Evaluation - Question 4.

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

Prezi.
I used Prezi to collect all of my ideas together on one page and to present them in a visually entertaining, interactive way. Prezi was helpful as it allowed me to create things like mood boards, collages of pictures and videos, ect. I was able to do this as Prezi allowed me to upload pictures, videos, internet links ect onto one page which would represent all of my ideas. This helped to plan all of my work and organize my ideas, especially when doing my pitch to the my classmates in my media class, as I was able separate each idea, showing each one in detail. I also used Prezi when planning my print work, as it was a great place to write down and store ideas, it was also somewhere that I could come back to, knowing all of my notes and ideas had been saved.



HD Camera.
I used the HD camera a lot throughout this whole year of my media course, especially during the construction part of the course. I learnt how to use it before taking out and using it, this way I was able to film the best footage possible as I knew how to work the equipment. I learnt how to keep the camera steady during filming as I was able to use a tripod, which again like the HD camera, I was taught how to use. I managed to film and shoot everything on the HD cameras that I was given as they were quite small and handy to use and transport around.

Premier Pro.

Premier pro was very important to the whole of my project. I used it in my research and planning, as I wanted to decide what style to film and edit my video in. Premiere Pro was also used to edit my video. It was a really excellent site to use as I was able to experiment with different tools and see which tool worked best on each part of the video, for example I was able to edit the control and lighting levels on some of my shots to make certain moments in the video to be darker/lighter than others. However, I found difficulty with the software when it came to rendering some of the effects. This was mainly because it took a long time and if we didn't like the effects then we had to change them and render them again.

Facebook.

Facebook was a crucial part of my project as it was a great source for audience feedback and comments, which then helped me improve my work as a whole. When trying to gather audience feedback, I was able to upload my music video, digipak and advert onto Facebook into a focus group I had created, then I was able to tag lots of people into the group to gather their comments and opinions. This was a great site to use as it allowed me to gather positive and negative comments, which even though negative, were still very constructive.

During the production stage of my project  I was able to upload some of the photographs taken onto Facebook, into the focus group, this was again to gather comments and opinions, this also allowed me to see which photos the audience on Facebook preferred  Some of the comments on Facebook were again positive, and some were quite critical, so I used the photos with the most positive feedback for my final design.

I also used Facebook when looking through my friends to cast and to use as my target audience. I would go onto their photos, judge how photogenic they were and see whether they were a good match to use for my work. I also went through my some of my target audiences profiles who I felt our video would appeal to and saw other music that they had listed to. This allowed me to give a detailed audience profile.

Timetoast.

Timetoast was a great site to use when it came to my planning and my time management, as it helped me organize my work and what order I was to do my work in. As soon as I started my project as a whole, at the beginning of my research ad planning, I wrote down everything on my timetoast timeline that I needed to complete and what order I needed to complete it in. As my timeline was online and saved, I was able to log into timetoast whenever I wanted to and check what I needed to do, which was a great help for me, as I have never been great at time management.

Blogger.

Blogger was a great help during my project and my media year as a whole, as it was the main source where I uploaded all of my progress, worries and issues with my work (weather conditions, ect), and it was also the place where I uploaded all of my final pieces of work. Blogger was also a great place to upload ideas and thought son my work and what I could do, it helped me decide on my final ideas and what was the best idea to go with. Like Prezi, the ideas I put down into blogger were never the final decision, which was a great aid to help my creative decision making. I was able to upload videos, web links, Prezi's ect onto my blogger page, which also helped me express my ideas through more than just standard texts posts, which made my whole blog a lot more visually engaging.

Adobe Photoshop.

Photoshop was a software I used to edit my pictures before I added them onto my digipak/advert. At the beginning of the year I found the software quite difficult to use, so for a long time I just had to experiment with what tool was what and what did what. This was an unexpected advantage on my work in the end, as it allowed to discover new effects that I didn't even know I could use, which made my work a lot better. The one thing I had problems with was the layering bar at the site of the site, which I could never get my head around. If I messed that up, it would all go wrong! By the end of the project, though, I feel like I finally got my head around what was what and what did what. The main edit I did to the digipak was getting a matching brightness/contrast across all the photos, so that they would all look symmetrical in the way they looked.

I also did other editing to the photos such as getting rid of blemishes and spots that any of the cast may of have. This was to give that professional, airbrushed look.

Media 2.0


Without Media 2.0, I would not have been able to gather any of my audience feedback or half of my research, I would say it was the main source of information for my project right from the start. It helped me plan out all of my work right from the start, this was either done by using timetoast, researching into different bands or artists and looking at different YouTube videos that inspired my own work. The technology that was available to me during this project has decided the product that I created, mainly because I used media 2.0 for nearly all of my research and planning, deciding on my target audience and editing all of my work. My iPhone was also a great help to me throughout the course of this year, as I was able to us certain apps, like Instagram, which was useful throughout the editing stage of my product.

YouTube was very useful to me during the research part of my project, as I was able to look into different styles of music video that were based around the genre of music that I was working within. My main inspiration were bands like Deftones and letlive. I looked at a variety of their music videos and the editing styles they had used, which I then used within my own work. It definitely inspired the construction of my work.