We used various digital media technologies in the planning, production, and evaluation stages of creating a music video, magazine advertisement, and digipak. Digital surveys on social media and Google Drive helped with audience research and planning. DSLR cameras were used to film and take photos. StoryboardThat created storyboards and Google Sites provided research inspiration. Microsoft Office created early drafts. Premiere Pro edited the music video. Photoshop edited photos and created the final products. Prezi, Powtoon, and PowerPoint were used for evaluations. Challenges included learning new software, and technical issues were sometimes overcome by using alternative programs or asking for help. The digital media technologies were crucial

1. How did you use media
technologies in the
construction & research,
planning & evaluation stages?
Bethan Glover and Georgia Fielding

2. Introduction
We had to create a music video, magazine advertisement and digipak. We firstly got into our group
and distributed tasks for each member of the group to complete, I was the camera lady, which
meant I was in charge of taking photos for the digipaks and magazine advertisements, whilst also
filming for the music video. Digital media was crucial for our planning as we used digital surveys
which we posted to social media for our target audience to answer in order for us to make
decisions for our digipaks, magazine advertisements and music video. We then made another
survey after our first draft to see what our target audience thought of what we had created and
what other things they felt we could add to make it look better and more professional. We also
recorded our decisions on things such as powtoons, prezi, blogger and powerpoint which was
crucial for our evaluations.

3. Pre-production and planning
Google drive was a beneficial use of technology that we used for our production and planning, as this was where we
created surveys for our target audience to answer questions on how we could make our media products attract their
attention and to look professional. The difficulties with this at first was understanding how to use the software, I soon
overcame this when I was looking around the software and clicking on things that stood out to me like “add another
question” which evidently meant to add another question for the survey.
Digital cameras (DSLRs) were crucial in order to create our music video, magazine advertisements, digipak and recce
forms. For our recce forms, we had to go to the location where we wanted to film and take photos for our magazine
advertisement and digipak and take photos of the location to portray where it was and what it looked like before going
on to writing about it and its health risks whilst filming. The difficulties we first faced was how to use the DSLR camera
as it is a lot more complex that normal, cheap cameras. We overcame this when we asked the technician to help us
with the camera and to show us how to use it.
Storyboardthat, was used to create our storyboard for how we wanted each scene in the music video to go and what
we wanted them to look like. The difficulties we found at first was how to use the software as we had not used this
software before. We overcame this by looking around the software and figuring it out for ourselves.
Google sites were vital for our planning as we decided on the pop genre for our products, therefore, we had to
research what sorts of things are seen within pop music videos, digipaks and magazine advertisements. This is where a
lot of our ideas came from such as typography, colour schemes, camera angles etc. This also helped us with questions
to ask our target audience for what they would like to see within our products, like for things such as what they would
like to see the artist wearing, and then we gave them ideas that they could pick from, from what we had researched. A
difficulty we had found after finding our research was to not copy what we had seen but to just use what we had found
as inspirations which we found easier after gathering the answers from our target audience.
Microsoft Office Word and PowerPoint was used to create our first ideas and design layouts for our magazine
advertisements and digipaks. This was beneficial as it was easy to use and suitable for creating first drafts that we could
show to our target audience and ask for feedback. The only downfall would be that that it was not very professional.
However, it did not have to be extremely professional for a first draft and we still made it very clear where everything
would go and what we were hoping the final outcome would look like.

4. Production
We used digital video cameras when filming our material for our music video as they were high quality cameras
which made the music video look a lot more professional than it would have done if we used a phone camera
or a cheap, poor quality camera.
The DSLR cameras were high quality cameras which were crucial for our photos and filming to make the
products look as professional as they could, as phone cameras, or normal cheap cameras would not have been
of the best quality so therefore, would make the products look less professional which would amount to people
not being interested in them.
We used light reflector boards whilst recording for our music video and for the photos we used for our digipak
and magazine advertisements as it illuminated the artist and their facial expressions so it was clear what
message they were portraying through their face and their body language. It also helped capture the
photographs to their full potential so they were not too dark. The difficulties I found with using the light
reflector boards were where to position them so that you could fully see the artist without shadows being
created on or around the artist. We overcame these difficulties by asking the technician for advice on where to
position them for their full potential.

5. Post-Production
For the editing of the music video, our team member Drew was the editor so in charge of the editing of the
video where she used Premiere Pro. We all helped decide on what edits we would use within the music video
including the colours used and the typography.
I used Photoshop to edit the photos for my digipak and magazine advertisement and also to crate these
products. When using Photoshop I added an photo where I had to remove the background, this was difficult as I
had to make sure that all the centre was removed to make it look as professional as I could. I overcame this by
zooming right in and rubbing out the background to the very edges so it looked very professional and clear.
When working on the Apple Macs it was a lot easier to download font styles and use them on the Macs as
when I edited my media products on the Windows computers the fonts were not accessible, therefore, I had to
find different sites and download different fonts when using these computers.

6. Evaluation
Prezi, Powtoon and PowerPoint were the software’s I used to create my evaluation.
With Prezi the problems that I appeared to have was that sometimes the software was not always working
very well which refrained me from doing my work. Sometimes it was the software, other times it was the
actual software. In this case I would proceed with my other evaluations on other software’s so I was using my
time effectively. However, when Prezi is working properly it makes the work look to a professional standard
and easy to follow.
The problems I had with Powtoon was making sure that I was not putting too much onto one slide, as when
the Powtoon is presented slides will be going too fast for everything on the slide to be read. To overcome this I
made sure every slide was on for 20 seconds and went through the slides myself to see how long it took me to
read them. However, Powtoon was good to use to use for some of my evaluations as it is very presentable and
easy to use.
One of the downfalls with PowerPoint which is evident to me is that it is very bland and plain. It is also
software’s that you use when you first start using technologies at a very young age so it does not show your
capability with new technology. However, it is a known and reliable software that very rarely has anything
wrong with it which makes it unable to work.