The document discusses how the author used various media technologies during the planning, research, construction, and evaluation stages of their project. During planning and research, the author used Blogger and Prezi to organize work, YouTube to research music videos and present their own work, the internet to conduct research, and Movie Studio Platinum to edit videos. During construction, the author used cameras, lighting, and Movie Studio Platinum for editing. They concluded they improved their skills with these technologies through the project.

1. H O W D I D Y O U U S E
M E D I A T E C H N O L O G I E S
I N T H E P L A N N I N G A N D
R E S E A R C H ,
C O N S T R U C T I O N A N D
E V A L U A T I O N S T A G E S ?

2. R E S E A R C H A N D
P L A N N I N G

3. BLOGGER & PREZI
I have used Blogger throughout the research and planning
stages to keep all my work organised and in one place so that I
do not lose any important work. This was significant during my
work as it allowed me to show my progress and development. I
used Blogger last year for my AS coursework to keep my work
in order but this year it was much easier to use Blogger as I
already knew what to do from using it previously and this
made the whole process much faster and easier. Last year I
found re-ordering posts quite difficult but through practice and
using Blogger a lot this year, it has been a lot easier and I did
not struggle with it.
I have also used Prezi during my research and planning
because this enabled me to show what research I had found
and this was an easy, creative way to show it. With Prezi, it has
allowed me to keep all of my research in one place which
makes it easier when it comes to the evaluation stages as it is
easy to find. Again, I used this for my AS coursework and I
found it reasonably easy to use but this year I could use it
faster and more efficiently as I had gotten used to using it.
Using both Blogger and Prezi has enabled me to keep all my
work organised and has allowed me to show what work I have

4. YOUTUBE
Throughout my research and planning, I often
used YouTube to research indie rock/general
music videos to aid my research. I also used
YouTube to present my own work – we had to
do a Pitch which was recorded and then put
onto YouTube so that people would know what
the storyline and ideas were behind our music
video. We also used YouTube to present our
target audience interviews as it is a different and
more creative way of displaying this information.
I also looked at student music videos on
YouTube as part of the research stages which
was easily accessible and caused no problems
for me. Using YouTube was very important for
my research and planning stages as it allowed
me to gain more information and also allowed
me to present my own in an easy way – rather
than just using Prezi all the time.

5. INTERNET
The use of the internet during the research and planning
stages was pivotal as it allowed me to research
everything (genre, target audience, student music videos,
age restrictions) in an easy way.
When researching the target audience, I found a useful
website called “infogr.am” which helped significantly as it
showed the patterns and trends of our target audience
and this enabled us to then further our knowledge and
look more into what our target audience would like to
see by doing the target audience interviews/member
profile. The website we used told us the psychographics
and demographics of our primary target audience. I also
used “NME” online which is an indie rock magazine to
research the target audiences psychographics.
The internet was also useful when it came to researching
our genre as it enabled us to go on YouTube and find
out what indie rock music videos tend to have in them
and this helped us as we then incorporated that into our
own music video. The internet also helped with regards
to using Prezi and Blogger to keep things in order.
The internet has been extremely useful and without it – it
would be very difficult to do this research and planning
without the aid of the internet.

6. MOVIE STUDIO PLATINUM
For our research and planning, we sometimes had to
use Movie Studio Platinum in order to edit the
research we had done on videos (pitch, target
audience interviews) so we could put them onto
YouTube and then onto our blogs. When we had
filmed our pitch and target audience interviews we
had to edit them, render them and then put them
onto YouTube and then post them on our blogs so
that people could see all of our research in one
place. Since we used this software for our AS
coursework, it was really easy to use this year as we
already knew how to edit and it made the process a
lot faster which helped us because it meant that we
could get on with more research as it did not take up
as much time as it did last year. Using this software
made our work more visually interesting and it made
it look more professional as we could get rid of
footage we did not want and then show the main
research we had done.

