How did you use media technologies in the
- 1. H O W D I D Y O U U S E M E D I A T E C H N O L O G I E S I N T H E P L A N N I N G A N D R E S E A R C H , C O N S T R U C T I O N A N D E V A L U A T I O N S T A G E S ?
- 2. R E S E A R C H A N D P L A N N I N G
- 3. BLOGGER & PREZI I have used Blogger throughout the research and planning stages to keep all my work organised and in one place so that I do not lose any important work. This was significant during my work as it allowed me to show my progress and development. I used Blogger last year for my AS coursework to keep my work in order but this year it was much easier to use Blogger as I already knew what to do from using it previously and this made the whole process much faster and easier. Last year I found re-ordering posts quite difficult but through practice and using Blogger a lot this year, it has been a lot easier and I did not struggle with it. I have also used Prezi during my research and planning because this enabled me to show what research I had found and this was an easy, creative way to show it. With Prezi, it has allowed me to keep all of my research in one place which makes it easier when it comes to the evaluation stages as it is easy to find. Again, I used this for my AS coursework and I found it reasonably easy to use but this year I could use it faster and more efficiently as I had gotten used to using it. Using both Blogger and Prezi has enabled me to keep all my work organised and has allowed me to show what work I have
- 4. YOUTUBE Throughout my research and planning, I often used YouTube to research indie rock/general music videos to aid my research. I also used YouTube to present my own work – we had to do a Pitch which was recorded and then put onto YouTube so that people would know what the storyline and ideas were behind our music video. We also used YouTube to present our target audience interviews as it is a different and more creative way of displaying this information. I also looked at student music videos on YouTube as part of the research stages which was easily accessible and caused no problems for me. Using YouTube was very important for my research and planning stages as it allowed me to gain more information and also allowed me to present my own in an easy way – rather than just using Prezi all the time.
- 5. INTERNET The use of the internet during the research and planning stages was pivotal as it allowed me to research everything (genre, target audience, student music videos, age restrictions) in an easy way. When researching the target audience, I found a useful website called “infogr.am” which helped significantly as it showed the patterns and trends of our target audience and this enabled us to then further our knowledge and look more into what our target audience would like to see by doing the target audience interviews/member profile. The website we used told us the psychographics and demographics of our primary target audience. I also used “NME” online which is an indie rock magazine to research the target audiences psychographics. The internet was also useful when it came to researching our genre as it enabled us to go on YouTube and find out what indie rock music videos tend to have in them and this helped us as we then incorporated that into our own music video. The internet also helped with regards to using Prezi and Blogger to keep things in order. The internet has been extremely useful and without it – it would be very difficult to do this research and planning without the aid of the internet.
- 6. MOVIE STUDIO PLATINUM For our research and planning, we sometimes had to use Movie Studio Platinum in order to edit the research we had done on videos (pitch, target audience interviews) so we could put them onto YouTube and then onto our blogs. When we had filmed our pitch and target audience interviews we had to edit them, render them and then put them onto YouTube and then post them on our blogs so that people could see all of our research in one place. Since we used this software for our AS coursework, it was really easy to use this year as we already knew how to edit and it made the process a lot faster which helped us because it meant that we could get on with more research as it did not take up as much time as it did last year. Using this software made our work more visually interesting and it made it look more professional as we could get rid of footage we did not want and then show the main research we had done.
- 7. CAMERAS/MICS For our target audience interviews, we used a HD Panasonic Camera to get the footage. This was a fairly easy process since we have done this before for our AS coursework but it takes a bit of time to set up the tripod and to make sure that the framing is correct. The filming went very smoothly and nothing went wrong during this and we did not encounter any problems. We also used the HD Panasonic Camera for the filming of our Pitch. The only problem that we had faced when filming this was that the sound was very quiet because we only used the mic that was on the camera but we could not do anything about this afterwards since it had already been filmed and we did not know it would be quiet at the time. It would have been beneficial for us to use a voice recorder as well because it would have made it clearer to hear us speaking. We did not use the camera much during the research and planning stages because it was needed more during the construction stages for us. I feel that we have developed our skills with using the cameras through our research and planning and have improved our framing skills and the handling of the camera in general.
- 8. C O N C L U S I O N
- 9. CONCLUSION Overall, I think that I have improved significantly using Blogger and Prezi because I have used it more frequently throughout my coursework. I also think that I have improved and developed my skills with regards to using the camera and editing software because I can now use them more effectively and more efficiently in order to make my coursework look more professional.
