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

Evaluation question 4

Research and Planning• On this slide there will be a list of all the different

technologies used for research and planning.

• Audience research -

• BBC social class test

• UK charts

• Interviews (camera, microphone, Sony Vegas)

• YouTube

• We also used - Facebook, Twitter, Blogger and Prezi and Google.

Blogger

• To show all our research and planning ideas we

used Blogger. A site which allows us to show our

progress through the uploading of pictures, and text.

Whether this be through Prezi, Slideshare or

Powerpoint. As Blogger is available through the

internet it is very easy to access, this enabled us to

check up on other peoples progress in the class and

also look back at previous students work for help

and inspiration. It also allows us to keep are work in

order and look back at what we have and haven’t

finished with ease.

• The first step of research completed was target audience - primary and

secondary. To do this I started with a prezi, this shows chart

information, Taylor Swifts Twitter and Facebook; which helped show

her amount of followers and the reaction her posts receive. This gave

us an idea about Swifts popularity and how important social networking

is for a young pop artist.

• Youtube was a main source for primary research as by looking into

different pop artists we were able to see their view count which

correlated with their popularity.

• It was difficult to find accuracy in the BBC Social Class test because

our target audience was younger than the test was aimed at, this

meant that the questions were often impossible to answer from a

young girls point of view. But by doing this I was given a rough idea of

what social class the video needed to be aimed towards.

• I used the UK charts (Top 40) to access what sort

of music got the number 1 spots on a regular

basis and whether the artists tended to be

mainstream or not. This helped us to see that pop

artists and bands are one of the most successful,

and often produce chart toppers.

• Through looking into the recent and past chart

toppers we found that there is a very strong

audience for pop music, we made sure of this by

checking the charts on a regular basis - Radio 1

Top 40, allowed us to do this.

• Lights, camera, action!

• For our primary target audience we looked into a lot of

interviewing work. Starting with a list of questions that we

thought through and we also took ideas from Taylor Swifts

website and what her fans seemed to like and ask. We

began with a target audience member profile, which set the

foundations for our interviews.

• For the target audience interviews, we set up a camera and

microphone on a tripod and got a group of 5 girls in the target

audience we decided that our genre focused on. By

recording all of the information interviewing the girls gave us

we were able to write about it and go back for more

information. We edited the interview with Sony Vegas.

• Prezi

• After completing a lot of audience work we had to showcase it, most of this work we

decided to show through Blogger yet we also used Prezi. Prezi is a lot like a powerpoint

presentation but easier for the audience to read and a lot more interesting to navigate.

• Slideshare

• I tried to avoid using slideshare because of its temperamental nature, yet it is a good

software to show word documents and other presentations. It also adds some variation

to your Blogger. Because slideshare is used offline its good for lists and other long

documents, such as shot lists or shooting schedules.

• Microsoft Word

• Instead of just typing straight onto Blogger all the time I also used Word, this gave me

more variation in fonts and design and its also easier to navigate than the blogger text

box. Yet to put the word document onto blogger it must be on an embedded word

document, which can only be done through slideshare (mentioned above)

Construction

• For the construction of our product we used -

• Cameras, microphones and tripods

• Sony Vegas

• Photoshop

• Phones

• For our filming we used a EOS Canon 700D

which is my personal DSLR. I decided on using

my own camera instead of the ones provided by

the media department as it enabled us to use it at

anytime and was always at hand. Using this

camera allowed us to film in 1080p which created

a crips and perfect final image instead of one that

blurred. Also because of it being my own camera

I knew how to set it up for maximum quality

imagery and the settings which would work to our

advantage.

Sony Vegas

• To edit all footage filmed we used Sony Vegas. A programme that allows

even the most novice editors to be able to create a piece of film. Its a

very straightforward piece of software to use until you progress into the

nitty gritty of the software where things get a little more complicated. By

using this software we were able to correct the composition of some of

our shots and cut before the shots got too long. It allowed us to do all

sorts of cuts and editing techniques which allowed our piece to look much

more professional, even when what rendering option to choose became a

problem.

• For our video we used specific photo filters to make the scenes more

bright and colourful as some were shot on a rainy day, this made the

video look happier. When using Sony Vegas cuts and fades were very

important and getting the cuts in the right place for the song was tricky

yet because of how easy the software was this was made easier.

Phones

• Our phones were used a lot throughout the

construction process, whether that be to check

the top 40 and how Taylor Swifts new album was

doing in the charts, or seeing if the weather was

going to be durable for the weekend of filming.

We also used our phones to take images on set

for future reference which meant we didn't have

to go into the video and take a low quality

screenshot, instead we had images to hand.

Photoshop

• We used Photoshop to edit some of the imagery in the video, but it

was mainly used for the construction of the digipak. I already have a

good knowledge of the software because of previous photography

work, so for the first ideas I helped Ben but he picked up the basics

quickly. We started layering images and seeing how different colour

effects work, we found than putting the images in black and white

worked well against the red writing. We had a lot of fun editing the

adverts and seeing what we could get out of Photoshop.

• For my design of the digpak I found that using the blurring tool and

the burn tool created a more flowing effect than just layering the

images together. We found photoshop very useful and didn't have

any major problems when editing any of our images.

Evaluation

• Prezi

• Powerpoint and Pages

• Audio Recorder

• Blogger

• Slideshare

• Powtoon

Prezi

• For evaluation question 1 I used the presentation

site Prezi, which allows you to create a

presentation that is easy to navigate and better to

look at than a normal presentation. This allowed

an easy use of creating examples and showing

screenshots with text.

Audio Recorder

• For evaluation question 2 I used a different form

of media to show my answer to the question, I

used a audio recorder with microphone and then

Sony Vegas to edit the audio with related images

and text. By doing this method the whole process

was quicker and by doing multiple recordings the

final recording sounded professional. This

method work really well and i will use it more in

the future.

Powtoon

• For question number 3 I used Powtoon which

allows the user to create a YouTube video

explaining or describing something. The site was

tricky to use and was very temperamental which

put me off using it again. Yet when you get to

grips with the site it does produce a good looking

presentation which is different from others.

Slideshare

• For this question i decided on using Pages which

allows a quick and simple way of answering one

of the questions, in order to upload it to Blogger I

will have to use Slideshare which is not the best

site to use as it hardly ever works meaning that

uploading presentations or word documents is

always a problem.

• In conclusion for the whole process we used a

variety of different softwares to produce the work

all shown on Blogger. Some better than others

but learning about how to use them to their best

throughout the process.