7. CAMERAS/MICS
For our target audience interviews, we used a HD Panasonic
Camera to get the footage. This was a fairly easy process since
we have done this before for our AS coursework but it takes a
bit of time to set up the tripod and to make sure that the
framing is correct. The filming went very smoothly and
nothing went wrong during this and we did not encounter any
problems.
We also used the HD Panasonic Camera for the filming of our
Pitch. The only problem that we had faced when filming this
was that the sound was very quiet because we only used the
mic that was on the camera but we could not do anything
about this afterwards since it had already been filmed and we
did not know it would be quiet at the time. It would have been
beneficial for us to use a voice recorder as well because it
would have made it clearer to hear us speaking.
We did not use the camera much during the research and
planning stages because it was needed more during the
construction stages for us.
I feel that we have developed our skills with using the cameras
through our research and planning and have improved our
framing skills and the handling of the camera in general.

8. C O N C L U S I O N

9. CONCLUSION
Overall, I think that I have improved significantly using Blogger and Prezi because I have
used it more frequently throughout my coursework.
I also think that I have improved and developed my skills with regards to using the
camera and editing software because I can now use them more effectively and more
efficiently in order to make my coursework look more professional.

10. C O N S T R U C T I O N

11. CAMERA AND LIGHTING
For the construction of our video – we used a HD Panasonic Camera which was
easy to use because we used this for our AS coursework when we had to make a
film opening. This made it easy for us to use and handle and this made the
process a lot quicker. We also used another camera which was better quality
which meant that we could clearly see certain shots, e.g. the fire in the eye would
have been hard to see if we had used the HD Panasonic Camera because the
quality was not as clear. This was then harder to edit when it came to it because
our shots then had different quality. We used a tripod for some scenes but
generally it was handheld because this connotes the unstable nature of the actors
in the video. It was much quicker to do handheld shots as it takes a while to set
up the tripod and when you need a certain lighting outside (e.g. in the evening
when it is still a bit light) you do not want to be spending time setting up a tripod
because we needed all the recording time we can get and because of the time of
year – the lighting changes very quickly. However, we used the tripod shots when
appropriate as it made it look more professional but some of our shots could not
be done without using handheld shots. With the handheld shots, it was very
difficult to keep still so we had to put a lot of our shots in slow motion in order to
make them look a bit steadier as sometimes they were very fast and hard to see
as it is hard to hold it completely still. This worked to our advantage though as
most indie rock music videos use slow motion. The other camera we used was a
lot heavier and bigger which meant that it was a lot harder to film some of the
handheld shots but they were very effective and clear. It would have been better if
we had used the better quality camera throughout but we got it half way through
our filming so it meant that we had to play around with filters in the editing
process to ensure it all looked the same.
We did not use any artificial lights because we wanted the lighting to be natural
during the day time scenes and at night – the lighting we used was from the fire
which really made it a focal point. We did not want the lighting to be high key as
this is not a generic convention. The low key lighting meant that it looked more
mysterious and was enigmatic and you could really only see silhouettes because
of this which is creative. The darkness of the video meant that the audience
focused solely on the only light source which was the fire which made it look of a
higher quality because you can clearly see the details of the fire.

12. CAMERA – CONTINUED…
When filming, we managed to get quite a lot of creative shots. For example, the shot
of our actor with the fire in her eye – this was quite hard to get since it is really hard
to get the good quality and we had to use a HD camera to get this kind of shot
since the other camera we had from school could not focus on the eye properly and
did not work well in low key lighting. This was a problem we kept having, the camera
we were given from school was not great quality wise so it was always difficult to get
good shots with it, especially when we were working in the dark with only the fire as
the source of light.
We also had a shot that went into a shallow focus, again, this was hard to get
because we were not sure how to do a shallow focus on the camera but it happened
by accident when we were filming but it works extremely well in the video and fits
nicely.
With regards to framing, we have a shot of the actor turned to the side and slightly
off centre in front of the fire, you can see up to her shoulders and we framed it off
centre to show her instability since she is obsessed with the fire, this shot then pans
up towards the sky which includes camera movements too. This is an iconic shot as
the girl looks as though she is a silhouette due to the low key lighting.
We have used more creative shots during our A2 coursework than we did at AS
because we experimented more with the shots and this makes the whole piece look
more professional and like a real media text.

