Throughout the project, various media technologies were used at different stages. A Canon EOS 600D digital SLR camera was used to take high quality images during planning, scouting locations, and filming. However, there were issues loading the high resolution images into editing software like Final Cut Express due to insufficient computer RAM. Other tools like Wordle, SlideShare, Voicethread, Blogger, YouTube, Evernote, Gmail, Prezi, Final Cut Express, video converters, and Photoshop were utilized at various stages for tasks like mood boarding, sharing work, annotation, documentation, editing, file conversion, and photo manipulation. Mac computers were the primary work machines but also struggled occasionally with high resolution files until

1. ‘How did you use media
technologies in the
construction, research, planning and
evaluation stages?’

2. From the advent of our media course the use of modern
media technology has been at the forefront of our work.
Throughout the course I have been experimenting with
different programmes, technologies and services to help
develop my personal skills to adapt to new situations as
the ever evolving media and film industry requires.

3. The pin sharp quality of The Canon EOS 600D digital SLR camera ensured
clean and crisp images throughout our project. However, when it came to
loading the images we had taken in Final Cut Express, there was a notable
drop in image resolution. Though we at first thought that this was at fault on
the cameras we later learnt that this can be where there is not sufficient
RAM present in the computers to cope with the image quality that the Canon
is capable of capturing. The Canon was used during the planning stages
when we were scouting locations, creating an animatic of our storyboard and
during discussions between my team members and myself. During the
production stages of our music video the camera was a constant part of
filming and taking evidence of work done.

4. Wordle is a tool that allows you to enter words into a text
area and then takes all of these words and creates a mood
board out of all of them, allowing you to edit the angles of
the text, the positioning and colours of the letters. This adds
to the overall feel and creates a noteworthy mood board, it
contributed greatly to our work on several occasions
including our pitch presentation.

5. Slide share is an online service that allows you to upload
your slideshows for others to view and download and
allows you to do the same. Slideshare was used during the
planning and preparation stages of our work and is being
used now to allow this slideshow to appear on my blog.

6. Voicethread is an online application that allows its users
annotate slideshows or images for all to see. Voicethreads
can vary in topic and may be creative or descriptive and
even has social network potential, though its interface
made it appear to be a fairly mediocre site in terms of
capability. I did attempt to use this for an analysis task but
decided to instead type out the task due to the problems
stated above. I then went onto use Voicehthread for my
evaluation question 1.

7. The site, blogger, has been a useful tool throughout our
music video project allowing each member of my class to
create both individual and group blogs allowing us to share
our progress with our team mates as well as providing an
archive of our preliminary research. We used this
throughout our project to document our research as well as
our progress.

8. Youtube is an enormous online video sharing site that has
assisted us throughout our project, using you Youtube we
were able to post videos and look at the response of the
public, for example views or likes. Although I believe
Google Plus somewhat limits the capability of the site for
group users as accounts are now linked.

9. The Mac computers are very capable machines and have ensured that
we are able to complete our work to the best of our abilities, they were
used at every stage throughout our project and acted as a home point
for all of our work. However, the Macs did struggle with some tasks due
not containing sufficient RAM to play our initial filming in the high
defintion the Canons were filming in, however this problem was solved
and Final Cut Express ensured we were able to create our finished
product.

10. Evernote is an online note taking tool that allows you to
annotate web pages and pictures with possible ideas. I
have used it in the post production stages a little more for
the annotation and sharing of my notes on the initial cover
designs.

11. Though the majority of technical work was completed on
the IMacs, some Photoshop and image manipulation
although most work was completed using either Word or
Powerpoint which both allowed me to create professional
looking documents throughout the process.

12. Gmail is an online email service that allowed us as a
group to communicate ideas as well as the progress that
we’d made, in the form of videos or images. The only
disadvantage would be the limit on video sizes that Gmail
is capable of sending. Gmail was an application that we
used throughout our project.

13. Prezi is a more creative and design based form of
Powerpoint and allows you to create interactive
PowerPoints. I used this during my research into existing
conventions of the Rock genre in music videos.

14. Final Cut Express was the editing software we used when
creating our music video. Final Cut Allows the user to work
along a time line and add or delete footage where they
need to, it also allows users to place an audio file
underneath a video file enabling us to accurately lip sync
our song to our footage. One disadvantage of Final Cut
Express was the fact that when you removed one clip it
would sometimes move all of your clips back along the
timeline and thus, out of sync. Final Cut
Express was used throughout the editing
Stages of the project.

15. I used video convertors throughout the research process to
ensure that I had all of the videos I needed without the
need for internet, enabling me to complete certain tasks
that I would have not been able to complete otherwise.
Sometimes image quality was an issue with different
converters but on a whole they were easy to use, fast and
reliable.

16. Photoshop is an online photo manipulation and editing
software that enables the user to do a multitude of things to
an image to entirely change its properly and ultimately it’s
look. I used Photoshop in the post production stages of my
project to create the initial covers for the CD case. I did find
that although I had used previous versions of Photoshop, I
found that it was fairly difficult to pick up again due to the
change in interface and locations for certain tools.