Evaluation 4

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

           Having done Media Studies for several years, I know how to use most of the resources and technologies available, as I have used them to create media products in the past, for example I’ve used Adobe Photoshop to create my magazine for my AS Coursework. Although when creating my coursework this year there were a lot of new programs and technologies I had never used before. In the research and planning stages of my coursework, I used the website www.blogger.com by Google to set up a blog where I documented the development of my coursework, continuing this process until I reached the stage where I handed my coursework in. On my blog I made regular video or text-based diary posts describing what I had been doing that week or if there had been an occasion where I had been filming and wanted to note something on the blog. In conjunction with my blog, I used websites such as www.prezi.com, www.scribd.com and www.youtube.com to upload various documents and media that I could then embed in posts on my blog. This showed I could use a variety of technologies and was versatile rather than sticking to the same format that I was used to. My blog helped me to organize myself as it allowed me to browse what tasks I had completed and what more I needed to do. It also helped me to post everything on time and ensure I met deadlines, as well as giving me a simple way to get regular feedback from my peers and teachers on my progress.

When filming for my music video, I mainly used a Canon 550D camera with a cinematic shutter speed and 1.8 aperture lens. This allowed me to shoot in shallow focus, which added variation and extra effect to my video, as well as making it look more professional in general. It also helped me have focus pulls, which is most notable on the guitar and when the car lights go off towards the end of the video. I also used a GoPro Hero3 for the various scenes as it could fit in smaller places and still provide a larger, good quality picture. In addition I used this for the underwater scenes too.  Furthermore, the attachments for it also helped get better angles and camera positions, such as the CCTV typed shot in the bathroom, where we had the camera attached to the end of a microphone stand, which was then taped to the wall. For the scenes of the guitarist and the ending scenes with the instruments with lots of high contrast, I used two fill lights with red and blue filters (red for the instruments and blue for the guitar), which gave me high-key lighting and added as a good filter but also allowed for me to make it look more professional and sharper when turning the contrast up. In the other scenes I used the sources that would be natural in the music video, such as the bathroom light and lights on the equipment. On the ‘chair’ scene, I used a very powerful lamp I had, which allowed me to create the effect of the light coming up, and then going down. After I had filmed all the footage I needed to edit it all together. I did this using Adobe Premier Pro CS6, where I imported all my footage and then cut clips using the razor tool and sped them up or slowed them down using the time stretch tool as well as obviously moving them using the pointer tool. I also had to do a lot of scaling on the clips as they were shot at such a large size, with the exception of the GoPro Hero3, which I had to zoom in for the bath scene as I wanted a close-up of the side of his face rather than a close mid-shot. I also automated the effects so they gradually came in rather than having them be prominent throughout the clip. For example when he first walks into the last performance room with the teddy bear, the contrast starts low, but as he steps out of the shadows it changes to very high.

For my digipak cover and magazine advert, I did not use any images I had taken from both this year and last year as I found they were not up to a good enough standard to fit in with the theme of this year, as well as taking into account “If I was an artist, would I be happy with this as my album cover”. Instead of images, I used original graphics I created, which consisted of a logo, and then a blackboard effect typed background, with the chalk text on the album, coinciding with the theme of the album title ‘Lesson One’. I used Adobe Photoshop CS6 to do this. As I did not use images, I didn’t feel the need to use filters or do any editing of the colours as I could change them from the original source of the graphics or in the ‘Blending Options’. I feel I was lucky as I did not have to search the internet for the perfect font on websites such as www.dafont.com as there was already a font exactly how I had planned the chalk font to look like on my computer called ‘Chalkduster’. Creating the inside of my digipak also followed the theme of the chalkboard, this time introducing a yellow coloured font for the track names. Again, I created both pages from scratch, although I feel the CD page could have been better as it is very basic and does not look as effective as the rest of the sides. I found myself often using the ‘Blending Options’, which I had used throughout my AS Coursework when creating my magazine so was very comfortable and confident in using them.

Media technologies did not only help me and allow me to be more creative in my research, planning and production stages, it also allowed me to receive feedback from my audience too. They allowed me to get feedback online by posting my video on websites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, where I could screenshot comments as well as the methods I have used in the past such as getting people together to show them. By displaying my video on various different platforms, it allowed me to reach a larger number and variety of people, which both fit my primary and secondary target audiences.