How did you use Media Technologies in the...

How did you use Media Technologies in the...

• 1.
  How did youuse Media Technologies in the; Construction?Research?Planning? Evaluation Stages?
• 2.
  ConstructionTo produce ourproducts for our Media Coursework we used various professional software's used within the music industry to create a professional project. For our Music Video we generally used ‘Final Cut Express’. This software was new to the whole group which meant we were trained to use the software effectively in a week. AdvantagesFinal Cut Express was very sophisticated allowing us to use various Video transitions, generators and effects. Adding the film was unproblematic, once the Video camera was linked to the Apple Macs by a Fire wire the clip was simply set to play and the film uploaded. The ‘Razorblade’ tool within Final Cut Express made editing easy and quick once placed at the play head of the timeline where your clip wanted to be cut. Adding music to the timeline was effortless… once upload on to the Mac computers by simply importing it onto the timeline. Adding Video transitions and generators was also straightforward by simply dragging over the specified clip and then rendering both the Video and the Music or adding it just a little way into the clip to generate a ‘Fade in and Fade out’. This helped us to create a fast paced professional Music Video which looked professional and targeted our audience of youths. The ability to lengthen the timeline and shorten it was a real plus. This enabled us to select specific parts of a clip for editing.
• 3.
  DisadvantagesThe fact thatneither member of our group had had experience on Final Cut Express meant that we had to train up on the software which took nearly a week off our production time. It also slowed production down as throughout the editing we had to keep referring back to the help booklets to show us how to do certain effects. The software could be temperamental which meant we could not run any other programs whilst editing as this could result in the Apple Macs crashing and unsaved work being lost. This meant we were constantly saving after around 15 minutes of editing. When trying to move clips up from the end of the timeline to the top, if we slightly placed it over an existing clip on the timeline once released it would delete that section of clip making editing stressful. Furthermore trying to close gaps between clips was not helpful. Trying to use ripple delete would not work so it had to be done manually. Even though the split screen within our product was effective and different, the editing was lengthy and had to be precise. By making the clips smaller by the motion tab on the ‘Viewer’ window and then move them to their desired place was very technical and took many hours. If the clip was not selected properly we could not edit it. Trying to speed certain clips up resulted in some problems as we experienced various error messages which meant we had to upload the footage again and cut out the section we wanted in order to speed it up again. The final problem was that the film would not play full screen which meant we were not able to see small flaws.
• 4.
  In order toproduce our band logo, CD Album Digi pack and Magazine advertisement, Photoshop and InDesign were regularly used on the Apple Macs. Once again I had never used this software so when we began designing our logo and other products I had to learn the basics quickly. AdvantagesPhotoshop allowed us to create professional looking images and logos by using various effects and brushes. Creating the logo was lengthy and took a large amount of time as I had to use the brush tool to smudge the edges of the white to look distressed. However once it was done it looked authentic and sophisticated. It allowed us to create a greyscale picture and then use a brush to bring the red colours through the grey in our CD Album cover. Also we were able to apply a brush which mimicked smoke to add to the picture of the cigarette. InDesign was used to create the CD Album Digi pack, it already had a template of the dimensions of a CD cover which was selected to create the correct sized template.DisadvantagesThe production was lengthy and not simple. We again had to use many tutorials to create effects and to simply add text to our images. Creating the logo was stressful as simple blocks of colour proved difficult to add to a layer and were not easy to fill with colour. Then adding blur to the edges via the brush to took time; if you had blurred in one stroke and then gone wrong your whole edit had to be deleted.
• 5.
  The Video Cameraswere easy to use as we had already used them in AS Media Studies. However to enhance our skills we had a quick training session. Using the tripod was stress-free and using the camera ‘handheld’ was simple. The only setbacks we encountered were using the camera to portray the Point of View perspective. The camera had to be placed central of the person to create the perfect POV.We used a font website to aid our production of the Band Logo to create an individual image of the Torrents. Downloading from DaFont.com was simple and the text simply had to be dragged in to the fonts folder on the Apple Macs to be applied to all software. ResearchWe used various methods to research into the perfect design of our products. We used different websites such as Youtube.com, Google images, RoughTradeRecords.com, DaFont.com & UKTribes.com. We also used questionnaires to research what music youths listened to, when and how.
• 6.
  PlanningWe used yetagain the same websites to produce our plans. We also created storyboards and animatics to show our plans for our Music Video. We produced lists of props, costumes and characters. We had to ring up our desired venue in Clitheroe called Keystreetto ask for permission to film. We produced blogs to show our plans and our plans to film on specific dates.EvaluationFor my evaluation I initially started to create my Evaluation on Blogger.com by creating a blog. I was able to insert pictures and videos within the blog in the relevant places. Also I used PowerPoint to display some of my Evaluation and uploaded it onto blogger via SlideShare.AdvantagesBeing able to display my evaluation in different formats shows how you are confident with using various software on the computer. Blogger enables you to embed videos and pictures to your posts to describe them fully. You can also add links to websites and videos from YouTube within your blog. You can change the colour of your text and make the font bigger, bold, italic, make the text central and insert bullet points or numbers to highlight important points within your posts.
• 7.
  PowerPoint enables youto create a background like me Union Jack, once again carrying the brand image of the Torrents. You can place pictures anywhere you like within the PowerPoint, also adding borders to them which create shadows or present them slanted. PowerPoint also allows you to use Word Art to create striking headings and titles. You can manipulate your text by making it bigger, italic, bold, underlined, shadowed, Strikethrough and different colours of your choice. You are also able to use a wide variety of fonts and if you download fonts from DaFont.com you have an even wider choice of fonts to use. You can annotate pictures and use arrows through auto shapes to point out important things within your PowerPoint. You can also add links to the PowerPoint directing you to valid website addresses.DisadvantagesBlogger can be temperamental to copy and paste things into if you are not familiar with it. The pictures are hard to place in the desired place and the whole HTML of the picture has to be selected to move it. Blogger likes to add random spaces between text leaving huge gaps that look out of place. Sometimes Blogger likes to mysteriously delete pictures that were on a removable device from your blogger so you have to reload them onto the computer hard drive. Blogger does not give you the option to underline text and does not have a wide range of fonts to use leaving you limited in your creativity. PowerPoint does not allow to insert videos into your slides. When using SlideShare to upload your PowerPoint onto Blogger you are not told to use a standard font (as I learned the hard way!) and therefore a font such as Arial Narrow must be used like I use. The final Music Video itself was hard to upload onto Blogger. I first tried to upload it onto my USB pen drive as a QuickTime but the device proved too small. The Video took hours to upload onto YouTube and once uploaded only loaded the soundtrack and not the video. Blogger also timed out when uploading the video and therefore failed to do so. In the end we had to save it as a different format to upload it on to YouTube and embed it onto Blogger.