A2 media studies.

1. Technology What did you use it for? Pros and Cons
Internet (e.g. Google) To access many presentation websites. Also I used Google to
research two theorists (Todorov and Goodwin).
+ It’s a very efficient way to retrieve information quickly. Such
a huge range of information to read from.
- But if the connection drops it can be difficult for the
webpages to load especially in . Also some computers don’t
have the right flash player to be able to access websites like
Prezi.
PowToon A presentation website that I used for presenting Todorov
and Goodwin’s theory.
+Gives a very professional look to your work and is extremely
easy to use. Has lots of templates to choose .
-Whilst using the software it glitched a few times meaning I
lost little bits of my work, luckily not too drastically.
PowerPoint I created a couple of mind maps to help me get my thoughts
down in a visually interesting way, for example I did one for
my genre research.
+Again very easy to create a professional looking
presentation quickly. Has lots of tools allowing you to be bale
to give your work variety. More visually appealing than just
plain text.
- I just had to make sure that I didn’t over use this
programme as it would make my blog too boring and
repetitive.
Youtube It allowed me to be able to look at previous media texts
(music videos).
+ The main advantage of this website was that it allows me
to be able to find any music video from any artist instantly.
Then I could embed this into my blog by composing it on
blogger.
-Some of the computers at my college had issues either using
the site or embedding the videos. To get around this I did the
majority of it at home.
Research

2. Technology What did you use it for? Pros and Cons
Prezi A presentation software that I used to present information that I would
be sharing with an audience. In my planning I used it for my potential
ideas and artist research.
+ It’s a more visually interesting way to present information that grabs
the audiences attention. It has slightly more appealing design options
than say PowerPoint does.
-Again the only issue I has whilst using Prezi was the fact that some of
the computers I used were out of date meaning they struggled to run
the software.
PowerPoint I used PowerPoint again for mind maps , for example on my Initial Ideas
Pitch Feedback.
See research
Survey Monkey I used this website to create a survey to understand what our target
audience wanted from a music video in the Indie Genre.
+It was a very easy to use website so I had no issues there and the
results we did get were very helpful and help set the direction of our
product ideas.
-It was difficult to know how to get your survey seen so we both shared
it on Facebook to get more people to take the survey , I also emailed it
to some friends.
Email I used email to send a permission request to the record company (virgin
media) who produced the song that we wanted to use in our A2 piece.
+This was helpful as it let us know if we would be able to use the song
we wanted. I then just screen shot the email on the Apple Mac then
posted it on my blog.
Microsoft Word We produced our shooting script in word by creating a table with the
headings ‘Shot number’, ‘Shot type’ ,’Description’, ‘Duration’ and
‘Sound’.
+ I know how to use word from past experience so there were no usage
issues. Its an effective was to create a table with ease. Tables are a great
way to present information because it all neat in one place and is easy to
read.
-I wouldn’t really use word for any other tasks apart from mind maps or
tables because plain text can look quite unsatisfactory to the eye.
Final Cut Pro In my planning I used this software on the Apple Macs to create a
professional looking photo story board.
+Final Cut Pro is excellent for making short films of a decent quality and
once you know how to navigate around the software it is easy to use.
- I am still fairly new to the software as my first time using it was last
year at AS level. However if I ever found something I did know how to do
there is a whole series of tutorials available on line.
iPhone I used my mobile phone to take images of any written work that I
wanted to post on my blog. Some examples of work that I took photos of
are my Story Board and my Shooting script feedback.
+ iPhones have a very decent camera quality so no new equipment had
to be brought especially for the filming element.
Planning

3. Technology What did you use it for? Pros and Cons
Final Cut Pro Converting the raw footage into the final piece using various
editing tool e.g. cropping and blading the footage. We used
final cut pro along with YouTube to get our first and second
cuts onto our blogs. So when the first and final cuts were
completed we uploaded them to YouTube and then
embeded the codes.
+ On this software there is such a huge range of filters,
transitions and font to choose from.
iPhone 6 We used this mobile phone to record all of our footage for
the product.
+ The camera quality was sufficient enough for filming with,
there was no need to buy any fancy cameras or anything-
we didn’t need a microphone.
-The only problem we did face was the fact that we weren’t
sure weather there would be enough storage space
available for all of the footage on the phone.
SlideShare After making a PowerPoint presentation this was an easy
was to get it uploaded onto my blog . An example of a
presentation that I uploaded to SlideShare is my detailed
planning.
You just upload it onto the slide share website and then
embed the code into a post like you do with Prezi.
+ Is a very easily operated website, just a few simple steps
and it was uploaded.
- You do have to have a LinkedIn account to be able to
upload the presentation to the website.
Apple Mac We used the Macs to screenshot the different editing stages
during the production and obviously we used the macs to
run the final cut pro software because this was the only
computer that we could edit our product on.
+I wasn’t that confident using a mac because before a year
ago because I had always used windows software. But for
this project I feel as if I know how to use the macs well
enough to be able to efficiently work. But any functions I
wasn’t sure on could be easily shown on the internet so
that was very helpful.
Production of Main Product

4. Production of Ancillary Products
Technology What did you use it for? Pros and Cons
iPhone I used my mobile phone to take photographs of some of my
written work e.g. my draft ancillary products. Also I used an
iPhone to take the photos that would be going on the final
ancillary products. We were able to compose the photo as
we envisioned thanks to the perfect fairy lighting.
See planning technology
PowerPoint Again I used PowerPoint to make visually appealing mind
maps because I felt it was the best way to present my
ancillary products feedback and improvements.
See research technology
Fireworks We used the Fireworks software on the Apple Macs to create
good quality ancillary products. The main tools we used to
get clean edges on the objects were the lasso and crop tools.
+After having an induction to the basics of this software I
was just about able to navigate my way round. As we got
further into the production I became more familiar. An
queries I had could be answered by tutorials on the internet
so I felt like I was able to achieve what I wanted with these
products.
- The only draw back I had when using this software was not
the software its self but the fact that the only place I could
edit the ancillary products was at college. I didn’t have the
software at home.
Internet I used the internet more particularly Google to search for
images of logos such as Spotify, Itunes, Virgin Media
(Blossoms record company), the band logo/font and a
Barcode.
See research technology

5. Evaluation
Technology What did you used it for? Pros and Cons
PowerPoint Another mind map for the planning of my first
evaluation question.
See research technology
Prezi I used this presentation software to write up my first
evaluation question . It had a suitable layout to
account for all the reflection that I included in the
question (a good zooming feature). So this was good
when I was referring to screenshots because the
information in theme can be quite small.
PowToon PowToon was the presentation software that I used
for my evaluation question 3 and it was very
effective.
See research technology
Emaze I used the Emaze presentation software to create my
evaluation question 2.
+ It is a very similar software to Prezi or PowToon in
the sense that they are on the internet rather than a
programme that you download to your phone.
- The website did crash a few times maybe because
my flash player wasn’t up to date. So I lost a whole
slide of work and had to redo it .
iMovie (iPhone7) I am going to use my iPhone 7 to film my evaluation
4, I will then edit the footage on iMovie an app on
my phone to get the final video.
+Like I said before about my iPhone the quality will
be sufficient this is ideal because poor camera
quality can look unprofessional.
-The iMovie software is not as complex as final cut
pro but it did a good enough job for the evaluation.