QUESTION FO

UR: HOW DID YO

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USE MED

IA TECHNOLO

GIES IN

THE C

ONSTRUCTIO

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RESEA

RCH, PLA

NNING AND

EVALU

ATION STA

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N A N C Y OV E R

In the process of my advanced portfolio I have used a collection of different media technologies through my planning, research, construction and evaluation. My main use of media technologies was the website blogger where I

posted all my work throughout the year. I also used use many other

media platforms in order to produce successful products.

BLOGGERBlogger is a simple, easy and free website which I used

throughout the year to upload my coursework so it was easy to track the progress of my products. It also allowed my peers and teachers to keep up to date with what I was posting and how effective my research, planning and feedback were. It’s a really convenient software as it allows you to go back and edit your posts. I made sure that I blogged every step of progress when it came to my final product for all three which consisted of research, planning, construction and evaluation. I enjoyed using blogger as it enabled me to embed from a number of different online websites such as prezie, emaze, glogster, slides etc. These made my work more creative and interactive for people on my blog.

YOUTUBE AND GOOGLE

YouTube was very helpful when It came to research and planning. It was also key to helping us decide which song we wanted use for our final music video. It also made us aware of the conventions of existing r&b music videos. Most of my research was done on an IMac. Google was also another successful search tool for photos, information's and videos about my specific genre and overall media information. Google also allowed me to research into songs that do not have a music video. I also used my mobile phone for the internet to access the lyrics for our song when we shooting offsite and had no computers around.

MICROSOFT OFFICE – RESEARCH AND PLANNINGMicrosoft office helped me a lot during my research and

planning, its useful and very easy to use. I used Microsoft office when writing up my questionnaire results, risk assessments and then other documents which I would post on my blog via Slideshare. And for Powerpoint, this was not only used to make presentations but when editing my images (getting rid of the background) as well as using it to create my mock ups. It allowed me to use different designs and layouts to make my work look more appealing.

MOBILE PHONES, LAPTOP, IMAC AND USB’SOur mobile phones were our top form of communication

when it came to deciding when and where we were going to meet. We used our phones to research other music videos and lyrics. Also, when documenting stages throughout my planning, I used my phone’s usb cable to transfer all my photos and footage to my laptop where I then posted it to blogger.

I also used my personal laptop to do lots of independent research at home. I was able to access many sites and go onto youtube to do further independent research. Watching other r&b music videos at home also helped me understand what conventions our music video had to conform to in order to be successful.

CAMERABefore we started shooting, we had to decide on a

location where we could take photos of Deejay for our own music advert and digipak. The camera we used was a Cannon 600DSLR. The camera produced high quality images which allowed us to edit any photos on Photoshop effectively. It was appropriate for all weather conditions as the white balance of the camera is adjustable. The images that were taken in the studio were equipped by artificial lighting . We wanted the background to be plain white so there would be a clear contrast with the background and the artist, making her stand out more. It also makes it look more professional as its used in many music videos.

PHOTOSHOP, INDESIGN AND PICMONKEY

I used Photoshop to edit the images I had of Deejay , I experimented with different colours, lighting and texture.  The program allowed me to remove skin blemishes and generally improve the quality of our pictures using a skin smoothing process. On the other hand, the various tools and effects available made it suitable for creating our album cover. InDesign also allowed me to add text to both my digipak and music advert. I used Pickmonkey for the selection of clip art it had which was a big part of both my products.

IMACThe schools Imac’s were mandatory when it

came to wanting to use the technological resources such as Photoshop, InDesign and to create my ancillary texts and Final Cut pro to create the video. The editing process (which was Janna’s role) was easy to access with use of the Macs as using a personal pc made it a bit of challenge. We faced no issues with using Final Cut pro when exporting files and importing out final video.

FILMINGThe camera we used to film our music video was a

Canon500D saves all footage to an SD card which was easy to transfer all footage to different devices. Alongside the camera, we used a tripod which enabled us to capture a steady, focused shot. After shooting we uploaded all footage onto the mac as well as our own personal pc’s and uploaded all our footage to Final cut pro. The camera was of great quality and produced some lovely footage for our music video. However, the camera and tripod were a struggle to carry around when shooting off set.

EVALUATION During the evaluation process, I used various media technology to

present my work. Using online software’s such as Prezi, emaze, slides, slideshare etc helped me to create a presentable evaluation. It kept it well structured, spaced out and easy to read.

Emaze was a brilliant software to use when creating a presentation on my evaluation question. The use of bright designs and interactive features made it fun to use as well as read.

Prezi has to be my favourite. It’s creative, easy and makes more work look exciting and different. It allows me to add photos, videos , stickers etc and is a really good software for presenting work.

Slides, like Emaze was also a really good presentation software. With over 50 fonts and a wheel of colour to choose from , my work looked colourful, presentable and professional.

Lastly, Zoho. In essence, this was an online version of powerpoint. It didn’t offer much variety on text and designs and was also a nightmare to upload on to my blog.