The document summarizes the student's use of various media technologies during their construction and research, planning, and evaluation stages of a project. The student used Tumblr as a blogging platform to store and share their work, used Prezi to create online presentations, relied on computers to complete and share their work, used a digital camera to film footage, and learned to use Premiere Pro and Photoshop for digital editing and photo manipulation. The student provided benefits and difficulties of each technology from their experience using them for this project.

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

2. TUMBLR
Tumblr has been a blogging site that I have used a lot of this topic as I can store all of my research, planning and
production onto the site. Some of the benefits of this site are;
• It’s an open platform which allows my teachers to go onto my blog and check my work whenever. By doing this they
can give me feedback on any of my work.
• Another benefit of Tumblr is that there isn’t a cap on how much I can out in one blog post. I can put as much and as
little as I want and it will go onto the blog even though I find that if I am doing a big blog I will put it onto another
platform like Powerpoint which allows me to shorten the post.
• I find that this blogging site was easy to use and I could edit posts easily or connect a link to the post. Before this
course I hadn’t used Tumblr before so it was all new to me but I soon got the hang of it and I knew how to have a
presentable blog.
• It was helpful because I could see all my planning and research in one place when I needed it for my production.
Difficulties;
• Tumblr is very temperamental. The reason for this is because if you spend a long time writing a post or it is very
long then it won’t give you the option of posting it. This then leads into me refreshing the page and copying and
pasting the work back in. This happened quite a few times for me and I know it happened to other as well. It
doesn’t seem like a very reliable site to use if you have long posts.
• You can’t add titles to certain posts like links or videos. This is annoying because posts look more presentable with a
title above it which makes people find posts easier. I wanted my blog to look good with titles on each blog and this
didn’t help, especially when I was doing the planning as I couldn’t present certain things like videos etc.

3. TUMBLR
Overall I feel like Tumblr has made it easy to share my work with others and allow my posts to be edited if needed.
When I was in my planning and research stage it was very useful as I could base my research around my plans but then
go back and check whenever I wanted to get some more ideas. By updating my blog frequently it allowed me to make
a final product that included everything I needed and had mentioned before in my posts. I could make my blog my
own and Tumblr allowed me to do this by letting me post anything I needed like links, videos, photos etc.
When I was filming my production I relied on Tumblr as I could post about what I filmed on certain days and give
updates as to what I was doing. This allows me to show a deeper involvement with my work than just showing the
final product. I could also post my Digipak and Magazine Advert onto my blog and show the bits on the side I was
creating.

4. PREZI
Prezi is an online presentation website. It allows you to create fast flowing presentations that can be created online. You
get a selection of templates to choose from and then you go from there and fill in different boxes. I quite like using Prezi
as it allows me to create modern looking presentations without having to mess around with the affects. I used Prezi a lot
when I was doing my research as I could create them about my target audience etc.
The benefits of using Prezi are;
• It’s a website so that means you have your own account which you save your presentations to, this allows you to
access your presentation anywhere rather than having to be on the same computer or saving/sending it somewhere
else to be viewed.
• It’s easy to use. There aren’t any fancy tools that you have to use to create a Prezi, its just selecting a template then
typing in the boxes.
Difficulties;
• It relies on a internet connection which means you can’t work on your presentation offline. This was bad for me as
sometimes my laptop connection didn’t work and I couldn’t edit my presentations.
• It is hard to fit a lot of work onto the Prezi sometimes as it looked messy. To avoid this you have to add more slides
which just makes the presentation too long.
I feel like Prezi has helped me produce better quality presentations than I would have got from Powerpoint. Prezi makes
the presentation look a whole lot professional and cleaner, I wanted my work to be presented in a modern way which
included a smooth finish and that is what I wanted to have on my blog. I feel like Prezi would be a good way to present
my final products to a group as I would only have to include the main products and I could explain the rest.

5. COMPUTERS
Computers took a big role in my project this year as that was the only way I could post my work onto Tumblr or create my
other final products. Everything I did inside and outside of the classroom relied on me having a computer so I could update
my blog and also I could create my digipak and magazine cover.
Benefits of computers;
• I can do my work whenever I need to which means I can be out of the lesson and keep on top of the work.
• