1. Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
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 the blog at college due to technical problems, the blogs were a more organised and
efficient method of culminating my coursework into one place. 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.
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 digipacks. This gave us the ideas we
needed to create our final products, with the most common internet tools used being YouTube and
Google as they offered the widest variety of information in one place. 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 digipack covers as Google provided clear images
of examples, it was even more useful when researching existing music videos. YouTube allowed me
easy access to a wide range of material, which I could then embed on the blog and analyse. For
example I used Google to find examples of current digipacks and analysed three current digipacks,
one Libertines EP and two Arctic Monkeys albums. I thought analysing the Arctic Monkeys albums
was particularly important as the song we chose was an Arctic Monkeys song, this meant that our
digipack had to fit in with the conventions of an Arctic Monkeys, Video, Poster and digipack even
though we changed the name of the band. YouTube also hosts 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.
However the use of the Internet for research was hindered by in-school internet filtering which was
sometimes a pain, but we was still able to access it outside of school and could easily save links or
relocate videos if research was interrupted. Therefore, the internet was a major part in my research
and planning, despite minor technical disruptions. After all research and planning was complete we
could then begin constructing our final products, this also required the 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 Elements, this video editing
software was very easy to use but also provided the necessary tools needed to create a professional
2. looking music video. We also used the software to create question three of our evaluation as we
thought having visual aids one that question was important when trying to describe the process.
We also used Photoshop to construct both our digipack and promotional poster. 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 in 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, 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 digipack 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
Creating PowerPoint’s was also a large part of our research. It allowed us to create visual aids of our
research and present them in a professional and easy to view way. These where then uploaded via
SlideShare to our blogs.
