Question Four

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

In order to research in depth the chosen genre, I had to use various media technologies to help me do so. To start with, I needed to gain reliable and useful information about the genre "alternative rock" and what it was all about. I used various sites such as Wikipedia, Yahoo and Urban Dictionary. To verify the definition and the genre, my audience feedback posed the question "What does the term alternative rock mean to you?" in order to gather different outlooks on the genre. YouTube was another site I frequently used when researching. The site allowed me to search bands associated with the genre and to watch the videos by such bands. This helped me in understanding what the genre was about and what characteristics were associated with it. Furthermore, I was able to pick up on reoccurring themes throughout various videos which I could then apply to my own. Researching the videos allowed to me to construct several nine frame analysis' around them and take inspiration and ideas from them. I took inspiration from artists such as Oasis, Blur and Ian Brown. Using YouTube enabled me to take print screens of the videos in which I could then load them into a power point presentation and analyse them in depth. I also used YouTube during my construction page to upload the rough cuts and final cuts of my music video. The site also had a HTML code in which I could embed my music video onto my blog. Blogger was another site that I used during each stage of my coursework. By creating a blog, this allowed me to create an easy and accessible way in which people could see my progression from research, to planning and construction and then to evaluation. Blogger became an essential aspect for the creation of my portfolio. The site let me upload pictures, create pages and posts accordingly to my tasks, and post links and videos to it. I could also alter the theme to fit around my genre in which I have chose colours such as blue, red and white, to represent a sub genre of the genre, Brit pop. Another media technology that I used frequently throughout my research and planning was Slideshare. Slideshare was a very useful site that I used to upload word documents onto which could then be shown in their original format on my blog. This allowed people viewing my blog to see all my planning and research that I had done in Word, which created an easier format for them to read it in instead of reading loads of words on a single post on my blog. Google Images was a further media technology that I used. Instead of buying and reading through various magazine looking for advertisements by other bands, I used Google images to find past advertisements quickly. This helped me a lot as it was quick and efficient as I needed to move on with my research and onto planning. I found advertisements on bands such as Stereophonics and The Killers. When creating my music video and my blog, I used a Mac as oppose to a PC. This meant I could use programs such as iMovie to create my animatic. IMovie allowed me to import pictures of my storyboard into the programme and fit them in time with my track so the viewer could get a brief idea of what I was expecting my music video to look like. The program was also very useful to me as the director of the video so I could experiment with different camera angles and experiment with framing etc and then put them into this program to get an idea of what a running video would look like. Photoshop was a major and critical media technology I used continuously throughout my portfolio. The creative programme helped me create my digipak and advert to accompany my music video. Looking back at my coursework from AS Level and my use of photoshop, I would say I have dramatically improved my skills by using this software. Not only does it allow me to create my own advertisement to promote my video and a digipak to accompany the single, but it also meant I could experiment with fonts, designs, create my own designs and mess around until I found something fitting. The editing software I used to create my music video was Final Cut HD, a program used by professionals. I also used this program in my first year of media studies and found it quite complicated and stressful. However, second year media studies taught me more about the software and once I came to grasps with how to use it, my skills advanced quickly, allowing me to edit more efficiently. The timeline aspect of the software allowed me to match up footage and sync it with the audio to create high quality lip syncing and in turn, letting the video flow smoothly. Prezi was a futher online program that I have used to present pieces of information on my blog. I thought as an outsider, looking onto my blog and reading the same font and format contionously would be quite dull and boring. In order to make my information more interesting, I transferred my information into a Prezi where I could experiment with different styles and ways in presenting my tasks. To capture the footage for my music video, I used a Panasonic HC V10 camcorder. The lightweight equipment used a HD display and all footage capture was of high quality. As the camcorder was only light and quite small, this allowed me to maneuver easily between shooting and capture difficult angles. Learning to use the camcorder was straight forward and easy to transfer to the Mac after capturing the footage. The camcorder also had a good camera built in it and I used this to its advantage by shooting the photoshoot using this camcorder as well.