How did you use media technologies in the construction and research,planning and evaluation stages?Evaluation 4 - Bartek Wielblad

In my pre-production of my first year of A level media which is my foundation portfolio, I have gained a lot of knowledge about a specific genre of films in which I studied the genre of horror and then had to apply it into my own work which was a film opening.The horror genre was completely my choice and I have chosen to study this genre as I was the most interested in that genre at the time.To gain this knowledge and information I researched already existing film openings that are based around the horror genre, this then helped me to apply some of the knowledge into my own production.I have used various ways of research however the primary way of gaining this key information and knowledge was the internet itself.

I have researched everything about the genre of horror and looked at already existing successful film openings through a social media website called YouTube. This was the main source of the film opening that I have studied. As this way of gaining information and this method of research was effective in my foundation portfolio I also tried to implement this into my advanced portfolio which was to create a music video.Using this method of research which was the information gained from the internet and also looking at existing music videos on the social media platform YouTube allowed me to widen my knowledge about the genre of hip hop as I chose to study hip hop. This research allowed me to gather all of the generic conventions that are needed and also other key information that I needed for me to implement into my music video.

In my advanced portfolio I had to make a music video as part of my production.However before the making process of the final product I had to gain some information and knowledge about the specific genre which I was studying in which it was the genre of hip hop. I had to gain information on the history of this genre and then I had to analyse what and how the genre has changed within the time period of 50 years. This knowledge allowed me to then see how the music videos changed over time and then allowed me to figure out what I had to include in my music video for it to fit in within the genre.During the research of other music videos I also came across digipaks and magazine posters which of course were also part of my tasks within the media course called the ancillary texts.

The internet helped me a lot when it came to research of already existing media texts as search engines such as Google were very resourceful as they provided me with majority of the information that I have collected.In order to gain extra information about the genre of hip hop and the music videos within that genre I decided to do a survey to get more information from other people and also I went ahead and created a VOX POP which is basically a video representation of peoples opinion on a specific topic which in my case it was a question about the hip hop music videos.

In order to film this video I used a phone camera as it was very good quality and it was much easier to then copy the videos from the mobile phone onto the PC for me to then edit all of the clips to make it into one video. To edit the series of clips I used a program which I am fairly familiar with called Sony Vegas Pro.The VOX POP was a very good and effective way of getting other people’s opinion on what they think they should expect within a hip hop music video.I have used the VOX POP as a method of gathering information/opinions from various different people as I have previously used this method in my foundation portfolio therefore it was successful and I then wanted to recreate this method and do the same thing for my advanced portfolio. However this year in my advanced portfolio I also decided to use a survey too as well as VOX POP as this will give me extra information to work with which helps me to validate the information I have gathered.Although this method of gathering was effective and useful in my foundation portfolio I have realised that it was much easier to use a computer online based software to create an online questionnaire and then sending it out to the public to gain data back.This online software was then able to gather all of the information that was sent by the users and then the computer could create a copy of the results and present them in different formats such as a pie chart or bar graph.By using this online tool it saved me a lot of time as it was more practical doing it online instead of writing out the questionnaire and then printing it and then handing it out.

In my production stage of my foundation portfolio I had to create my own logo for my institution and also I had to begin filming my film opening. During the production of my logo for my institution I have used a windows computer which is my personal computer. I have used a program on my PC called Adobe Photoshop 2016. I have found my PC to be better to edit my ancillary texts and every other piece of work that needed editing as the Mac computers which are provided by the school were fairly slow comparing them to my PC. Another thing that I came across is the fact that the Mac computers did not have enough RAM(Random Access Memory) in order for me to edit my work on the computers. This was a problem because the programs on the computers fairly frequently crashed and therefore meaning that I would be losing my work and also the Mac computers are in general slow operating wise.The program Adobe Photoshop 2016 is very good and one of the best editing programs on the market.As I have previous experience with Photoshop I was able to apply my knowledge about the program and apply it to my work which was the logo at the time.

As this program was so effective and I have gained even more experience during my foundation year I then used the same program to create and complete my ancillary texts which were the digipak and the magazine poster.I have used the Adobe Photoshop 2016 program in order to complete my ancillary texts as the program allowed me to add all of the effects which I wanted and also allowed me to play around with extra features that I have used in my work to make it look even better.For my magazine poster for my advanced poster I have used the print screen feature on my windows PC and this basically allowed me to take a screenshot of what was present on the screen in which it was a picture of my artist ‘RunDown’. I have then used this picture of the artist which was captured from the music video and used him as the main focus on my magazine poster.

