4. How did you use media technologies in

the construction, research, planning and

evaluation stages

• New technologies such as YouTube offer opportunities for creativity. This enabled

me to watch music videos that are suited for the genre that I chose to look at (indie)

and get inspiration for the construction stage. From using this way of researching, it

gave me the idea of what sort of music video to do that will suit the Indie genre e.g

a lot of indie artists such as Ben Howard use Narrative videos (Joan Lynch). From

new technologies, it offers creativity in the way that I have presented my research e.g

I have used blogger to show what music videos I researched by embedding the

music video from YouTube and for research with the promotional package, I have

used spider diagrams on PowerPoint and then posted them on my blog.

• In planning my music video, I used Photoshop to create a collage to portray the outfits and the hairstyles hat the actress will be wearing in a creative way to demonstrate the idea of how my actress is going to look in the music video. For planning my promotional package, I have taken photographs of what is going to be on my digipak. I used a digital camera to take photographs of the main photograph like the front cover but I have also used the Fujifilm instax mini 8 to take instant photos for inside of my digipak. This has been done in a creative way with how they link to the genre (Indie). In the promotional package, I have also used Photoshop to design a album artwork inspiration so I can get an idea of what wanted to create. I also used the weather app on my phone to plan when the weather supposed to be nice so I knew when to hire out equipment and to film my music video. For my storyboard, I used PowerPoint where I put the photographs of my drawings of what my storyboard is. I found it creative because it goes through in chronological order to what my idea is to do and so I know what to aim for when filming.

• In construction, my music video and my promotional package involves empowerment because it shows that you do not need to be in a big Hollywood company to create a music video or a digipak and advert and actually with the software that is available for anyone to use such as Photoshop, InDesign, Aftereffects and Premier Pro, people are now able to create their own from home or school and is so easy to produce even with a limited amount of equipment. It also gives the audience empowerment as it is easy to pick up editing skills using Premier Pro by being able to watch online tutorials on YouTube and also trial and error by self learning. I have also used After Effects to stabilise some of my footage in my music video. I also used After Effects to create a frame for my music video because I wanted my music video look like it was filmed on a Super 8 camera. When producing my promotional package, I used InDesign for my

for my Digipak. I found that InDesign is a very creative way to produce the digipak as

it gave a truthful perspective of how the digipak would look like if the digipak was

printed out and was distributed because the measurements are the same measurements

at an actual digipak. It also shows what my digipak would look like as a finished

product (with the photographs and the text). For my music magazine advert, I have

used Photoshop to create it and to add the text on the photographs for the digipak. I

found that using Photoshop was a creative way of creating a music magazine advert

because I found it easy to use and can add effects to the photograph to make it look

more professional and Indie.

• In the evaluation stages, the technologies that I have enabled me to create and represent my answers for the evaluation in a creative way. In the first question, I used Prezi to create a animated/ PowerPoint and I feel like it portrayed my work in a better way and in a creative way where it makes it more interesting way to read instead of it being bulky on my blog. For question 2, I used Word to type up my answer and add photos/screenshots to illustrate my point and then I saved it as a PDF and used Scribd to put it on my blog. This is because I could not get issuu to work and thought it would be more creative than just typing onto my blog. I had also used my camera to take photographs of the whiteboard where I was writing my answer to question 3 and thought it was a different and creative way instead of typing it up on the computer.

Advantages:

• The advantage of the technologies that I have used, is using Photoshop that

enabled me to edit my photographs for my promotional package and also create my

music magazine advert to suit the theme that I wanted (Indie, relaxation and

calmness). By using Photoshop, it is easy to use for me because I used Photoshop a

lot last year and in my other subjects so I am able to work a lot on Photoshop. The

advantage of using InDesign is because I used InDesign last year in media so I had

a clear understanding of how to use the software to create my digipak and found it

easy to use such as knowing what tools to use on the left hand side and how to

create the digipak template and how to add the images.

The advantage of using Premier Pro meant that I was able to edit my music video easily and add additional effects to reach my target audience that listen to Indie music. I found Premier Pro easy to use as I looked at a couple of online tutorials that helped me with more advanced editing skills that I wanted to learn such as adding a scratching effect to make my music video look like a super 8 camera (temptation to use effects). I have also used Adobe Audition to cut down the song that I was using. This was an advantage because it was easy to use as I all I had to do was delete a part of the song at the end because I needed my song to be a maximum of 3 minutes or it would have run on for too long. Using technologies such as YouTube and Blogger is means that in todays society, it is so easy to distribute my work so the whole world can see which shows that you do not have to be a top producer or famous to be able to distribute my work.

• The advantage of using After Effects for my music video is that when I used the fig

rig for when I was filming, I found that it made my footage quite shaky even though

I wanted that effect because my music video is in the style of a “homemade” video

as it is an Indie, relaxing and calming music video so I used After Effects to stabilise

some of the footage so that it wasn’t as shaky. The advantage of the equipment I

used is that the camera that I used was very easy to use as I study photography as

well (Canon 600D) so I had a understanding how to use the camera like what setting

to use and also how to use the tri-pod which was helpful and easy to use and helped

my footage to be a lot more stable than the fig rig.

Disadvantages

• The disadvantages of using the fig rig for my camera when filming, is that I found it did not stable my camera as well as what the tri-pod did but I had to use the fig rig because the tri-pod is only used for when the camera is still which I did use for when I was filming still footage like close-ups. The disadvantage of using After Effects is that I found it quite difficult to use compared to Premier Pro because I found that the layout I used was a lot more different and also when I was looking for online tutorials on YouTube, I found that they were outdated for the After Effects I had and was quite complicated to follow. I found that being able to hire equipment such as a camera or a fig rig was a disadvantage because the whole class needs to use the equipment as well which means only having a certain time with the equipment which meant if the weather was bad when you are filming, it was a problem unless you need bad weather so it took up a lot of time hard to get the perfect weather and right time to hire out the equipment. The last disadvange that I found was when doing my evaluation for question 2, I could not load Issuu onto my computer which meant that I had use something else which I used Scribd which is fairly similar.