This is the fourth evaluation question answered through a PowerPoint

1. How Did You Use Media
Technologies In The Construction &
Research, Planning And Evaluation
Stages?
A – Level Media Coursework
Evaluation

2. Introduction
I have used a lot of different types of media technologies in the construction
and research, planning and the evaluation stages of my three media products
which where a music video, digipak and an advert for the digipak.
One piece of media technology I have used for the whole course has been
WordPress which I have used as my blog to upload all my planning and
research, all my production updates and my evaluation. I used the same blog
site for A/S however this year I used it to its full potential; what I mean by this
is last year I only ever posted the document, screenshots and images to go
with the text however this year I have uploaded documents through
SlideShare and Prezi which I will talk more about later.

3. WordPress
WordPress has been easy to use as it is
layout in a very spaced out way, this is
good as a very clustered website can look
very intimidating and can be rather
frustrating to use. Once your post is up it
is extremely easy to edit the document if
you realise you have made a mistake but
it also looks very well on the whole
webpage, WordPress also allows filters
when looking for posts so if I wanted to
load up a post from December I could
click on the December tab and all my
posts from that month were there. This
was extremely helpful to me as when I
was referring to previous work or if I
needed to look something up then I
knew exactly where to go.
This is an example of one of my documents that has been uploaded
onto WordPress

4. Music Video
For the planning of the music video I
printed off a blank storyboard template
from Microsoft Publisher and drew in
what I was going to do in the video with
a brief description on what is going to
happen in the shot, the types of angles I
will film from, the duration of how long
the shot will be and the mise.
en scene of the shot i.e. costume, facial
expression and setting. I did this so that
I had a brief idea on what to do while
filming and to see whether what I have
in mind will work and if it did not work
then I improvised to fill the space.
To get more of a wide range of different
music videos I looked at a lot on
YouTube. I did this as part of my
research and planning, looking at all
the different styles of videos and all the
possible camera angles. I also took note
on how many views each video had,
this was to see whether the video was
popular due to the song or video. An
example of a video being popular for its
video is Coffee and TV by Blur, people
are big fans of this video because it is
so different.
This is the blank template I planned my music video on

5. Music Video
A video that I had in mind on replicating or heading down the same line as was Yellow
by Coldplay. The reason I wanted my video to be similar to this is that it is extremely
effective compared to how simple it is, the video has gained millions of views since its
release and the video is just Chris Martin walking down a beach and singing. I wanted
to film something similar as in the performance aspect however I also wanted to film
in more than one location which I successfully did.
When I eventually got to filming the cameras I used were the Sony Handycams. I used
two of these to film the video from different angles, I also used tripods to keep the
cameras in place and centred; this was helpful to me as when I was using one camera
to film handheld shots, the other one was filming the shots at a distance to establish
the shot on where our character is. Using this equipment was pretty easy after we
were shown how to properly use them and how to get the best out of them; this was
helpful as when it came to filming there was no worry about not having knowledge on
how to use these pieces of equipment.

6. Music Video
Most of our filming was taken outside so lighting was
not really an issue for us as the cameras adapted well in
the natural light, this worked to our advantage as all the
shots taken were good to use where as if we were to
film indoors and use artificial lighting then you may not
get the best lighting from the camera.
Once I had finished all the filming it came to the editing stage. I had to export all the
videos off the two cameras onto my external hard driver. This was a new piece of
technology that I had never used but it have used a memory pen which is extremely
similar, the only difference being how big the storage is.
One I saved them onto the hard drive I opened the files to see all the different shots and
clips I had, I then sorted them out putting them into folders so it was easier to locate
when it came to editing. The editing of the music video was done on Adobe Premier
Elements and the first item I included into the document was the song so when I included
a video I deleted the audio and made the audio fit so the lip syncing is in time with the
song, this took a while to get right as the video had to be perfectly in time with the music.
This is one of the cameras I used

7. Music Video
Using Adobe Premier Elements was easy to use once
you knew the basics of the software; so my class had
an idea on how to use it as well as the camera we shot
three different video with the class which we were
then made to edit and make more interesting, this not
only gave us the knowledge on how to use it but also
an insight on how to put videos together, for example,
you do not want the same shot being used for a long
period of time as it may get boring for the viewer.
Once I had completed the video I added a fade to the beginning so the video fades in to
start with and does not just start straight away, I also added a fade at the end as the
ending is like the beginning in reverse and the fade really helped with that effective of
the video.
When I had finished with the video completely I exported the video so it could be played
through Windows Media Player and backed up all the data as well as the video on an
external hard drive so I have an extra copy.
Premier Elements