- 10. C O N S T R U C T I O N
- 11. CAMERA AND LIGHTING For the construction of our video – we used a HD Panasonic Camera which was easy to use because we used this for our AS coursework when we had to make a film opening. This made it easy for us to use and handle and this made the process a lot quicker. We also used another camera which was better quality which meant that we could clearly see certain shots, e.g. the fire in the eye would have been hard to see if we had used the HD Panasonic Camera because the quality was not as clear. This was then harder to edit when it came to it because our shots then had different quality. We used a tripod for some scenes but generally it was handheld because this connotes the unstable nature of the actors in the video. It was much quicker to do handheld shots as it takes a while to set up the tripod and when you need a certain lighting outside (e.g. in the evening when it is still a bit light) you do not want to be spending time setting up a tripod because we needed all the recording time we can get and because of the time of year – the lighting changes very quickly. However, we used the tripod shots when appropriate as it made it look more professional but some of our shots could not be done without using handheld shots. With the handheld shots, it was very difficult to keep still so we had to put a lot of our shots in slow motion in order to make them look a bit steadier as sometimes they were very fast and hard to see as it is hard to hold it completely still. This worked to our advantage though as most indie rock music videos use slow motion. The other camera we used was a lot heavier and bigger which meant that it was a lot harder to film some of the handheld shots but they were very effective and clear. It would have been better if we had used the better quality camera throughout but we got it half way through our filming so it meant that we had to play around with filters in the editing process to ensure it all looked the same. We did not use any artificial lights because we wanted the lighting to be natural during the day time scenes and at night – the lighting we used was from the fire which really made it a focal point. We did not want the lighting to be high key as this is not a generic convention. The low key lighting meant that it looked more mysterious and was enigmatic and you could really only see silhouettes because of this which is creative. The darkness of the video meant that the audience focused solely on the only light source which was the fire which made it look of a higher quality because you can clearly see the details of the fire.
- 12. CAMERA – CONTINUED… When filming, we managed to get quite a lot of creative shots. For example, the shot of our actor with the fire in her eye – this was quite hard to get since it is really hard to get the good quality and we had to use a HD camera to get this kind of shot since the other camera we had from school could not focus on the eye properly and did not work well in low key lighting. This was a problem we kept having, the camera we were given from school was not great quality wise so it was always difficult to get good shots with it, especially when we were working in the dark with only the fire as the source of light. We also had a shot that went into a shallow focus, again, this was hard to get because we were not sure how to do a shallow focus on the camera but it happened by accident when we were filming but it works extremely well in the video and fits nicely. With regards to framing, we have a shot of the actor turned to the side and slightly off centre in front of the fire, you can see up to her shoulders and we framed it off centre to show her instability since she is obsessed with the fire, this shot then pans up towards the sky which includes camera movements too. This is an iconic shot as the girl looks as though she is a silhouette due to the low key lighting. We have used more creative shots during our A2 coursework than we did at AS because we experimented more with the shots and this makes the whole piece look more professional and like a real media text.
- 13. MOVIE STUDIO PLATINUM When we had finished shooting for our music video, we began editing it on Movie Studio Platinum – which we were familiar with from working with this software for our AS coursework which meant it was easy for us to use. Editing our music video was a very long process as we had to sort out which clips we wanted to keep and which ones we did not want and then begin editing. We found the editing aspect easy but we did not know what order to put the clips in to make sense as we felt that none of the clips worked together and we were not happy with it – we went out and filmed more because of this and then we were finally happy with the shots we had recorded which made us feel a lot better about the whole process. By using Movie Studio Platinum, it meant that we could use different filters and change the colours and saturation of certain shots, add
- 14. MSP – CONTINUED…We used filters on most of our shots that we filmed with our own camera because the shots looked of a better quality than those from the schools camera – we had to make them look like they had been filmed with the same camera so we put filters on the better quality ones to make them look less different. We also added a red filter onto a certain scene to fit with the lyrics – when they say “demons” – the fire flickers to a red filter to connote the danger and darkness of the video. We did this by using the “Magic Bullet” and then selecting which filter we wanted to use, we experimented a lot with different filters because we were not sure what fit best and we had never done anything like this before. We also put a Sepia filter on most of the shots and this gave them an orange tint to make it look more realistic and to make it fit with the genre more. This makes it look like the fire is creating this glow which makes the product look more professional. Again, by using the “Magic Bullet”, we found the Sepia filter and applied it to all of the scenes, this is also a generic convention of indie rock music videos as it makes it look old fashioned and rustic which is partly why we did it. We also changed the brightness and contrast on some of the clips to add a red/orange glow to them to make them look like they had been lit up by the fire. We did this by going onto Video Event FX and adjusting the brightness and contrast, then applying it to the scenes individually. We also added our own titles to the video which we found easy since we did the same for our film opening and this showed the audience the artists name. This was done because we did not do a performance based video so we did not promote the artist in this respect but by using titles of the artists name – we are therefore still promoting the artist. This was fairly easy for us to do, by selecting the “titles” button on Movie Studio Platinum and selecting the title we liked best from the previews and then typing in what we wanted to put in our video. We found this quite easy to do as we used titles for our AS film opening so this did not take very long. We also cut the music so that our product would be within the correct time limit and this was quite difficult because we had never done this before and it took a lot of time to get it right because it was hard to connect the music back together after cutting a piece out of it. We had to select the unlock tool to unlock the video and the audio from each other so we could just edit the audio and then cut out a verse and replace it with the outro of the song. This took quite a lot of time since it was really hard to match up the audio, however, we successfully did