13. MOVIE STUDIO PLATINUM
When we had finished shooting for our music
video, we began editing it on Movie Studio
Platinum – which we were familiar with from
working with this software for our AS
coursework which meant it was easy for us to
use. Editing our music video was a very long
process as we had to sort out which clips we
wanted to keep and which ones we did not
want and then begin editing. We found the
editing aspect easy but we did not know what
order to put the clips in to make sense as we
felt that none of the clips worked together and
we were not happy with it – we went out and
filmed more because of this and then we were
finally happy with the shots we had recorded
which made us feel a lot better about the
whole process.
By using Movie Studio Platinum, it meant that
we could use different filters and change the
colours and saturation of certain shots, add

14. MSP – CONTINUED…We used filters on most of our shots that we filmed with our own camera because the shots
looked of a better quality than those from the schools camera – we had to make them look like
they had been filmed with the same camera so we put filters on the better quality ones to
make them look less different. We also added a red filter onto a certain scene to fit with the
lyrics – when they say “demons” – the fire flickers to a red filter to connote the danger and
darkness of the video. We did this by using the “Magic Bullet” and then selecting which filter
we wanted to use, we experimented a lot with different filters because we were not sure what
fit best and we had never done anything like this before.
We also put a Sepia filter on most of the shots and this gave them an orange tint to make it
look more realistic and to make it fit with the genre more. This makes it look like the fire is
creating this glow which makes the product look more professional. Again, by using the “Magic
Bullet”, we found the Sepia filter and applied it to all of the scenes, this is also a generic
convention of indie rock music videos as it makes it look old fashioned and rustic which is
partly why we did it.
We also changed the brightness and contrast on some of the clips to add a red/orange glow to
them to make them look like they had been lit up by the fire. We did this by going onto Video
Event FX and adjusting the brightness and contrast, then applying it to the scenes individually.
We also added our own titles to the video which we found easy since we did the same for our
film opening and this showed the audience the artists name. This was done because we did not
do a performance based video so we did not promote the artist in this respect but by using
titles of the artists name – we are therefore still promoting the artist. This was fairly easy for us
to do, by selecting the “titles” button on Movie Studio Platinum and selecting the title we liked
best from the previews and then typing in what we wanted to put in our video. We found this
quite easy to do as we used titles for our AS film opening so this did not take very long.
We also cut the music so that our product would be within the correct time limit and this was
quite difficult because we had never done this before and it took a lot of time to get it right
because it was hard to connect the music back together after cutting a piece out of it. We had
to select the unlock tool to unlock the video and the audio from each other so we could just
edit the audio and then cut out a verse and replace it with the outro of the song. This took
quite a lot of time since it was really hard to match up the audio, however, we successfully did

15. POWERPOINT AND PHOTOSHOP
ANCILLARY TASKS
Instead of using Photoshop to edit our ancillary tasks, we
used PowerPoint as it had better effects and we found it
easier to do it this way as we were used to using this
software.
We decided that for our ancillary tasks we would made
them very different and artistic much like Hozier’s actual
albums. We played around with a lot of different artistic
effects because we were not sure on which one we
preferred – after creating many different styles we showed
the class and got feedback on which ones looked the best
and this helped us come to a decision.
We added black and white and artistic/pencil stroke effects
to three panels of our digipak and we left the back panel
without and effects or filters on because we wanted it to
stand out as just the original image. This gives it a more
quirky effect and makes it more unique.
We only briefly used Photoshop to add the panels of the
digipak so we could put it all together but we did not use
this software for the making of our digipak. We have not
worked with Photoshop much in the past and it is not as
straight forward as PowerPoint so we decided we did not
want/need to use this software as it would take up more
time – we know the basics on Photoshop but it was much
easier for us to use PowerPoint since we are more used to

16. C O N C L U S I O N

17. CONCLUSION
As previously mentioned, I feel I have developed with my editing and camera work
because I can now edit and film more effectively and to a higher level.
I think with regards to Photoshop – I have gained some basic skills on this software but I
did not use it enough to have gained massively from this software.
Editing my digipak on PowerPoint has allowed me to gain more skills with regards to
editing images which I did not have much experience with before.

