used Word, Photoshop and Pixlr. I originally used word to construct my poster but found it was too

difficult to move the pictures freely and word wasn’t the appropriate software to manipulate the images in the way I needed, but I did find it was useful for copying images which I found was sometimes a long process on PS. I used Photoshop to compile the poster and edit the font of the title so it looked stylized, relating to the rest of the poster but also linking to the digipak so the audience could make a connection between the products. Having never used this multimedia tool I was often frustrated and found it took me a lot of time to come to grips with how to use PS to my advantage, but found once I learnt how, it was very effective in helping me manipulate the image in they way I wanted. The use of separate layers made it easy to edit and position the different aspects of my poster. Pixlr- I used this website to edit the colour of my photo and give it a stylized effect so it relates to Bon Iver’s and Bob Dylan’s posters. Having a poster in this style is conventional for the folk genre which is what I wanted so it attracted the right target audience as they would recognize the style.

Research and Planning• For my research and planning I used www.blogspot.com to keep track of all my work and document all the processes I

went through and any changes made. I used it to keep track of what the rest of my group were doing and used it to organise ourselves (e.g. putting up timetables of our frees, filming timetable, list of jobs for the week)

• I changed the background and font on my blog to link it to the products and continue the motif of yellow titles.

Software I usedSlideshare- I used slideshare to display all my PowerPoint presentations and word documents. It made it easier to create things

such a tables, or presentations with a lot of images and separate points in them would have been difficult to accurately display if I used blogger directly.

YouTube- I used YouTube to upload the storyboard so it was easy to see the whole thing in sequence and get a better idea of what the video would be like. I also used this technology when researching the conventions of folk rock videos by

watching other music videos of the same genre. This was free, simple and gave me an excellent insight into the kind of conventions I would try to emulate.

EvaluationIn my evaluation I used Prezi, PowerPoint and iMovie HD. I’ve never used Prezi before and found it quite complicated at first, but like Photoshop and Word by combining Prezi and PowerPoint I managed to produce an interesting presentation on Prezi. I also used Youtube to record myself talking about whether my product used, developed or challenged the conventions of a real media product. I found talking to a camera unnerving at first but eventually got a bit more used to it. Recording myself on youtube kept making the blog and the blog itself interesting.