Q4 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Need confirmation over if this is Q4 of the evaluation

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

Technologies used:
DSLR
Adobe premier pro
Photoshop
Prezi
Powerpoint
Blogger
YouTube
iPhone
Paint.net
Da font
Google
Tripod



Microsoft paint: i only used this software briefly throughout the coursework and only really in the initial plans for the logos for my band, Paint is an easy to use software in which allowed me to spinout really simple logos in which Gave me a view over whether or not my hand should have one.


The usage of a tripod enabled me to film the video with relative ease as it enabled me to get decent band shots. Tripods enabled me to be able to get a more eye level shot in which was ultimately steady and stable, something not seen when someone holds it via handheld. The tripod also can be angled to provide a decent array of camera angles. A Tripod apart from being a vital filming aid for capturing steady shots and correct angles capturing the lighting and the band wan't used for anything else during the course.
A tripod in the stages of constructing the product also allowed me to check footage in which had just been recorded without having to move the camera much at all and therefore adjust the tripod only.

Da font
Da font is a website specifically for fonts, font of which are made by anyone anywhere the fonts available were in their millions as such it gave Huge variety of possible font types, I used Da font in the planning and the final stages of the print productions. As the print productions needed a unique type face in which enabled the band to be seen in a certain light. There was a few issues with Da Font as people can charge for use of their fonts at will meaning some good looking fonts were unavailable for use in my production.
Da font enabled me to be able to get a decent font as well as come up with a style in which to use it as well as to check out millions of other fonts in which to use.






I used an iPhone for my print productions photos for my print productions due to the ease of quickly snapping up an image and getting a good photo on a very short span of time, it's awkward To carry around a camera with me everywhere I go so it's easier to use a handheld mobile phone in order to take photographs. The iPhone itself can take burst shots and take lots of shots in a very short amount of time and due to this allows me to check all of them and choose the best looking one as well as giving me a huge array of images to use. An iPhone allows for simple and dynamic shots to take place as a click of a single button and you can edit and alter the image on the phone itself with no difficulty. Editing it on the photo allows me to check if the image is worthy of being used in the production as I can check there and then and alter and re shoot as necessary. iPhones have internet connectivity meaning I could upload the images straight to the internet once taken cutting down time in which is needed for simple image transfer, the internet capabilities also allowed me to write up posts onto the blog; in turn meaning I can work on the go or when a computer isn't nearby. Research can also be taken on an iPhone as I researched album covers and bands on the phone as I was taking images and ideas for the music video. A huge drawback to using an iPhone is that the images taken are simply not stable 100% of the time and in some cases it effects the overall image quality and therefore gives awful images and recordings compared to using a camera and DSLR.



Blogger is the hub of all the coursework it is the place where it all resides for some examiner to mark and for the occasional feedback from teachers. Without Blogger there would be no coursework. UsingBlogger as a means to post the random blog posts needed to get an A level in media enables me to have a chance of passing A Level Media, the opportunities within Blogger let me embed, type and link anything to do with my media coursework onto it. Blogger enabled me to be able to use a wide range of software for coursework and dump on it all into one easy to use blog with relative ease. Blogger enabled everything to do with our research to be find able and read easily however due to the fact this is Blogger and the posts appear on the timeline in a chronological order depending on date uploaded it can sometimes be hard to find certain aspects of the work and planning, therefore ruining the useablity of Blogger. But alas once the planning had been uploaded to blogger it made it really easy to plan and develop ideas as well as to get "feedback" from others to help create a more diverse plan. Apart from being a giant hub for all the media work to be posted upon Blogger serves no real fundamental part in the development of the coursework, it simply harbours the stuff.


We used a handheld DSLR camera for shooting our music video, we also used a tripod to get eye level shots of the band while filming. Our entire music video is shot at a strange angle in which gives an overview of the entire band . Throughout using the camera I learnt that the focus upon the lighting can be altered via the use of the angle itself of the camera, if the camera is at an angle and the light is also at an angle it looks better than making the light direct at the band. The DSLR also amazingly helped create the video in the first place, without it there would be no music video to evaluate at all. As with all tech some difficulty occurred mainly being the fact that sometimes footage corrupts and dies and leaves us having to refilm it all, however it also enabled us to check the footage we did film and determine if it was worthy of anything remotely useful. Over the two years the use of the DSLRs has drastically improved the shots are now more stable than ever and capture more of an image than before where I just filmed someone walking with a shaky unsteady camera. Technology over the two years is still the same DSLR wise as it was before, most likely being because of expensive and lack of funding in the specific department. Otherwise over the two years iPhone cameras have Horton a lot better and are more smoother and capture footage in a lot better quality than before.



Premiere pro is the editing software sued for my music video and other media creations over the last two years. We used it by dropping the song into the timeline and then steadily inserting video into the areas in which they would fit, we also used it to be able to find the exact locations in which to cut the song down a little bit, using the sound wave feature present in any audio file on the software.
The use of Premiere pro enabled me to actually have an actual music video in the first place as it allowed me to actually be able to construct the thing.
Throughout the two years I have learnt to clip music files and place them together again making a song shorter as well as lip sync to the render so that when it's compressed be complied the lip sync still remains intact. As well as being able to import and export sound bites from clips and merge them with the timeline. The software itself was used to export the video as a MP4 format in which then got uploaded to YouTube. Another thing I learnt using this software is that adding transitions and merging two clips make a more fluent transition overall.

YouTube was the online sharing platform in which my music video resides on, it's the worlds biggest video sharing platform being used for videos of any genre and style. It was used as the platform to upload the music video onto because of its extreme ease of use, it's extremely easy to upload and watch videos on YouTube. Another aspect is that YouTube analytic enable me to see my audience overall and which accounts watched it and what they like to watch on YouTube, enabling me to be able to find out what my audience likes and dislikes.
YouTube is also heavily integrated with Google as such the video can be embedded onto Blogger and shared with relative ease. Although YouTube didn't help on the edit and the print production side. Things it did help with research as YouTube harbours millions of videos and thousands of music videos, in which enabled me to undertake research into genres and conventions with no real issues.

Prezi was a online software I sued to create overly fancy PowerPoint. Prezi was used to create mood boards anyone in the whitelist could edit, this made it easy to put together some ideas of how things were planned and it also helped in the research aspect of it as multiple ideas could be spewed onto prezi and viewed at anytime and anywhere.
Prezi enabled complex ideas to be portrayed in a less complex display.


Photoshop:
Photoshop is a giant aid towards my media coursework, its the one vital program which made my print productions what they are. i used Photoshop by combining and tweaking my images for my print productions; altering them drastically and giving the once dull photographs new life and new details as well as making them link to the narrative.
I had never used Photoshop before i used it for my media work, i diddn't even know how to import an image in it to begin with but over time got more and more used to the software and ended up learning how to oportate numerous layers at once by merging and altering layers in order to create a more diverse image. Photoshop was only used in the development and the finalisation process of making the print productions, reasons for this are because using Photoshop for a music video would mean altering every single frame and it wouldn't make sense to do that. I briefly used it to create drafts of logos in which i ultimately scrapped to focus upon creating meaning behind my productions and not designing a logo in which wouldn't have a meaning. To make the print productions what they are i angled some of the images slightly and created a colour gradient using one of the in program filters, initially it looked slightly too odd and messy as such using dimmers and highlight tools enabled me to create the productions shown today.