1. Evaluation
Martin Noficzer
How did you use media technologies in
the research and planning, construction
and evaluation stages?

2. Throughout the entire project, we have been using personal blogs to
upload the finished products we have been working on. Each student
writes their own annotation of the work uploaded even if they were
working in groups. My personal blog address used in this course is
wwww.mnoficzer.wordpress.com
These blogs allow us to upload a wide variety of media, as well as
embed media from other sites. This allows us to practically upload
images, videos, sound, written documents and much more to the
blogs, meaning that we are able to use a great number of software to
help us produce our final products.
We have also used the blogs to upload production logs, which are a
type of journal that keeps track of the progress of our projects. After
every major session of work on the course we write up what we have
done, how we have done it and what we will be working on next. This
helps when looking back through the project to see when things were
completed.
Personal Blogs
www.wordpress.com

3. Dropbox
I have used a free online service named Dropbox while working on this project.
This service allows users to upload files to their own personal accounts to a
certain limit, which is them stored online. This means that the files uploaded will
be available at any location where the user logs into their account. There is also
an option to set up a piece of software on a person’s computer to have it
automatically update the files uploaded to a specified folder on the computer’s
hard drive disk.
I have sued this service in many ways to help me get my work done. It was
mainly a tool to synchronize and update the work I have done at home and the
work I have done in college. I have also used it to transfer files from one
computer to another when there was no portable drive available.
www.dropbox.com

4. Adobe Photoshop
We have used Photoshop as one of the biggest tools in this project. We have
sued it for a variety of things, which includes producing the final ancillary tasks.
We have used Photoshop to produce the artwork which we have used in the
digipak and magazine advert, as well as putting all the components together for
the final product.
The tools and function the software has to offer gives us great control over
image manipulation. This allowed us to convert a pencil sketch into a digital
finished piece of artwork which then could be used in the ancillary designs.
We have used the masking function of Photoshop to effectively remove parts of
images that were not needed to improve the overall quality of our work. This
often meant removing a background of an image where we had to use
something in the foreground.
The brush, eraser and smudge tool were some of the most widely used ones, as
they were the main ways of producing the artwork. Free transform, eyedropper
and magic wand tool were some of the useful tools that we have also used.
www.adobe.com/photoshop

5. Graphic Tablet
In conjunction with Photoshop, we have used graphic tablets to work on some
of the artistic sections of our work. The tablet gave us a more effective and
intuitive way of input to Photoshop, which meant a more accurate and overall
better way of working on the pieces of artwork.
Being able to control the brush pointer with an actual pen shaped tool gives a
lot of control over the pointer as it is easier to control a pen on a flat surface
rather than having to use the pointer with a mouse.
In addition, being able to use the graphic tablet meant that we could get work
done in a faster manner ultimately meaning that we could focus on detail more.

6. Sony HD Camera
To film the footage needed for our main product, the music video, we have used a Sony HD
camera which we have borrowed from our college. The reason we have used a camera
supplied by the college is mainly because it is a high quality recording device and it is also
compatible with the systems in the college, meaning we did not have to test for
compatibility before we have started working with it.
The college has also supplied a tripod with the camera which we could use when out
filming. It helped stabilize the steady shots for our project, which meant a more
professional looking final product.
Once the filming was done, we have used a docking connection to both connect the camera
to the computer as well as supply power to it at the same time. Once we have decided
which clips will be useful in editing with the use of the edit decision list, we have
transferred the raw footage from the camera to the computer’s hard drive where we could
work on it later on.
The high quality recording meant that the final product would be more professional
looking, which is something we were hoping to achieve. Of course this might not be the
case, but the high quality of the footage has certainly helped.

7. Final Cut Pro
The editing software that we have used for our main product, the music video, was
Final Cut Pro by Apple. It is a piece of software that offers a large number of tools,
filters and function to allow the users to perform video editing to professional
standards.
Once we have had our raw footage for the video, we have use d Final Cut to transfer
the footage from the camera onto the hard drive of the computer. From then, we
could access the footage with the browser of the program. Having filtered the
recorded footage, we only had the useful material available in the software.
From then on, we have used the software to the best of our ability to put together the
final product. Being able to place and cut each clip wherever we wanted, we were able
to edit the video so that it matches the music the way have intended during the
planning phase. As the plot of our video involves parallel editing, we have had to plan
out and insert clips in a specific order so that it will be correct to the music’s lyrics. The
flexibility of the program allowed us to change the way the clips are arranged very
easily.
We have also used tools like the Pen tool which is used for altering the transparency of
clips and different times in the sequence, meaning that fading in and fading out clips
was simple and easy to do.

8. Conclusion
There was a big range of equipment and software I had to use throughout this project
and his also taught me to use them in effective ways to overcome obstacles. I have
had to make sure that I can use the tools available to me in order to create my
products to the best of my ability. One of the problems we have encountered was
when we printed the final digipak design we noticed that the and logo was flipped,
which we didn’t notice while working on the design. Using Photoshop we were able to
easily flip the logo itself so it will be the right way around when it is printed. Being able
to work on individual layers meant that we did not have to import the logo from the
original and simply edit the version already in the digipak design.
Throughout the course I have learnt and also improved many of my skills involving
media technologies.