8. Digipak
For the research of my digipak I first looked at the physical CDs that I have at home, some
of these being Coexist by The XX, Love, Lust, Faith & Dreams by Thirty Seconds To Mars and
The 2nd Law by Muse. These helped me in my research as it was good to have a physical
copy to look from and get all the detail from, people these days miss out on this due to
digital downloads so having the real thing really helped with my creative process. Once I
had looked at a few digipaks I took pictures of them using a standard Cannon camera and
then put the images into a PowerPoint and I analysed them, saying what works well, what
makes it eye appealing and how it is different from everything else. Once this PowerPoint
was finished I changed it through SlideShare, this meant that I was able to embed the
document into WordPress and the slideshow was visible through my blog rather than what I
did at A/S which was screenshotting each slide and saving it as an image and posting it like
that. This was a new experience for me as I had never used SlideShare before however it
was really easy to use, all I had to do was open the document through their website and
then it was converted and posted online, I was then able to copy the embed code which I
just had to paste into a new post page on WordPress and it would work once I posted it.
The fact that this piece of new technology was very easy to use helped out a lot as it meant
that I was and am able to use it in the future when I am wanting to share a slideshow.

9. Digipak
While I was doing my filming I took many stills and pictures in general to use for my
digipak. Once again for this I used a standard Cannon camera and used a vague plan
on what I wanted the pictures to be like. When I had all the pictures taken I saved
them all onto my computer and I decided to choose which images I would use and
which images I would not use. This took some time as for some pictures I liked the
lighting was poor and too dark, this made it difficult for me as my aim is to add text
over these images and the text was planned to be black so if the image is too dark
then it won’t work. Other reasons I did not choose some images taken were reasons
such as the person in the image not being centred enough for the purpose on what I
want to use the image for, the picture being too close to the main object so if I were to
add text onto the image then everything would be too close together and the cover of
the digipak would look too chaotic and be not very eye appealing.

10. Digipak
After my images have been chosen I
imported them into the Quark
Express template which was made
available to me. I had used Quark in
A/S when producing my magazine
so it was nothing new to me
however, this year I was a lot more
confident when using it. I knew
where all the tools were and know
what they did, something that
would have taken a few weeks to
do last year only took me a matter
of days.
My digipak while open on Quark Express. It has all the images in that I
chose out of the few I had at my disposal.

11. Magazine Advert
For my magazine advert I effectively used everything that I used for my digipak, I used
the same image from the cover of the digipak, I used Quark to construct the
document and I also copied the idea of having the name of the album in a circle, I did
not do this out of laziness but I did it to give the viewer of the advert a sense of
familiarity as if they see the poster and then the digipak in a shop then they know who
the band is and what it is for.
The advert is no identical to the digipak but there are similarities to both products.
What is different between the two is I included more writing on the advert, first I went
to the shape tool and drew a rectangle and placed it at the bottom of the page, the
default setting for this was 0% transparency so you could not see anything under the
box however I felt it obstructed the image too much. What I did was change the
transparency to 40% so you could still see the image and text but you could also point
out that they were on different layers. The box with transparency was effective when
it was put on the document as it made the text really clear to read but you also got to
see the whole image, if I had not done this then most of the image would be
obstructed and in opposition to this, if I did not include the box in the first place then
you would not be able to read the text due to the colour of the text which is white and
the image being quite bright in lighting.

12. Problems I Faced
I faced many different problems while producing my promotional package. An
example of a problem I faced was when I was going to produce my digipak. Because I
was intending on using 4 different images for this product it meant they all had to be
perfect and somewhat linked. I had planned what I wanted to do however once I
looked at the pictures I had taken I had to make a decision on what images to use.
These are the pictures I had to chose from for my front cover:
Although all these images look identical I had to chose the one that fit for the occasion
perfectly. In the end I chose the image on the far right as it is the most centred image and
the colours match the other images better than the other two picture I had to chose from.

13. Problems I Faced
Another problem that I faced was in the music video I planned to have a 20 second
scene set indoors and the quality of the video looked perfect before I started to put
the video together however, when it came to the editing stage I realised that I had
made a mistake.
As the rest of the video is shot outdoors and during the day rather than the indoor
scene which was filmed there was quite a substantial difference in the lighting and
overall quality of the picture.
How I tackled this was I had to re-plan the whole scene and then reshoot the footage
but this time it would have to be filmed outdoors. This meant that I had to completely
scrap a scene where the character was with two friends to the character being in
complete isolation. This was a problem as it meant I had more work to do when I was
already on a tight schedule so finding time to do more filming and completing the
video was not an easy task however I soon managed to do it and completed my music
video.