During my production of my film opening(foundation portfolio) and music video(advanced portfolio) I have used the same camera which was a mobile phone camera.This is because the camera quality was very good therefore there was no need for change. The camera allowed me to capture all of the clips I needed and then allowed me to transfer these clips from my mobile phone onto my PC.The camera we used had a feature which turned on exposure up which was needed in my foundation portfolio as we were filming in dark environments and the school provided cameras were not advanced enough to have this feature therefore we had to use a smartphone camera.Also the camera that was provided by the school was only of HD quality which was 1920 x 1080 pixel (1080p) whereas the smartphone camera which we used was a UHD(Ultra-High-Definition) and it recorded at 3840 x 2160 pixels (4K) which is a huge improvement in quality therefore we decided to use the better camera.

The exposure feature allowed us to film in the dark which meant that our clips where much clearer and had better lighting.As this smartphone was so good and effective we decided to use it for our advanced portfolio’s too as it was still one the best cameras out at the time.Although the advanced portfolio did not have any shots in the dark it was still more effective as it needed more colourful/vibrant shots therefore the device was able to record good quality and clarity.In my advanced portfolio my experience from my foundation portfolio helped me out as when I was filiming my music video the experience of camera shots,lighting and other stuff helped me to make my music video better as I was able to use a variety of different shots that I have never used before and also I took lighting more into consideration.

In the post production of my film opening(foundation portfolio) and my music video(advanced portfolio) I had to edit my film opening and this was completed by using a windows PC which I personally owned and also the software which I was most familiar with which was Sony Vegas Pro. I used my PC as mentioned before that the Mac computers that were provided by the school did not meet the system requirements that I needed as there was not enough RAM and this meant that the programs crashed fairly often. The software Sony Vegas Pro had included features which were very useful towards the production of my film opening such as the colour enhancements and also other features such as a blur effect or camera shake fixing which basically tries to reduce the camera shake, this therefore meant that I could get my shots to be near enough 100% still.

To gain extra sound effects that were not included within the program I used the internet to find copyright free sound effects.I could then download these sound effects and implement them into my work(film opening).Adding those sound effects was not that difficult as they already came in a .mp3 format therefore it was easy to just add them.As my PC had good hardware I was able to export my final product which was the film opening without any problems which meant that the final film opening was done quicker.As I was already experienced with the program Sony Vegas Pro I also used it this year in my advanced portfolio as I already knew how to use it. It then was much easier to edit my music video which was the product we had to create for our A2 media production.I used the same methods of gathering extra bits that I needed to complete my music video which in this case I had to get some sound effects from the internet and then implement them into my work.The software was much easier to use as I already had experience from it and therefore I was able to mess around with more features and I implemented extra effects into my music video production.

In my post production evaluations in relation to presentation I have used a specific platform on which I uploaded every task that I have completed onto.This online platform is called ‘Blogger’. The function of this platform is within the name itself as this online platform allows you to make your own blog and post stuff on it.Whereas I have used this a way of uploading my tasks to one place to make it easily accessible.I have used Blogger for my foundation portfolio and as I have found it to be good and reliable I decided to use it also for my advanced portfolio. The layout of my blog is in a flipcard layout which helps to layout the order of the tasks, therefore meaning that every task is in the right place and it looks neat.I have used other online tools to display my work and to make it look more appealing. I have used things such as ‘Slideshare’ which is an online tool which allows me to turn my work into a powerpoint format and then I used the embed code and embed it to my blog and therefore the powerpoint format document can now be viewed from my blog.

The main software that I used to create my work was a online based software provided by Google and it called Google Docs.I have also used their other online tools such as the Google Slides tool which is equivalent to Microsoft Powerpoint and the Google Docs is basically a Microsoft Word in an online format.This was the best way for me to do my work as I have found myself on the internet all the time therefore I was able to start my work and finish it off anywhere I wanted to as long as I had internet and a working station that I could access Google’s online tools.When it came to uploading my music video I decided to use a social media website called YouTube. I have chosen this platform as the primary platform to upload my video as I personally think that it is the most effective platform for my video to be uploaded to. The video was then very easily embedded into my blog and can be viewed from my blog.