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

2. The use of blogger.com was very useful in organising and showcasing my Research and Planning,
primarily because it allowed me to keep my research on the computer, rather than having to print it
out. It also allowed for easier access from both home and school, via any internet connection, which
was very useful when doing work outside of school. The online nature of the blogs also allowed me
to make instant updates that were neat and tidy. Although there were some occasional issues in
accessing at school due to technical problems, the blogs were a more organised and efficient
method of gathering my research. Furthermore, although paper plans (e.g. Storyboard sketches)
had to be scanned onto the computer before they could be uploaded, this was simple and easy.
SlideShare played a very important part in bringing our blog together as it allowed us to upload
presentations of research and planning which was needed as part of the course.
Research and planning.
The Internet was very useful While researching conventions to use within my final products as well
as examples of successfully existing music videos, posters, and digipaks to give me the ideas I
needed to create ours our selves, I found the most common internet tools I used were YouTube.com
and Google.co.uk. They allowed me to access a broad range of examples, including ones from other
genres as well as genres of my choice. While this was very useful when researching posters and
digipak covers as Google provided clear image of examples, it was even more useful when
researching existing music videos. YouTube.com allowed me easy access to a wide range of
material, which I could then embed on the blog and analyse for example the existing song ‘Give me
love’ by Ed Sheeran which I analysed the existing music video and uploaded it onto my blog. It also
hosted a lot of unconventional music that would not be shown in the charts, and may have required
a lot of researching to find, this was very helpful as the genre we had chosen was indie/rock which
isn't really found in the update chart programmes. I was also able to find suggestions for conventions
to research, which I would have had difficulty finding another way. This made my research much
easier, as I could focus on analysing the genre of my choice and the music videos from this genre,
rather than looking for ones that I didn’t need.
Blogger.

3. However The Internet and internet research was hindered by in-school internet filtering which was
sometimes a pain, but I was still able to access it outside of school and could easily save links or
relocate videos if my research was interrupted. Therefore, the internet was a major part in my research
and planning, despite minor technical disruptions.
Construction
After all research and planning was complete we could then begin constructing our final products we
also required a use of a lot of technology. Before bringing our music video together we first had to
record the footage, which we did by using video cameras provided to us by the school, this allowed us to
record all the footage we needed to create the music video, we had to use the camera to its full potential
as we had to make sure we had a number of different angles within our final piece this meant using
some of the cameras features for example the zoom button for long or close up shots.
Once all of our footage was collected we then had to bring it all together as well as editing it to make
sure it successfully fitted the genre of our choice. We did this by using a programme called Adobe
Premier, which is a video creating/editing programme. It contained many features which allowed us to
edit our video to how we wanted, for example we made sure all the cuts were extremely fast as this was
found to be a typical convention of the indie/rock genre. We was also able to add a black and white
shaking effect to our video to give it that indie, urban and gritty nature to it. Adobe premier was also
used to create parts of our evaluation, questions 3 as this involved us feeding back to the examiner
about how the audience feedback we gained helped us create our final products. Once again we
needed to use the program to its full, as we needed to edit the footage we gathered, using the video
camera to do so to how we wanted and to make sure it flowed easy and made sense.

4. Photoshop was another important programme we used to construct our final pieces but it wasn’t
in the making of our video but our digipak instead. It allowed us to style and edit existing images
and images we collected ourselves to suit the genre we had chosen, this process was made
easier Photoshop as it has many different tools and options which allowed us to make a few
designs before settling for the one we thought would be the most successful in appealing to
intended audience. Some tools we used included the ‘magic eraser’ which allowed us to perfectly
cut around an image and keep parts we wanted, deleting the rest this made it much faster
process in bringing our album cover and poster together. Another tool we used was the fading
option tool, this was very important in creating our digipak as it was needed to blend an image
with an effect allowing us to create a link between all three of our final products, shown to be a
typical convention for the music industry.
Finally just to make sure we mixed our evaluation up a bit we used Prezi, which is very similar to
PowerPoint in terms of it being a presentation programme, but came across a lot more
complicated to use. This was good as it widen our skills when using different technologies.