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

Rhian

Research

Media technology helped me with research like music genre. To find more about this I was able to look at similar video on YouTube, free of cost. This helped me to see the similar conventions and how an indie rock music videos is put together. I also used google search engine to find the basic conventions of the genre or the correct lyrics of the song as it directed me to many useful sites like “www.azlyrics.com”.

Another media technology I used for research was music channels, but this is a prepaid technology that many people wouldn’t have. But these music channels showed what the newest, most popular songs are at the time. This helped me to realise what type of things that are popular or in trend at the minute.

Then after doing all this research, I was able to gather it all and put it on “ Blogger”. This was very useful as it meant that I didn’t lose any of the research and it is available on the “apple app store” as well as the “play store”, so I can access it on my mobile, wherever I am (with internet access). Another helped tool Blogger has is a draft post. This meant that I could start a post and go back to it later without it making my blog look messy. It also meant that I could organise what I need to do as like a check list but “publishing” the idea instead of “ticking it off”.

Another way that I presented my findings was with “Prezi”. With this presentation website I was able to creatively show my ideas in an easy understandable way.I used “Survey Monkey” to write up my question about music genre and was able to get people to respond online. After this I gathered my ideas and used Excel to turn the information into graphs to show my findings easily.

PlanningFor planning simple things like action plan I used websites like “Exam Time”. This was useful as I would easy jot down what I need to do quickly in a mindmap to expand on what I needed to do for each task.Also an important media technology that I used often was “FaceBook”. This is because I could easily reach my actors and made a group chat where we could all talk to each other rather than me telling one person what another had said. This meant that scheduling was easier as I knew when everyone was free and worked around them.I also used “Word” a lot to write down my preliminary thought, then I could edit it to create something more creative. For example my lyric analysis, it was easier to copy all the lyrics onto a word document to then decipher the meaning behind it.

ConstructionWhen the main construction stage started (filming) I used a Casio Camera to film the music video. This was the best camera my school had to offer. As well as this I used a tripod to hold the camera and keep it sturdy. To play music I used my iPhone 5s with “Spotify” to continually play the song.Once I finished filming I uploaded the footage onto the Apple Mac and used the software Final Cut Pro. After looking at the footage I started to decide what footage was useable and started putting the music video together. With this programme I was able to change the footage with filters to suit the genre. I also used transitions so the clips would move from one to another smoothly.

I then uploaded the video onto “YouTube” as it is a free online video website where I could embed the video onto my blog.I also used Adobe Photoshop to edit the photos for my Digipak and Poster by changing the colour of the background, focusing the certain parts of an image to make it standout.

Evaluation

I used “Prezi” a lot with my presentation of my evaluation as it was simple to use, also I was familiar to the programme which made it easier to use and made the text more interesting and creative.I Also used slide share to upload my Microsoft PowerPoint so that it could be embedded into my blog instead of pictures of each slide.