QUESTION 4 PLAN

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

Technology is an important factor in the media industry and it’s important for media institutions to understand how to use technology correctly to address their target audience. In the production of my media product I used several different technologies to appeal to my audience, this has also helped me to find new technologies to use during my evaluation questions and audience feedback.

The first use of technology during our project was to set up a way of posting and keeping up to date with all our progress and research. We decided to set up both individual blogs to keep up to date with our own research and then a group blog to keep records of what we have done and what we are planning on doing. These blogs were set up on blogspot.com, which made it extremely useful to share images, documents and videos that were relevant to our project. As we had already used blogspot for our foundation portfolio we found this part of technology fairly easy to use.

When conducting both group and individual research we were able to present this information in a variety of different ways. The main way we did this was through text posts on the blog itself but we also used videos which we were able to embed into the HTML code of blogspot to make the video playable on the blog. Using videos such as ones from YouTube is a good way of using a visual aid to help get the information across, these videos allowed us to list the conventions of different music videos and also how they fit the genre and how we were going to employ or defy these boundaries.

When planning all our overall video and the filming shoots it was important for us to keep in contact easily in case something changed. We did this by using social networks to message on a group chat we had set up. By using facebook in this way we were able to easily keep in contact with each other outside of school so we were able to efficiently plan and develop our ideas. We also used facebook to conduct our audience research. Audience research is an important part of a media institution as it tells you what your audience is thinking and how you can adapt to suit your audience more. We did this by firstly posting our music video on to the website and allowing people to comment on what they like and what we could improve on, and secondly we individually posted our own digipak and magazine advertisement to gather comments.

During the filming of our video we used a Canon HV30 video camera, this was the first time we had ever used a video camera so we looked up for tutorials on the internet and practising ourselves. The main way we practised was during our pre-liminary task in which our group created a condensed version of the trailer for the film “A Walk among the Tombstones”. This helped us understand how we could develop our creative control and work with a high quality of footage. We were also able to use a tripod during our filming; this was useful because there were a lot of landscape pans in our video so the tripod helped us keep the footage smooth and steady. The tripod was fairly easy to use as it had a spirit level attached so the scenes were level and stable, we were able to adjust the legs easily so they were the same height and suited the type of camera shot we wanted. I also used a DSLR camera to take still shots of our band scene, costume and equipment we used throughout the process. I used my person Nikon D3100 camera, which I already knew how to use appropriately.

To edit and develop our footage I used the Mac software iMovie, I was already able to use this program as I had used it for other projects but I had not used it to edit such a long video with a lot of different footage. As we also used this program for our pre-lim task we had a basic understanding of how it worked and what tools were available. In comparison to our pre-lim task our main task was not only longer and bigger but also features music and musical instruments, the most difficult part of this was linking the music with the instruments. To learn how to properly match the music with what the instruments are playing I looked on YouTube and on different sites across the internet. From this research I was able to focus solely on the hit of the drums in the song and line them up with the hit of the drums in the footage, this made it a lot easier to line up the rest of the film.

To export our movie we export to disk and select where we want it to export to. This allows us to create multiple copies and transfer it to different platforms so we can firstly gather audience feedback and secondly upload it to our own blogs. Once we had gathered our audience feedback we were able to make the appropriate adjustments and then re-export it and overwrite the first copy.

To make my ancillary tasks, a digipak and magazine advertisement, I chose to use Adobe Illustrator. I wanted to use this software as I felt quite comfortable with my skills on it and I would be able to use it easily to create my desired product. I also wanted to use it because it is vector graphic program, meaning its using for more cartoon like images such as the one on the front of my digipak. Meaning its more specialised towards vector images rather than Adobe Photoshop which is ideal for bitmap images. Using a variety of tools such as artboards, text, shape, graphic, and pen, I was able to create my digipak and magazine advert. The next step was to share these and gather audience feedback. To do this I transferred them from AI files to PDF files meaning I was able to share them on social media.

The next step was to answer my evaluation questions. As there were only four questions I decided to use a variety of ways of presenting these rather than just a word document. This included using the website Prezi, which is an online presentation program which allows you to create presentations and share them on the internet, I had already used this website to create my evaluation questions for my foundation portfolio but I think this is a really professional way of presenting this information. I was able to develop my knowledge further using the image importer, shape tool and text tools. I also decided to use iMovie to create a movie to present my evaluation; this was a great way of incorporating my style model videos and sections of my music video. As I had used this to create the music video I knew the tools and editing capabilities already. I also used GarageBand. GarageBand allowed me to create a podcast where I can talk the audience through my thought process and allows me to incorporate images to visually show the audience what I am talking about. I knew the basic skills of GarageBand and using this program for the purpose of my evaluation helped me develop my skills and knowledge of that type of software.