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

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

2. Programs used throughout Research
and Planning

3. Research
To research for music videos in my genre, I got most of my help from the
internet and websites such as Pintrest and YouTube. I did this using a
computer. Google was an useful search engine that I used while undergoing
my research, I used Google to search for photos of artists from my genre,
information about artists like Lorde and Paloma Faith the lyrics to our song
‘East of Eden’ and also images of digipaks to help decide what we wanted our
digipak to look like, etc.
My phone internet was also available for research. I used the phone internet
when we weren't near a computer with internet access and we if we needed
to find out quick information to help our media project. E.g the right lyric of
our song or to watch a quick clip on YouTube.
Music Channels were also available for research, different music videos to
different genres of music and different shot types and locations were used.
We got ideas from all of the existing music videos and we analysed what we
liked about them and what we hated about them and used the ideas in our
music video

4. Blogger
Research & Planning:
We used Blogger a lot in our project to write about our work
as we went along with it. Blogger was good as it was easy to
use to keep track of our progress while working. We blogged
every step that we went along with, from introduction to our
project to the evaluation of our project.
Blogger was useful as we could embed pictures and videos to
show where we were getting our ideas and inspiration from
We could also embed all of our planning documents – such as
our target audience questionnaire, draft videos and risk
assessments.
We used Blogger like a diary, constantly updating it with ideas
and progress, after filming shoots and editing days

5. Microsoft Office
Research & Planning:
Microsoft office helped me during my project. It was useful and it was
easy to access and use.
I used Microsoft PowerPoint as it was easy and effective to use. I
would display all different types of work on this format, like my music
video analysis of Sia’s Chandelier video. This was a good way to display
information as we could take screen shots to evidence what we was
writing and present back if needed.
I used Microsoft Word to write up my risk assessment and to also copy
and paste lyrics to be printed out. We printed the lyrics out for
different uses, e.g. to make notes about what we wanted to film
beside particular lyrics and for the performer to memorise lyrics. Word
was also used to construct our questionnaire and print it out to give to
our audience to answer.

6. YouTube
We used YouTube for a lot of our research and planning.
We had to look up different music videos from our
chosen genre and analyse them. For example, we chose
the song Chandelier By Sia, so we analysed the real video
for this song as well as artists like the Paloma Faith and
Lorde. We learnt how to embed videos off YouTube and
on to Blogger.
We also used the videos we researched to come up with
ideas to use for our music videos, and see what sorts of
shots we needed to use in our particular genre and what
sort of props we needed, like fast takes and shots with
flowers and the tea party to stick to our theme.

7. Prezi
Throughout our media coursework we were asked to
present our work in a range of mixed media formats, in
which we found Prezi. An animated presentation, which I
found worked well as a substitute to a normal slideshow.
To navigate Prezi you click the bottom arrows in which
the presentation zooms to the different paragraphs or
pictures which are set up in a sequence.

8. Social Media
We advertised our artist on our Facebook and Twitter pages, to encourage
more people to get to know our artist more and also be able to follow her
whereabouts. We also used Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to promote our
artist more. This also allowed fans to keep up to date in the process of her
album as we made regular updates on these sites.

9. Other Devices
Our phones helped us during the planning stage as it was
great for organisation and meeting up with our group and
making plans on when was best to film.
During the filming stage, we took lots of pictures on our
phones and we sent it the computer via email this was
very useful and reliable. We also could then put these on
our blogs and production diaries.
We also used my laptop to do lots of research at home on
the internet when we wasn’t in school. We was able to go
on YouTube to listen and watch music videos from my
genre, Google to research anything we needed to know.
Also IPads was available for further research.

10. Construction
In the construction stage, the computer was used to operate the various software.
The Lumix G10 Camera and a Sony AX390 were the cameras that we used to film our
music video. Along with this camera we used a tripod to hold our camera still and to
get perfect footage. After filming, we uploaded our footage onto the computer with a
USB cable and uploaded it to Adobe Premier Pro , here we chose the footage we
wanted to include in the video, included it in our timeline, edited the video, added
video transitions, and most importantly matched the filming to the song so that Luna’s
lip syncing matched to the song accurately.
We also used Adobe Photoshop to make our digipak and our cd cover – outsides and
insides.
We also used the still camera a lot to take pictures of locations that we filmed in and
we uploaded them on our blog and explained why we thought the place we filmed in
was necessary. We also used a lense to attach to the camera, the Lumix 2200 lense.
This helped us with the time lapse shot, this allowed us to manually focus the camera
and chose what we wanted to focus on apposed to auto focus.

