HOW WE USED MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE

PLANNING OF OUR PROJECTBy Michael Scotney

Introduction This presentation is looking at media technologies

used in the second stage of our project: Planning. Planning was crucial in helping us turn our creative ideas into reality effectively.

This covers all of our planning involved from our research, audience feedback or creative ideas. This includes organisation, discussion of ideas, location planning, digipak and poster planning and testing and many other planning aspects.

Camera phones They were a very important media technology that we used

extensively throughout our planning process. They meant that we could capture the image and discuss them as a group later and make a decision based off them.

Examples of it being useful in our project include taking photos of potential narrative set locations, taking images of potential performance locations and individual parts of these locations, capture digipak and poster initial sketches, documenting our progress and taking pictures of the actors for continuity. So this media technology was very important in the planning stage.

2D Design Tools This media technology is a computer programme that enables its

users to make more sophisticated, detailed and precise drawings and designs without complicated controls. This was perfect for our project as we are not experienced in complex tools but a member of our group had used this software extensively and so it was perfect for us.

We used this media technology to plan the templates for the digipak and poster spray painted Demon skull logo design. Nathan used it to plan what size we needed, what typography we needed etc that we could not have planned otherwise (analog means) and so this media technology was crucial in planning an accurate template for the logo that turned out very well in our opinion and so this was effective.

Photoshop Photoshop is essentially a program for image editing

at a higher standard. This media technology was pivotal in the planning of our digipak and poster.

The planning made possible by this media technology was essentially testing creative ideas in terms of the placement of the elements for the digipak and poster so that we could get a final design for these media products. Other planning involved preparing the base and element sizes, trialling colour grading and important effects etc.

YouTube and digital cameras Another media technology we used in our projects’ planning

stage was YouTube and digital cameras. Having discussed important planning parts such as prop, costume, location organisation, shot lists etc, we used the digital camera media technology to record Vlogs of this to reinforce the plans and complete our project.

We then used the media technology of YouTube to upload these planning Vlogs so that all our group members could understand and access the ideas, we could access our plans at school or at home or even while recording to help us out and so this media technology was important is making our planning more effective.

Final Cut Editing Sofware This media technology is crucial as it is the one that we planned

and edited our music video on (as well as edit the Vlogs for YouTube). In terms of planning, the ways we used Final Cut to plan for our music video include testing ideas that could be used in our music video, becoming familiar with more effects, filters and technical features of final cut that we would need when using it to construct and edit our music video and importing the soundtrack in at the highest quality so that we constructed our video in time with the song and produce the best possible content from the high quality format. So this media technology was effective in technically planning our construction.

Evaluation So in evaluation whilst media technologies where not as

relatively important in the planning of our project when compared to the research, construction and evaluation it still was very important.

The most important media technologies in my opinion for our planning were the camera phones which were absolutely crucial in gaining group decisions about our locations that were more accurate due to the images from the media technology. Also very important was the planning that we carried out on the media technologies of Final Cut and Photoshop as they tested our research and helped us come up with the best ideas through trial and error and getting to know the software better.