18. E V A L U AT I O N
Q U E S T I O N S

19. Q1 : IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR PRODUCT USE,
DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS
OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?
For this question, I decided to use Prezi. This is
because it is easy to use and I did all the work for
this question on other Prezi’s so it was very easy for
me to gather the information and put it into one big
Prezi. This allowed me to answer the question in an
organised way and by doing it like this, nothing got
lost and everything was in one place. This is also a
visually interesting way to show my answer to this
question and you get marked on your use of
different technologies which is why I used Prezi for
this question.
It was also very easy to add images and videos
which was essential for this question because it
supports my answer and gives evidence.
I am very confident with this site because I have
been using it for 2 years and it is very simple and it
allows me to structure my answer in a different way.
I feel that I have answered the question throughout
my Prezi and presented my work in an organised
fashion.

20. Q2 : HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR
MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TASKS?
For this question, I wrote an essay draft and had it checked to
see if I was missing anything or needed to add anything, I then
corrected and added improvements to the essay. After this, I
recorded myself speaking the essay on a camera to get a
higher mark by using different technologies. I edited this on
Movie Studio Platinum and got rid of the visuals as they were
not needed and instead I added my own images (ancillary
tasks, music video etc) where I had spoken about them.
Since I used a camera to record mine, it was a lot easier
because I already knew how to use the camera from using it
previously. The only problem I had was moving away from the
camera microphone when I was speaking which made the
sound differ in some places.
This helped me to build my confidence by speaking an essay
rather than just keeping it on a word document. I have also
never done something like that before so it was a very different
way to present my essay which allowed me to reach a higher
mark.
Again, using Movie Studio Platinum allowed me to gain more
confidence when using this software and it did not take me
very long to edit this which shows how my skills using this
software have advanced over the 2 year period.

21. Q3 : WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM
YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?
I decided to use a word document to present this
evaluation question. This is because I have not used a
word document yet to present an essay and in order to
get the highest marks you need to use different ways to
present your essays. Using a word document is very
easy since they are very simple and they allow you to
organise your work effectively. It is also very easy to
add images into a word document to support what I
had spoken about.
I found it very easy to use a word document because it
is a software I am comfortable using and am very
confident with and it is very reliable. I had no problems
with using this software which made me feel a lot better
when answering this question because it was very easy
and it is also easy to read as it has a structured layout.
I think using word was best for this question because it
is more of a text response with only a few examples.
Overall, I am happy with my decision to use word as I
had not used it previously and it was very easy for me
to use since I have used it for a long time now.

22. Q4 : HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE
CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND
EVALUATION STAGES?
For this evaluation question, I have used PowerPoint. I
felt that this was the best way to present this question
as it needed a lot of examples and it is visually
interesting. This software was very easy for me to add
images as evidence which is essential when answering
this question.
Using PowerPoint has allowed me to present my work
in a clear and professional way, everything is in order
and organised.
I am very comfortable with this software because I
have used it for my research, planning and
construction stages which meant that I knew what I
was doing and it was quicker for me to use than
doing a Prezi would be.
I had not used a PowerPoint presentation for an
evaluation question before this so this should allow
me to gain access to the higher marks since it is a
different way of presenting an essay and I have used

23. C O N C L U S I O N

24. CONCLUSION…
In conclusion, I think that I have developed
significantly in my use of technologies throughout
the research and planning, construction and
evaluation stages during my A2 coursework. I
think I have especially progressed with using Prezi
and PowerPoint as would now be confident using
these for any work after using them a lot
throughout these stages. However, I feel that I
have mostly improved upon my camera and
editing techniques as I previously lacked a lot of
confidence when using these technologies,
however, after using them throughout my A2 year
I have gained more confidence and now I think
that I could use them more quickly and effectively
through using them a lot more for my A2
coursework.