The document discusses the new technologies and software the student had to learn over the course of the year for their media studies class. They learned how to use video cameras, the video editing software Final Cut Express, graphics software like Illustrator and Photoshop to make a logo, and the visual effects software After Effects. The student found online resources like YouTube tutorials, Pinterest, and Blogger useful for researching ideas, brainstorming visually, and documenting their progress over the course of the project.

1. ‘What have you learnt about new
technology ?’

2. New
Subject
• At the start of the year
media was a very new
subject. We have
constantly been learning
new information and
facts of new technology
that has helped us
throughout this year.

3. Cameras
• Instantly we started using new technology to produce our independent
Swede. The first piece of new technology that we had to get to grips with
was the video cameras. We had used these briefly before but not
professionally. We had to learn about using tripods and holding them
steady and framing. We did this through trial and error with our swede.

4. Final
cut
• We then had to practice using Final Cut Express,
which was new software we had never used
before. We practiced using the tools by playing
around with music video clips and editing them
together to make something coherent. We then
had to edit our swede. Final Cut’s interface is
hard to get your head around, but once you are
used to it and the shortcuts it becomes easier. I
think as we practise, it will become even simpler.
Making the title sequence and this evaluation has
improved our skills in this area.

5. Preliminary task
• Next we moved onto the preliminary task
where we each had to create a short sequence
to develop our skills using the new technology.
In this we used all that we had practiced
previously to try and make something that
looks professional and use continuity editing.

6. Company
logo
• We also had to get our head around graphics
and photo software. Our task was to use
illustrator and Photoshop to make a
production company logo. This was a fun
activity and we will definitely use these skills
again on the A2 course.

7. After
effects
• After Effects was a challenging piece of
software to use with lots and lots of different
things that we had to learn. We used YouTube
to look up tutorials of different techniques
that could be used for our final piece. We used
After Effects for the leaves sequence in our
final piece.

8. Our final
piece• We then started to research and
create our final piece in which we
needed to incorporate everything
that we had learned over the
past months. We used new
technologies in our research. We
used the online program
pinterest which was really useful
for brainstorming ideas visually.
We used it for looking at fonts
and grouping together films that
are in our genre. We will
definitely use this program again.
We also used Blogger. This is a
really useful tool, because we do
so many activities and if we blog
all our work at the end it is easy
to come back to these and
remind ourselves. This was useful
for this evaluation, because we
could look back at our work from
way back in September.