11. Editing
To edit our video, we used Premier Pro CS6. Adobe Premiere Pro is a timeline-based video editing
software application. Premiere Pro supports many video editing cards and plug-ins for accelerated
processing, additional file format support, and video/audio effects.
Premiere Pro also integrates with Adobe Photoshop . Photoshop files can be opened directly from
Premiere Pro to be edited in Photoshop. Any changes will immediately be updated when the Photoshop
file is saved and focus returns to Premiere Pro.
To edit our footage, we used Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 which provided us with an array of tools to create
high quality and a realistic video. We were able to import the footage and audio then cut and replace in
conjunction with our storyboard.
Screenshot of our
timeline in
Premiere.
Video and audio
bar
Different clips we uploaded,
we organised our clips and
put them into video mode
and then added audio. Our
timeline was also used to
track our progress and to
see how far we had come
along in our video this also
made us aware of any gaps
that we needed to fill.

12. Editing
This is where we chose the type of
effect we wanted to insert in our
video. There was a variety of
video/audio effects and transitions
that were available for use. We used
the best ones in our video that we
thought will have the best result and
make it look professional.
This is our timeline. This allowed us
to see if we had any gaps in the
video and what we needed to fill.
This also allowed us to see where we
had overlapped clips and added
effects. This was good as we knew
what clips were where to make sure
the video flowed.

13. SD cards/ SD card reader/ memory
stick
SD Card is an ultra small flash memory card. It is intended to deliver high-capacity
memory in a small size. SD cards are used in numerous portable devices such as video
cameras, digital cameras and mobile phones.
We used an SD Card in the camera and then after we had got the recordings we
transferred it to the computer to edit it on Adobe Premiere Pro.
The card was easy to use in the terms of transferring footage to the computer. To get
the footage from the card to the computer we had to use an SD card reader. This was
a piece of hardware that read the memory that was on the SD card and transferred it
to the computer.
The SD card had to be connected into one of the USB ports on the computer in order
to put the footage on the software. The process was simple and worked very quickly
and allowed us to easily import footage without loosing it.
The whole group used memory sticks throughout the entire time of doing our media
coursework. This was either to save notes that we had done at home or in class or
work that I just wanted to keep in a separate file that I could access at any time.
I used the memory stick mainly to transfer images/videos and documents from
different computers and also to keep the files as a back up.

14. The Website
For the artist website, we used Wix, we had never used this site
before or anything to do with creating a website so this was new
to all of the group members. We spent a lot of time playing
around and experimenting with the site and all its features to
produce what we wanted the site to look like. It was a realistic
form of promotion where we created different pages which I felt
would interest the user. These were a welcome page, homepage,
me, music, connect, see, shop and contact. These pages we found
occurred on other artists websites and thought we would include
them to make it look realistic as possible.

15. Evaluation- Blogger
Blogger was used to record our filming, editing, research and
planning activities that was done throughout our process.
Blogger was easy to access on the computer, our personal
laptops, mobile phones and iPad.
We kept my blog up to date. It was used to summarise
processes, embedding images and embedding videos.
We tried to analyse information on Blogger and write in detail
so we could document each stage of the development and
show how we progressed.
Signing onto our blogs, making & editing posts and publishing
them was not hard to do on Blogger, it was a very easy
procedure.

16. Evaluation- Social Media
To get feedback from our target audience we put our
video onto social networking sites, sites such as
Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook allowed us to share our video with our online
friends and they could comment on the video and say
what they thought about it or some people just ‘liked’
the video. Our online friends were also able to help me
share my video so that others could view it.
Because of Facebook, we was aslo able to share
statuses about the video by advertising it now and then
so that people who did not see the video when we first
posted it were aware that it was there. We hyped it up
so that we could get as much feedback as possible.
Friends also private messaged us instead of publicly
commenting.
We used twitter to ‘tweet’ about the video so our
friends who did not have Facebook but had twitter
could see the video and they messaged us with their
feedback, telling us their thoughts about it.