The student used a variety of media technologies throughout the research, planning, construction, and evaluation stages of their coursework. During research, they used the internet, Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, Blogger, and Microsoft Office to gather information on their target audience and existing music videos, magazines, and digipaks. Planning and construction involved using Facebook, a scanner, iMovie, iTunes, Adobe Photoshop, Photobucket, and a video camera. Evaluation utilized Blogger, YouTube, Facebook, Microsoft Office, Slideshare, and iMovie to present findings and gather audience feedback.

2. As with Google, Wikipedia provided me with lots of relevant and necessary information whilst I was conducting my research. For example, when it came to researching famous music video directors I did a lot of my research on Wikipedia, so that I could find out what videos they had directed and look at their contribution to the industry. However, although Wikipedia was a valuable media technology that I used regularly I had to be careful that the information that I took from it was valid, as anyone can upload and change information on Wikipedia.

3. Blogger is the website that hosts all of my media blogs, from both AS and A2. Without it I would have either had to use a different blogging website or simply write out my research and evaluation. It is quick, easy and simple to use, and provided me with a platform that I could use to make my coursework look as visually pleasing as possible. It was also helpful because when planning our media products, my group and I could quickly go onto our research blogs and show the group all of the information that we had found, so it saved a lot of time because we didn’t need to constantly look through piles of paper or suffer the inconvenience of forgetting to bring something into school, because it was already there online.

4. Moreover, I used Microsoft Office, especially Word and PowerPoint, frequently when I was doing my research, as it allowed me to present the research that I had gathered in a neat and organised fashion. For example, I used Microsoft Office a lot when I did my analysis of five existing music videos, as I presented my findings in a variety of different formats (word documents and PowerPoint presentations), to prevent my blog from looking dull. In order to upload the work that I had done on Microsoft Office onto my blog I uploaded the files onto a file sharing website called Slideshare, which allowed me to embed my work onto my blog quickly and easily.

5. Freeplaymusic.com and BBC Introducing are both good websites that host undiscovered and unsigned bands/artists. To find the right song for our music video my group and I did a lot of internet research into popular unsigned bands/artists, in order to try and find a good song that we believed we could get copyright permission for and thus, use to create our music video. Therefore, without these websites it would have been very difficult for my group and I to find a copyright free piece of music.

7. Furthermore, I used a scanner during the planning stage of my coursework to scan in a brainstorm and a plan of the magazine advert that I had drawn so that I could upload the images onto my blog to show evidence of planning.

8. iMovie and iTunes were another two new media technologies that I used. iMovie was the software that I used to edit our music video on, as it is the editing software that comes with the Apple Macs that we use at school. It has all kinds of features that were really helpful such as ‘stabilise’, which reduced the visibility of any shakes or wobbles that occurred when we filmed. Another feature that I used was the colouring wheel, as it allowed me to adjust the colouring and brightness of any shot in order to create continuity between any shots of the performance where the lighting was slightly different to the shot that came before it. Moreover, I used iTunes to purchase the single that we used for our music video and then uploaded the track from iTunes onto iMovie to provide the music video with the necessary audio.

9. Adobe Photoshop was the photo editing software that I used when I was constructing the magazine advert and helping with the digipak. It allowed me to enhance the colours in the photograph and add text over the top of the background image of the advert. The most useful device was the ‘content-aware’ tool that allowed me to delete any background features that I didn’t want in the image, such as a lamppost, without ruining the picture. This tool was also what I used to remove one member of the band from the image because he was pulling a silly face and insert another photograph of him in instead.

10. Moreover, I used the website Photobucket during the planning stage of my coursework to upload and embed photographs of the locations that we had chosen onto my blog in the format of a slideshow, in order to make my blog as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

11. Microsoft Office and Slideshare were another two media technologies that I used during the planning and construction stages of my blog. For example, whilst my group and I were planning the music video I wrote out the script/shot list on Microsoft Word before uploading it to Slideshare so that I could embed it onto my planning blog, so that all of the members in my group could read it without wasting paper by printing it off.

12. In order to keep in contact with all of my group members and the actors we all exchanged mobile numbers and often texted or called each other to confirm dates and times etc. We also used my iPod touch whilst we were filming our music video so that the actors knew what line to sing and what notes to be play. It also helped Anthony and I when we were editing, as we were able to identify where in the song they were when we were playing the footage back, which made it easier for us to match the lip-syncing to the lyrics.

13. When filming our music video my group and I used a HD video camera and a broken tripod, as our school did not have access to any working ones at the time. The HD video camera greatly improved the quality of our work, as it made it look a lot more professional than our AS coursework last year which we used an ordinary video camera to film. We also used the camera to create the blurred effect at the beginning of our music video as the lens of the video camera allowed us to adjust the focus of the image. The tripod, although broken, did help us to keep many of our shots steady despite the windy weather conditions, which was good because essentially it fulfilled its role.

15. Moreover, YouTube and Facebook were the two websites that I got the majority of my feedback from. I was able to use the comments that I had received from our potential target audience to help me answer evaluation question three (what you have learnt from your audience feedback?) and to help me evaluate my how successful my group and I had been in producing the music video, magazine advert and digipak. I have also used YouTube to upload my video response to some of the evaluation questions.

16. I also used both Microsoft Office and Slideshare during the evaluation stage of my blog. For example, I used Microsoft Word to type up this written response to evaluation question four and I will later embed this onto my blog using Slideshare.

17. Lastly, I used iMovie to edit the video recording of myself answering one of the evaluation questions before uploading the edited video onto YouTube.