Evaluation Question 4

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

We used a wide array of new media technologies within the planning, construction and evaluation stages for our coursework. These technologies were made up of both hardware and software, and some required us to come up with innovative solutions to overcome the restrictions and challenges which they gave us.

In the planning stage, I used Blogger in order to organise all of my work. This was an incredibly important piece of software because it meant that my work was instantly accessible, saving me from having to carry around documents such as a storyboard and shotlist. By using Blogger it meant that my work was accessible anywhere, it was all online which meant I didn’t have to worry about losing pieces of paper and having to store all my coursework in a folder, this therefore meant that using Blogger was a lot more beneficial as all my work was save. It also made it easy to embed videos and images alongside of text, meaning that I could analyse other music videos and publish my findings with a much greater deal of ease. I used Blogger to promote and show my research. This is where I could refer back to when planning my product, and also show the journey of development I conducted throughout this course.

In the research stages, I used several internet websites to gain an insight into the current contemporary and previous media texts. My main source of research was YouTube, by using YouTube I was able to look at any music video that already exists, this meant that I was able to look specifically into my genre and then get inspiration for my own music video. YouTube allowed me to view current music videos, and analyse their pros and cons, key conventions and overall aspects, and apply them to the construction and planning of my media product.

Similarly, I also used Google Images. This was to research current music videos, magazine adverts and digipaks. This again helped me to strengthen my research in preparation for making my own music video, digipak and magazine advert in order to make a set of successful pieces of media. From this, I took on board what to include in my media product and ancillary texts, and the reasons why to do this.

I used several media technologies in the construction stage of this course. Firstly, in order to capture the music video itself, we used hardware before using software to perfect it. We decided to use an iPhone 6 camera, we chose to use this because it kept things very straight forward and using a 8MP affair quality meant that our quality of film was good. I feel that using the iPhone camera was a success for us as it meant we didn’t need to carry around lots of equipment with us when it came to filming.

The software aspect of the construction played a vital part in the course. iMovie was firstly used to compile the clips we filmed together, in order of our narrative. We also used this software program to sync our characters mouth movements with the lyrics. This made the lip sync aspect easy to produce, and added to the triumph of our piece. iMovie was also used to edit our music video and I felt that it was used effectively in order to create a professional looking music video.

In the evaluation stages of this project, I used several media technologies. I used the internet to access the Blogger – which is where all my written work for the coursework was carried out and stored. This was so that I could firstly review my coursework. I then wrote up my thoughts and overall evaluations, and formed them into separate posts. I also used Prezi to evaluate my media products as I wanted to use a variety of different technological platforms instead of just putting all my evaluations on Blogger as written text.

Overall, I feel I used used media technologies, both hardware and software, appropriately throughout the duration of this coursework. I have learnt a lot by using all of the software that was involved in all stages of production, especially editing as I hadnt done much editing prior to this task.