Evaluation Question: How did you use media technologies in the construction and reseach, planning and evaluation stages?

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

 

Media technologies have ultimately allowed me to create my products. One key use of technology has involved the use of computer software.

 

I learnt to use Adobe Indesign during my AS coursework as this was the key software for developing my magazine. However I found that it was very beneficial during my A2 coursework. The fact that it is easy to import images and change the properties of them enabled me to make my digipak and magazine adverts for my music video quickly and easily. Changing the sizes of the pages were simple, so making the right size digipak took very little time. One factor of Indesign that I found really helpful was the shortcut to Photoshop. For example if I had placed an image into Indesign and wanted to edit it, I could right click the image and click ‘edit with photoshop’. This allowed me to make any changes to the photo and then carry on with my task. Indesign helped me with planning as I could create drafts and then easily make any changes afterwards rather than start from the beginning again. I found that this really helped me to trial and error various design styles. With Indesign, I could also save the final products or work as a PDF file. This made my work look really clear and when uploaded to a website such as Issuu, it really bought out the quality in my work. Therefore overall this was a really useful piece of software for creating my digipak and writing an evaluation.

 

Photoshop was also highly useful for creating the ancillary tasks. I used this software to edit photographs that I took. This enhanced my images and made them look more professional. I could do this using many of the tools that Photoshop has. A common tool I used was the crop tool. The crop tool can be used to focus in more on an image and remove any unwanted outer edge. I used this to focus more on the bottles within my images which made the audience look more at the bottle than the background of the image. One of the major benefits of Photoshop is that you can alter the contrast, brightness, hue and saturation, and make photographs black and white or add filters to enhance the effect of the image. This enabled me to make my photos more vibrant as before they were edited they were quite bland in terms of colour and lacked any link to the sadness of the music video. By making some of the photos black and white, and some in colour, it emphasised the choice of good and bad (colour option of the digipak and black and white option). Selecting certain items to remain in colour whilst making the background black and white enhanced the bottle, which attracted the audience to this more.

 

For research, the internet was a very useful method of gathering information. Due to the vast amount of access to websites online, I was able to use a wide variety of sources to research the required information. Some examples of this included using music t.v. channel websites and record label company’s websites to find out about what they do. Their websites provided me with a lot of information such has how they started and what they do on a day to day basis. This helped me learn more about the music industry which was very beneficial. I also used the internet for gaining inspiration for my own music video. By using the website Youtube, I was able to look at current music videos and decide what sort of music video I would like to make myself. Not only was Youtube helpful for information, but I also used it to upload my own videos. This included research videos and my drafts of my music video, along with my final cut. Youtube made watching and sharing my videos very easy, and this helped get my video out to a large target audience and Youtube is used through out the world via the internet.

Social networking sites such as FaceBook enabled me to access a wide audience to view my work and my music video. I mainly used this to get feedback on my work as using FaceBook allowed me to share the link to my blog and video so that people could view my work from their home. A link to the surveys I had created enabled me to quickly gain feedback as many people use FaceBook and therefore were able to access this survey.

By using a Canon 500D DSLR, it was really easy to record my music video. I also used this camera when taking my photographs for the digipak. I found using a digital camera really simple and it also saved time compared to using perhaps an older camera that might not have been digital. This is because as soon as I filmed a piece of footage or took an image I could view it on the screen of the camera to see if it was to the standard I needed. Compared to a film camera, this is was very practical as I did not have to wait for any film to be produced. Thus reducing chances of errors as I may have had to wait a day or so to see if the footage or image was correct. These cameras also allowed me to save my pictures and footage onto an SD storage card which I inserted into the camera. The use of an SD card allows me to easily transport my footage and share it easily. I simply had to plug the SD card into a card reader which I then plugged into the computer and I was able to view what I had taken on the camera via the computer. Thsi meant I could save and move files easily without any hassle, saving time and space. Changing camera lenses also enabled me to gain different styles of footage or photographs which enchanced the quality of my work compared to just using one single lense. For example I used a 50mm 1.8 prime lense for pictures and shots that needed to be of high quality, and a 18-55mm Zoom lense for shots that needed to zoom in or out. This ensured I got the perfect shot or photograph for my work.

 

One of the most important pieces of software that I used to make the music video was Adobe Premier Pro. This is editing software for video footage. It was simple yet effective to use due to the simplicity of the tools available. To put my footage together, I simply had to import the clips into Premier and drag and drop them onto a timeline, so I could choose the order that my footage was suppose to be in.  Like Photoshop, I was also able to add certain effects to enhance the footage and make it look clearer. I used the fast colour tool to adjust the brightness of my footage and make it look darker with a hint of blue so that it gave the footage more of a sad feel to capture the audience more with the song. Before I changed my footage, it was quite bright and did not really emphasise the mood of the song. By changing this my footage instantly related to the mood of the song and had a better affect of the audience.

 

For planning, again the use of computer software and websites were very useful. Microsoft Powerpoint and Word enabled me to create things such as my contact sheet and equipment lists quickly and easily. If I needed to alter anything, I could do so easily by accessing the file on the computer and changing the information. If I had done this by hand, it would be difficult to quickly make any changes without making the sheet look disorganised; therefore this software was very useful for quickly producing items for planning.

Through out the whole of my research and production, I posted all of my work onto a blogging website known as 'Blogger'. I found this a really ideal method of demonstrating my work as it is easily accessible to people around the world via my blog website. The idea of a blog also gives my work a sense of creativity and personal quality which I do not think would have been possible by using say a paper print out version of my coursework tasks. Even simple things like viewing my final video are made to look more professional by being able to view it via the link on my blog rather than having it saved on a dvd or cd. This also allows for more people to view my work as if it was saved via another method (such as a dvd) it would be harder to send to people for people to see. This opens up a worldwide platform for people to see my work using Blogger, and I think this helped a lot with gaining feedback and allowing others to be influenced by my work. Navigation and finding specific elements of my work are also made easy via the use of navigation buttons and tabs in the left hand side of the screen, once again emphasising how much more simple using a blog is compared to other methods of viewing my work.

 Above all, the most important media technology that helped me to produce my products was the use of a computer. Without this form of hardware, it would be almost impossible to have access to the software mentioned above.