The student used various media technologies at different stages of their music video and print production project. In the research stage, they used SoundCloud to find an unsigned artist, YouTube to research existing music videos, and Google to research genre conventions. Planning utilized Facebook, Snapchat, and email to communicate with collaborators, and Photoshop to create draft designs. Audience research analyzed Coldplay social media and YouTube comments. Production used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the music video, cutting clips to the beat of the music. Photoshop was used to design consistent branding across the album cover and magazine ad.

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

2. Research:
The things that I had to research, when crafting my music video and print productions were existing
music videos and print productions from within the indie genre. As well as this, I needed to find the
preferences and hobbies etc. of my target audience, which was teens between the age of 12 and 18.
In terms of finding the son to use, I used Soundcloud. Soundcloud is an application/website where
artists across the globe can post their music and sounds etc. This was particularly useful, as the task
assigned was to find an artist of whom was unsigned. The app also gives details to how to contact the
artist, meaning that it was easy to contact the artist, when asking for permission. The advancement
of technology has allowed for this sort of thing to be at the click of a finger, whereas twenty years
ago the task would have been a lot harder, and taken days rather than minutes. When researching
existing music videos, I already had knowledge of potential bands music videos that I could learn
from and take inspiration from. I utilized this and used YouTube to find these videos. YouTube is a
particularly useful website, like Soundcloud, it has the music videos at the click of a finger, meaning it
was easy to access different videos. The comment section of YouTube allowed me to see audience
feedback on the videos that I was researching. This would help me notice aspects of the video that I
may have missed myself. As well as this, the comments section helped me broaden my horizon, in
terms of how to tap into different demographics.
When I had decided my song, and become aware of the genre, I simply used a google search to find
out the typical genre conventions of music videos within the genre itself. The benefits of this was that
I got to view the ideas that are held by others, which helped add to my own knowledge. Slideshare
was commonly used as a presentation device for the ideas projected by these people. It was very
common that it was fellow media students, as well as teachers to make these presentation. Twenty
years ago you would have had to go and find these people to find out their ideas about these topics,
but the internet has made it so that their views and knowledge is accessible to everyone.
When researching the existing print productions (the album and magazine advert), I used websites
for magazines such as Billboard etc. as it was easy to access. If I was to have done this twenty years
ago, I would have had to have endlessly shifted through magazines etc. to find what I was looking for.
The internet also allowed for me to search, specifically, for what I was looking for, which was
particularly useful as it gave me knowledge of what, exactly, I was looking for and therefore gave me
much clearer and more useful inspiration.

3. Planning:
The planning task itself was made of up group tasks, of which I worked together with Harry Ames, as well as individual tasks. Social media
played a key role, in terms of the way me and Harry kept in contact. Facebook, snapchat and email was the three applications and methods me
and Harry used to send each other ideas, when completing a group task. When you break them down individually, the three combine
excellently. Facebook/Snapchat allowed me and Harry to access each other quickly, no matter where we were. Email allowed us to send each
other draft copies of group tasks, as well as share documents that might have been useful when planning the music video.
However, some of the group tasks were completed by hand, for example, the initial ideas mind map was done on paper. Simply due to the
easiness and freedom that writing something out allows. Creating a mind map on a computer on a such as PowerPoint can sometimes be more
time consuming than what is necessary.
When planning my magazine advert and album panels, I used Photoshop to create drafts for potential ideas. For me this was vital. Before
creating the drafts, I had never actually used Photoshop before, and by using it in my planning, rather than drawing, I was able to gain a fair
understanding and good knowledge of how to use the programme which meant that I was able to apply the different skills I learnt, from
practice, to my final production.
Here is the practice that I have mentioned. The drastic difference in
design shows how I used different tools etc. to create and practice
different styles of album covers. This was particularly useful as it
gave me a good perspective of what elements I could take and apply
to my final production. The only real difficulty I found using this
programme was the initial set up and what tools were where, but
that was solved by asking my other group member Harry Ames,
who is very knowledgeable and creative on the programme and he
helped me massively, when initially using the programme.
Over the course of this media course, my ability to use these adobe programmes has improved significantly, and has also given me a passion to
use them in the future. The planning of the album cover and magazine advert was particularly useful for me, in terms of desire to use
Photoshop in the future.
This here, is an example of the tools that I used to create the
brightly coloured album cover. The tools I became most
familiar with includes ‘inner glow’ and ‘gradient overlay’.

4. Audience research:
When researching my audience, I knew exactly what to search for in terms of what I wanted to know about my
audience. My target audience was people between the age of 12-18, and I myself fall into that category, so I was
able to apply my own knowledge of what I already knew about the group. I did it through my personal likes, as
well as those around me. However, this was only a small percentage of the target audience. The internet allowed
me to find out what types of things that people within the demographic liked. When researching my audience. It
was important that I found a band that I could compare to my own artist. This was important because I could
look at all social media and other platforms the band exposes their music etc. on, and then I could use the
feedback etc. on said platforms to acquire information about the demographic. The band I decided to compare
my artist to was Coldplay. Coldplay are an international band, and therefore have exposed themselves on a wide
variety of platforms. An example of what I would do to find out information about the demographic would be as
follows. I would go onto a music video on YouTube, and read the comments. Not all comments are useful, but I
would handpick the useful ones and take note of the feedback that they gave about the video, to be more
specific I would take note of what they liked. And then I would take note and look to apply it to my own work.
YouTube was particularly useful as it allowed me to find the opinions and criticisms of many people, whereas if
this was to be done twenty years ago, it would have taken ages to get the feedback from people etc.
When I finished my productions, I used survey monkey to find out the positives and negatives of my
productions. The responses that I received from this survey would be particularly useful if I was to
create another music video and print productions, but also for if I was to redo the productions. The
people that I asked to complete my survey were people within my target audience. The usefulness of
this is that I will know how to access and attract that particular audience. As well as this, I am able to
receive critical feedback of my editing skills and camerawork. The usefulness of this survey is that it was
easy to send out, I used email, meaning that it was not unnecessarily time consuming. As well as this,
the application itself puts the data into a variety of charts etc. meaning that trends etc. can easily be
noticed, and the data itself is easier to break down and analyze.

