The document discusses the use of various new media technologies during the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages of a project. YouTube was used for initial research and to understand appropriate conventions. Photoshop was utilized to create DVD packaging and magazine covers. GarageBand helped produce an original theme song. iMovie aided in editing the main title sequence, though file sizes caused crashes. Blogger allowed for documentation of the process through diary entries and evaluation.

1. HOW DID YOU USE NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION, RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

3. You-tube is very simple to use and was a quick way for me to gage what forms and conventions I needed to use and develop upon during the construction on my product. The downside of you-tube is the quality of some of the videos I needed to look at for my research, the Hannah Montana title sequence was especially hard to find in a reasonable quality, and this was the most important video for the research as I have likened my work to this real media product. I used you-tube during the research and planning stages, this was so I could get an idea of the look I needed to aim for in order for my products to look slick and believable.

4. I used Photoshop during the construction stage. I used it to make my ancillary products - DVD packaging and Magazine cover. I like using Photoshop: Because of the wide variety of tools you can use to manipulate your photos. Also because it is easy to create photos with the ability of using layers. The downside of using Photoshop is trying to remember where to find the required editing tools on each version - as I was using two different versions at a time.

5. I used Garage-band to create the theme song for my title sequence during the construction stage of this project. I used this technology as a means of producing an original piece of music, so I didn’t have to gain the right to use someone else’s music. I like using garage-band because it is easy to use, whereas some other similar programs tend to be quite complicated. I also like the way the music samples are laid out (drums, piano, etc) and you can choose samples via the mood or tempo you are looking for. The downside of using garage-band is when I needed to shorten some of the samples and add them to others it was quite difficult to get them perfectly placed so the music ran smoothly.

6. I used I-movie during the construction stage of this project. I used this technology as a means of editing my main product - the title sequence. I like using I-movie because it is easy to shorten clips and put them all together. Also in terms of the sound, reducing the clips original sound is simple to get rid of and placing the track so it was in time with the clips was also easy enough to do by using the slider at the bottom of I-movie to zoom in on the timeline and make it more detailed. The downside of using I-movie was - Because the file size of my title sequence was so big it often crashed when I tried adding transitions and special effects - this was very time consuming. Also I had film the title logo on a computer monitor because when I added the picture of the logo itself to the timeline in I-movie, the screen size was smaller than the film pieces, because of this the logo wasn’t as clear.

7. I used Blogger throughout the process of this project, this enabled me to explain how and why I did certain things to my work and complete diary entries which I included any issues I had and how to overcome them. I like using Blogger because it was new to me and help be more explanatory about my work, and better at evaluating it. Blogger was also easy to use, as editing my posts was very simple if I needed to change or add anything. The downside of using Blogger was that when I added videos and pictures to a post, it was often difficult to keep them where you wanted - when adding texts to the same post.