- 15. POWERPOINT AND PHOTOSHOP ANCILLARY TASKS Instead of using Photoshop to edit our ancillary tasks, we used PowerPoint as it had better effects and we found it easier to do it this way as we were used to using this software. We decided that for our ancillary tasks we would made them very different and artistic much like Hozier’s actual albums. We played around with a lot of different artistic effects because we were not sure on which one we preferred – after creating many different styles we showed the class and got feedback on which ones looked the best and this helped us come to a decision. We added black and white and artistic/pencil stroke effects to three panels of our digipak and we left the back panel without and effects or filters on because we wanted it to stand out as just the original image. This gives it a more quirky effect and makes it more unique. We only briefly used Photoshop to add the panels of the digipak so we could put it all together but we did not use this software for the making of our digipak. We have not worked with Photoshop much in the past and it is not as straight forward as PowerPoint so we decided we did not want/need to use this software as it would take up more time – we know the basics on Photoshop but it was much easier for us to use PowerPoint since we are more used to
- 16. C O N C L U S I O N
- 17. CONCLUSION As previously mentioned, I feel I have developed with my editing and camera work because I can now edit and film more effectively and to a higher level. I think with regards to Photoshop – I have gained some basic skills on this software but I did not use it enough to have gained massively from this software. Editing my digipak on PowerPoint has allowed me to gain more skills with regards to editing images which I did not have much experience with before.
- 18. E V A L U AT I O N Q U E S T I O N S
- 19. Q1 : IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS? For this question, I decided to use Prezi. This is because it is easy to use and I did all the work for this question on other Prezi’s so it was very easy for me to gather the information and put it into one big Prezi. This allowed me to answer the question in an organised way and by doing it like this, nothing got lost and everything was in one place. This is also a visually interesting way to show my answer to this question and you get marked on your use of different technologies which is why I used Prezi for this question. It was also very easy to add images and videos which was essential for this question because it supports my answer and gives evidence. I am very confident with this site because I have been using it for 2 years and it is very simple and it allows me to structure my answer in a different way. I feel that I have answered the question throughout my Prezi and presented my work in an organised fashion.
- 20. Q2 : HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TASKS? For this question, I wrote an essay draft and had it checked to see if I was missing anything or needed to add anything, I then corrected and added improvements to the essay. After this, I recorded myself speaking the essay on a camera to get a higher mark by using different technologies. I edited this on Movie Studio Platinum and got rid of the visuals as they were not needed and instead I added my own images (ancillary tasks, music video etc) where I had spoken about them. Since I used a camera to record mine, it was a lot easier because I already knew how to use the camera from using it previously. The only problem I had was moving away from the camera microphone when I was speaking which made the sound differ in some places. This helped me to build my confidence by speaking an essay rather than just keeping it on a word document. I have also never done something like that before so it was a very different way to present my essay which allowed me to reach a higher mark. Again, using Movie Studio Platinum allowed me to gain more confidence when using this software and it did not take me very long to edit this which shows how my skills using this software have advanced over the 2 year period.
- 21. Q3 : WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK? I decided to use a word document to present this evaluation question. This is because I have not used a word document yet to present an essay and in order to get the highest marks you need to use different ways to present your essays. Using a word document is very easy since they are very simple and they allow you to organise your work effectively. It is also very easy to add images into a word document to support what I had spoken about. I found it very easy to use a word document because it is a software I am comfortable using and am very confident with and it is very reliable. I had no problems with using this software which made me feel a lot better when answering this question because it was very easy and it is also easy to read as it has a structured layout. I think using word was best for this question because it is more of a text response with only a few examples. Overall, I am happy with my decision to use word as I had not used it previously and it was very easy for me to use since I have used it for a long time now.
- 22. Q4 : HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES? For this evaluation question, I have used PowerPoint. I felt that this was the best way to present this question as it needed a lot of examples and it is visually interesting. This software was very easy for me to add images as evidence which is essential when answering this question. Using PowerPoint has allowed me to present my work in a clear and professional way, everything is in order and organised. I am very comfortable with this software because I have used it for my research, planning and construction stages which meant that I knew what I was doing and it was quicker for me to use than doing a Prezi would be. I had not used a PowerPoint presentation for an evaluation question before this so this should allow me to gain access to the higher marks since it is a different way of presenting an essay and I have used
- 23. C O N C L U S I O N
- 24. CONCLUSION… In conclusion, I think that I have developed significantly in my use of technologies throughout the research and planning, construction and evaluation stages during my A2 coursework. I think I have especially progressed with using Prezi and PowerPoint as would now be confident using these for any work after using them a lot throughout these stages. However, I feel that I have mostly improved upon my camera and editing techniques as I previously lacked a lot of confidence when using these technologies, however, after using them throughout my A2 year I have gained more confidence and now I think that I could use them more quickly and effectively through using them a lot more for my A2 coursework.