5. Music video:
For my music video, I used Adobe Premiere Pro. This was the same programme that I used to edit my
Year 12 thriller opening, so my knowledge of the programme was fresh. The application itself is a
programme that allows for the user to be as creative as possible, it’s a much better programme than,
say, Windows movie maker. The programme itself is a lot more complexed, and there’s a real learn as
you go feel about it. The programme itself, makes it easy to use the overlay feature. This was key for
me as one of my dynamic features for my music video was using the overlay features. I wanted to
overlay lip-sync shots with the story that my artist was telling, to further reinforce the idea that my
artist is telling the audience a story. The line in the middle of the clip allows for the transparency to be
easily modified. The clear benefit of it is that there is no difficulty in achieving a transparent image,
meaning that I didn’t have to spend too much time modifying the clips. Another very key aspect to the
music video, was to cut to the beat of the music. I did this by cutting the mp3 file on every beat of the
music, of which I wanted there to be a change of shot. The benefit of the programme is that it allowed
the clip I was editing to be aligned with the cut of the music, meaning that it was very easy to make
the clip cut to the beat of the music.
In my music video, I decided to use a slo-mo shot. The shot itself is very smooth, and the composition,
I think, is very successful. However, the quality of the shot is lacking as it was filmed on my iPhone 7.
This was due to the accessibility of the phone. If I was to do the shot again, I was use the Canon DSLR
700 D with an 55-135mm lens with a focus ring, as I had used before in my other shots. The camera
itself was vital to the quality of my music video. An example of the importance of the camera was the
shot of my female character towards the end of the video. The shot was overexposed (intentionally)
to create this sense of having a brighter future.
Also- in print production, I used the colour overlay feature to create a motif within my work. For the
lip-sync shots I added a blue tint, which ties in with my print productions etc. the relation of this to
the question is the easiness of achieving the colour I wanted. The colour grading feature allows for the
percentage of each colour to be modified, meaning that I could change each option and see what it
looked like as I edited it.

6. CD cover:
For the CD cover, I used Adobe Photoshop. Brand identity was a key feature to my productions as
a whole. Therefore I used the deep blue colour that was used in my lip-sync shots, as it’s a key
motif. The CD cover takes inspiration from the minimalistic art movement, therefore I used a
simplistic close-up, the image was taken using the Canon DSLR 700 D, to maintain the quality
that I had in my music video. When creating the final product, I wanted to use this image, but I
wasn’t too sure how to incorporate it into my design. I wanted to maintain simple colours in my
album cover, therefore I decided to blend the image into the deep blue panel. I selected the
darken option, as shown in the screenshot to the right, and that put the blackened effect on the
image. To blend the image into the background, I changed the opacity of the rubber tool, and
then rubbed around the edges, I would slowly decrease the opacity of the rubber to make the
image slowly blend more and more. This was very easy to do, and the result that I achieved was
very successful. The other image to the right shows the original image.
Magazine advert:
In terms of the design and creation of my magazine advert, it
was the exact same process as creating my album cover. I did
this because I wanted to create this brand for the artist, and I
wanted the album cover to become as recognizable as possible.
However, the only real difference was the addition of the five
stars. I simply used the star tool on Photoshop, and made them
yellow. The has an instant visual appeal, there is something that
is very aesthetically pleasing about the sight of five gold stars. It
suggests that the album guarantees quality. There isn’t much
more to say about the magazine advert, as the design of it and
creation was the same as the CD cover.

7. The presentation of my work in blogger:
When putting my work onto my blogger, I made sure that it was labelled and tagged in a way that makes the posts easy to access. This means
that my blog is easy to understand and to navigate through. The majority of my blog posts have been created on Microsoft word and
Microsoft PowerPoint. These programmes are particularly useful when it comes to creating posts. Microsoft word is good for more essay style
questions due to the layout of the application. The word count on it allowed me to notice if I had written too much, meaning I could then
proof-read and cut out any unnecessary waffle. As well as this, the programme is just really simple to use, and there is a clear layout meaning
that al my attention and effort could go into the work itself. In terms of Microsoft PowerPoint, I used it to create presentation-style answers to
questions and case studies etc. the programme allows me to have individual slides for each subheading to the work I was doing. As well as
this, the tools on the programme make photos really easy to annotate and evaluate. If I was to use a different programme, more often, I
would use Prezi. For me personally I am a big fan of mind maps, and I think that they are a great way to project ideas and very good for giving
clear and concise ideas. If I was to redo the blog, I would use it more often so I could replicate the mind-map idea, as I believe that it would be
easier for me to analyze texts and project multiple ideas clearly etc.
Conclusion:
In conclusion to all of this, I would say that the knowledge of programmes that I gained during my time doing the year 12 coursework, was a
massive help when creating my music video and print productions, as the knowledge I already had, allowed me to focus more on the content,
rather than learning the techniques and the programme etc. As well as this, I believe that my presentation of my work in blogger has
improved significantly, and the work that I have produced this year has been of a much higher quantity, but more importantly, quality. The use
of media technologies in my work this year has given me a new passion, which is a desire to use these programmes in my future works; it has
also given me a new creative, dynamic aspect when working and creating content.