My a2 coursework Evaluation Question 4

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

2. Using technologies
Whilst doing this media course I have used many different types of
digital technology such as YouTube, blogger, Premier Pro and
Photoshop to help me with my research, planning and evaluation
stages. Digital technology was very useful because it allowed me to
research all my ideas for my music video. I could also, thanks to
blogger, record what I had achieved and the process of the video
down.

3. Research and planning
For my research I mainly used YouTube as it was a quick and easy
way of researching different genres of music. The reason behind us
choosing our song was because we knew we wanted a rock song as
then we could used the lyrics to make a narrative as that is a
convention of rock songs. While we were looking at rock songs we
found the video of Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve. Although
we didn’t want this song we liked the idea of the music video of the
man walking to the camera along a street. After coming up with this
idea we found the song Boulevard Of Broken Dreams and it fitted
perfectly. Once we had decided our song we needed to research and
watch other videos that involved this genre and other videos that had
the same storyline as us, which is a breakup.
I had to keep a record of all my research and ideas on my blog so
that I could look back on it. We had to create a storyboard and then
an animatic on Premier Pro so that we knew what shots to film when
we were filming and this gave us a structure. We uploaded the
animatic on our blog and on YouTube and this meant that I could look
back on it whenever I wanted and also meant we could get audience
feedback as the video was paired with the song.

4. Researching and planning
In our video we wanted to use a green screen, and so we looked on
YouTube at other past student work and we found one that although
didn’t use a green screen the girls projected images onto the
character singing and this gave us some inspiration. YouTube was
really useful to use as we can access it easily and it is free, when we
were creating our work we uploaded it when it was a minute long so
we could get audience feedback and once we had uploaded we put it
on our blogs so we could watch it when we wanted too.

5. Construction
When filming I used a canon G16 camera and uploaded the footage we
filmed onto the mac via the memory card. To edit we used the software
Premier Pro, we knew how to edit on this software because it was the
same one we had used in AS. We had to make sure when editing that we
edited on the beat a that is a convention of a music video, we also
included in our video different filters and different techniques such as
fades and turning the screen to black. When we had used YouTube to
research different videos, we looked at the video of Breakeven by The
Script, this video included a black and white filter for when the video
would show scenes of the couple after the breakup. We decided to use
this idea for our video and on the scenes when the couple are say, we
edited a black and white filter in.
When editing the green screen we had to use a colour correction tool and
then a colour key tool to cancel out the green. It was very easy to do
initially until we experienced a problem that we sometimes couldn’t get rid
of all he green that surrounded them because it started to remove some
of the actors hair. However we managed to remove most of it and the bit
left behind you can barely see.

6. Construction
I also had to use Photoshop when constructing my music video
advert and my digipak. I used different techniques such as changing
the colour, saturation and the highlights in some of my pieces. I tried
to relate my products to the video and so I used the same black and
white but altered the colour of. As I was gong along I uploaded my
ancillary's to blogger so that I could receive audience feedback and
so I could see my progress.

7. Evaluation
I uploaded my ancillary tasks onto my blog and this allowed me to take
screenshots of them when I was writing my evaluation questions. For my
evaluation questions I used these websites, eMaze, Piktochart and
Slideshare and these were all free, I then uploaded these onto blogger
and this allows me to see the journey of this course and how my
ancillaries and video have improved over time.

8. Summary
Overall these media technologies have been very important to each stage
of this media course. Thanks to the internet researching ideas for my
video has been really easy as there are so many videos out that because
the internet is free and anyone can upload. Without media technologies
making our video and my ancillaries