The document discusses the various new media technologies used at different stages of a music video project. In the research stage, Google was used for broad searches while being aware of potential inaccuracies. YouTube was heavily used to watch music videos and analyze them. A digital camera with useful features was used for filming. Final Cut Pro, with advanced editing tools, was used for editing on Mac computers. Adobe Photoshop was used to manipulate images for a magazine advert and digipak, experimenting with tools and downloaded brushes. Microsoft Word and Blogger were used for reports and essays, with Blogger allowing organized posts and team access. Facebook was used to get audience feedback by communicating with band members and friends.

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

2. In the research stages I used Google over other search engines because it provides a broad range of relevant information by only producing results that match all the terms used in the search box. However there are disadvantages of the search engines like Google, some websites may give wrong information, affecting the reliability and validity of your research and there have been arguments over censorship and copyright issues. Another website I used a lot throughout my coursework was YouTube. YouTube is a video sharing website that provides a pedestal for anyone to express themselves. I used YouTube to watch and listen to other music videos. To watch a video on YouTube you need to have Adobe Flash Player installed in the brower. This is one of the most common software’s installed on personal computers and accounts for almost 75% of online video material. By having this software you can playback material, meaning when I was watching music videos I could play, pause and rewind them to be able to analyse them in detail.

3. The advantages of using a digital camera over analog, is that is can connect to computers and therefore be edited. Also digital has a cleaner picture and is well defined, because it has a higher resolution. Furthermore digital cameras don’t degrade like analog ones and the equipment is smaller, lighter and more compact, making it more practical to use. During the construction of the music video, we used the Canon XM2 Digital Video Camera for filming. This professional camera had various features benefiting the filming process, like a 20x optical zoom and super low light performance.

4. When editing the music video, we used Final Cut Pro which can only be used on Mac computers. This was an advantage to us, because we were able to access the most advanced media editing technology. Some useful features of Final Cut Pro is it has a rand of video transitions, manual 3-way colour correction filter, videoscopes and generators like test cards and slugs.

5. . In terms of the magazine advert and digipak, we used Adobe Photoshop, to manipulate and improve images as part of the ancillary texts. I had used Adobe Photoshop before and therefore was familiar with most of the tools. An advantage of using Adobe Photoshop is that it is the best in the market at the moment, so you know you are getting all the best features. I spent a lot of time experimenting with the features to create a visually appealing advert, and used different brushes that I had downloaded from the internet, I played around with lighting to create a dark edgy feel, and added a hand drawn logo for the band to make the advert and digipak more personalised to the band itself. We uploaded the logo by scanning it into the computer and then cutting out the background with the eraser tool and playing around with colours.

6. By the evaluation stages I had also used software’s like Microsoft word for all my essays and reports and uploaded everything to a “Blogger”. Blogger is owned by Google and allows individuals to store information on blogs with a time stamped entry. What makes Blogger to other blogs is that it allows you to put posts in labels to organise the blog and have up to 100 team members on one blog.

7. Another website I began to whilst doing this coursework was Facebook. Facebook is a social networking site, designed to connect friends from around the world. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. I used Facebook to talk to other members of the band, and friends to get opinions on what they thought of our music video, as part of our audience feedback research Over the period of producing the products for this coursework, I have learnt about different media technologies and can appreciate how technology has changed over time to improve the ways we do things and make it easier and more accessible.