1. HOW DID YOU USE NEW MEDIA
TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION,
RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION
STAGES?
Erin Miller
2. WHAT ARE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES?
Media technologies are the content that are available on-demand. These can also be referred
to as new media technologies. They usually consist of interactive user feedback.
Examples of these include websites, online newspapers and forums, blogs and different types
of social media. These are all types of technologies in which I have used in order to gain a lot
of my research.
3. WEBSITES
When carrying out my research, it was important that I found out they key points. I carried out a
lot of research using websites as I was able to type into the internet the information that I was
looking for. When I created my mood board, I had to use websites in order to find a variety of
different images that I can put on the mood board. This allowed me to find all the images that I
needed. Another thing that I needed to use websites for was when I was researching the different
institutions such as Channel 4, BBC and Channel 5. The websites allowed me to gather the
research for my research. Finally, I used the internet in order to do my evaluations. I had to
research what different websites I could use in order to create presentations for my final
evaluations, as I wanted to use a variety of programs. I found websites such as Prezi, SlideShare
and Google Slide. By using these different varieties of websites in order to make my presentations,
it meant that I was able to show all of the different software skills I have as I was able to create the
presentations in a variety of different ways. Another thing that websites helped me with during my
research and planning was creating a ‘PowToon’. This is another software that I was able to use
and it allowed me to create a video ‘LIIAR’ analysis. The use of websites impacted me massively as
this was where I found the majority of my information to carry out my research.
5. ONLINE FORUMS AND NEWSPAPERS
Online forums were not something I massively used but they did help me a lot with the
research that I was carrying out. When it came to the creation of my documentaries, I had to
use a forum to find out the statistics of how much plastic surgery was carried out in 2014.
These gave me the numbers and statistics that I was looking for in order for me to include
them in to my main product. Another thing that helped me with regards to online forums is
that when I was creating my audience profiling, I had to use online forums in order for me to
research the amount of money that they spent on clothes, make-up, shoes etc. These forums
online were helpful when I was researching, however they did not massively impact the
construction of my product. One thing they did however help with was when I was trying to
find information on how to insert sound tracks on Movie Maker, these forums guided me
into how to do this to make my final product have a larger impact.
7. BLOGS
Blogs were something that helped me a lot throughout this process. Due to the fact this is an
A-level course and that there are a number of people across the country who have already
done this course, therefore using their blogs as inspiration was a good and helpful idea. This is
because I was able to look at their ideas and how they presented their products. The blogs gave
me help when I was looking for my research as I was sometimes stuck on what the points I
needed to make were. In order to present my work I have created my own blog so that my
teacher can read and review over my work. By having a blog it has allowed me to keep progress
reports of what I was throughout each lesson or term. The blog has allowed me to present my
work in a more up to date and formatted way that is easy to read and understand throughout
the whole of this unit of work.
9. SOCIAL MEDIA
Social Media was the piece of media technology which I found helped and impacted me the most throughout
this unit of work. I had to use Twitter a lot of the time if I was looking for feedback from users or if I was looking
to find images of celebrities. This is because I would be able to find a number of images of them but they would
also be recent images. I wanted recent images and old images because I could show the contrast between them
all. The main social media network that I used was YouTube. Throughout the whole of this unit of work, I had to
use a lot of archived footage. Archived footage was something that helped me to make the product look more
realistic and helped to encourage the point that I was trying to make. In order to get the archived footage I had
to look on YouTube and find different interviews and clips that would help to support my point and my topic.
Additionally, when I was using different pieces of software, it was important for me to use YouTube if I needed to
look over a tutorial. When it first came to the production stage of my media work, I decided that the software
that I wanted to use was Adobe Premier Elements. When it came to trying to use it, I began to struggle a lot. This
is because it was a software that I was unfamiliar with. I then decided to not use it as the computers that I used in
school did not fully support this software. Instead I used Movie Maker, and I had to use a number of tutorials in
order for it to explain to me how it worked and how I should trim the clips that I was using along with how to
insert more than one sound type.
