Question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

I used a variety of new technologies in the creation of my video and print production, some of which I had not used before and had to develop my skills at using. I used my iPhone to upload short production updates during the production of my video. This was a useful tool as I could quickly write down how my work was progressing as I was filming and capture the thoughts and feelings I had at the moment (using 3G internet service). I used social networking sites to obtain feedback from members of my audience I could not reach in person. I mostly used Facebook however I did post links on Twitter, my own personal blog etc.

The editing program we used to construct the video was Adobe Premiere Pro. This was not my first time using this program however using it to create this video forced me to develop and improve my skills greatly, which I feel I did. I used effects such as changing the colour levels, grain levels, fast forwarding and reversing footage and slow motion. We recorded the footage in the video with a Digital Camcorder and transferred it to the computer using the program Adobe On Location. This was a good opportunity to enhance my skills at using this program, too.

To create my Print production task I primarily used Adobe Photoshop. I had previous experience with this program so I adapted to using it for this task fairly easily. I used a Digital SLR Camera to take the pictures I used. There was some technological determinism here as I found myself trying different camera angles that could not be achieved with a normal digital camera which I am used to using.

For the planning stages I used lots of different internet sites to research into similar music videos, one of the main ones I used was Youtube, which I used to research and analyse videos similar to the genre of mine and also what makes videos of other genres different. I also uploaded rough cuts of the video to keep a document of my progress, viewable in previous blog posts. I used Blogger to document my planning and to gather my thoughts. I used Photoshop to create a moodboard to draw inspiration from and Adobe Premiere Pro to create an animatic (Animated storyboard) which can be viewed here:

I used audio editing program Audacity to edit the song into a more manageable length. The song was originally over 6 minutes long and I managed to effectively reduce to running time to 3 minutes and 23 seconds.

I experimented with using Prezi to create a presentation but decided that it was not necessary for what I was trying to accomplish and used PowerPoint instead. I created a PowerPoint presentation for my music video Pitch in the planning stages. I used different slides to detail the different aspects and aims of my music video. I uploaded this powerpoint to my blog using SlideShare a web device for embedding slideshows with HTML code. I used Google and Google Images find research materials along with many other websites. I took inspiration from digipaks I own such as Plastic Beach by Gorillaz and Scream, Aim, Fire by Bullet for My Valentine.