Question 4

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation?

Throughout my research I have used a number of media technologies when constructing my research, planning and evaluation. During research and planning I’ve tried using a range of ways to present my findings such as Prezi, Canva, Sway and my blog. However, due to a lot of posts on my blog being short and up dates and I used just the standard blogger lay out as it was quicker to just simply add a blog write a little and post it straight away instead of spending time on using a software which I already feel comfortable using but does take a while to make perfect so for slight updates I wanted quick and simple. Although, the packages I did use when I did, were there to make the blog look more colourful and interesting therefore I used Prezi as it gives the audience a simple presentation view of the subject I’m speaking about, Canva offered me a way to produce colourful and attractive posts and sway was useful when it came to writing a lot in a post. 

When producing the bands website I used a website called ‘Wix’ this website is a way of making a website from scratch using templates and free hand. I have used this website once before on a previous piece of work however I did not have much practice. This gave me an advantage as I knew where things should have been and how to edit the site. The site is very user-friendly giving me the ability to create a unique website even tho I did use templates from the site itself, it allows you to add your own photos, videos etc. Furthermore this helped us also expand our artist image/ brand image to market the band. I found Wix to be very helpful as it made it simple to start the website and we were able to make it our own. We decided to go beyond the brief as we wanted to make a full website and not just the homepage and with the software Wix it seemed too simple to not try and make the whole thing. 

When taking photos for all three productions and filming I used a Nikon DSLR camera, I used it on auto as I found that it gave us the best image and what we wanted. We had to take into consideration as we filmed both inside and outside what our lighting would be like. For outside auto made it perfect as it readjusted to how we needed it, for inside we had to take a few takes to get it right as some where bleached out others too dark. A benefit to how we filmed was that we filmed quickly as we followed our shot list and also got some other shots just in case we needed them, therefore the lighting didn’t change much as we filmed. I felt confident that we were able to get a decent range of shots using the camera so I was overall pleased with the results we got.

When creating the CD pack I wanted to use Photoshop on some of the photos we got as I felt in control as I know the program well. However, even though I knew the program I was always learning something new such as colour splash techniques using a YouTube tutorial and clip sequences which helped develop my skills. When first imagining my CD pack I wasn't sure what exactly i wanted as my final draft although, after having an idea just from seeing Eleanor's bright yellow coat I wanted to try and bring a boldness to the product while also making it look like a conventional, realistic CD pack. This is why we decided to make only one colour/ object in colour and the rest of the image in black and white. 

When producing our main product, our music video, we used a few different programs to get our end result. The main program we used was Premier pro which is a video editing software. I’ve used this program many times as I’ve used every time I’ve created a production or video; I would definitely say that my skills using Premier Pro have been developing as each time I use it I know how to do something new. Therefore I felt confident using it and knew how to use the main features. However, with Adobe programs I feel liked there is always something new to learn as they have a lot of hidden tricks that’s why we used YouTube to show us how to create certain effects. We used Premier pro a lot throughout the process, we were able to change the opacity of videos so that we could overlap them to play simultaneously, we put some sequences in where multiple videos played together and also edited them to the beat of the song (linking back to Goodwin's conventions) while also maintaining a pace. We also slowed down a lot of clips, reversed them and played them on a loop. We were also able to colour correct most clips used in the video. We also used text in the video and made it so the letters where see through. We used many different affects which helped create the video I imagined and made it even better. 

After finishing editing we had to export the video by rendering the videos together then used a 320mp3 to ensure that our audio was to an industry standard; we then exported it at H.264 and YouTube 1080 to ensure it was best suited to our exhibition format (ie YouTube).

In my evaluation I've used 4 different ways to present each question. Question 1 I used sway which was a way which i could use Gifs to show small clips of my video and gave the question a presentation layout, question 2 i used Emaze which enabled me to break the paragraphs down. Question 3 I used Canva as there wasn't many photos or videos I planned on adding so it gave the short answer a poster layout. Question 4 I used the blog layout. I used a range of programs to present my work so each question was its own and that the answers were visually interesting but also detail.