Q4: How Did You Use Media Technologies in the Construction and Research, Planning and Evaluation Stages?

I have used technology religiously throughout my year as an A2 media student. It is the most important part of the coursework, without which I wouldn't have been able to easily research into existing similar products, communicate with my target audience or make the video or print production itself.  

Media 2.0

I have used Youtube a lot through all the stages of my coursework. It has been useful not only because of the ability to research into existing products but also to find tutorials to increase our skills with the editing suites. For example it was key for our narrative that we included a split screen effect, and so we looked up how to create this in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Facebook was my main way of communicating with both my audience and my cast. I used it to send group emails to those taking part in the video to organise times and places as well as using it for audience feedback purposes. However audience feedback grew to be problematic where Facebook was concerned. Many were interested and happy to watch the videos but became reluctant to answer the questions and provide useful comments due to the sheer amount of other media students doing the same thing.

I spent a long time on Myspace in the initial stages of planning to find our artist and song. Once decided upon our artist I used his Myspace to find out key information, such as whether he was signed to a label or not and the artists he claims to be similar to (for inspiration.)

I also used music software Spotify's related artist feature to find artists similar to the one I had chosen and then look up their music videos for inspiration.

I have used Blogger greatly through my A level course. The website has allowed me to present my coursework effectively and interestingly as I am able to embed HTML codes to include videos and powerpoint presentations from other websites such as Youtube and Slideshare.

My mobile phone became key to the organisation of my music video cast, meetings and focus groups. Initially I would create an even on Facebook informing them all of the filming times and locations however it was through my phone that I was able to remind them to make sure they turned up.

Production

My Nikon D40 was very important where my print production was concerned as it enabled me to take high mega pixel shots which made the editing process in Photoshop easier. With it's range of features such as the auto focus and ISO levels I was able to take successful shots.

Jess and I were very lucky to have access to a Panasonic HDV camera to use throughout our music video production. Having previously used a DV camera whereby it is recorded on a tape and each clip has to be 'captured', I found the HDV camera a lot easier to use because of it's SD card. When teamed with a tripod we were also able to create pan shots like that in proffesional music videos.

Editing

I chose to use Adobe Photoshop CS5  when editing my print production work as it was easy to manipulate images. I used the RGB curves filters and the effects, particularly vignette, a great deal when trying to replicate a vintage image. The colour dropper tool enabled me to make sure the colours were the same where appropriate to make it coherent.

For our music video task the only software we used was Adobe Premiere Pro. This allowed us to easily import and organise (through the use of folders) our video clips and arrange them. We used the razor tool to  discard any unwanted bits of film  and to create effective cuts. We also used this tool to precisely cut our clips to ensure the lip sync was spot on. However I do think we were limited in our choice of video effects. Initially we had wanted to include a film grain however the only option available didn't show up very well so we had to discard it. That meant we had to rely on the filters to make certain sections of our video look vintage. This technological determinism shows how technology has had a power over my work.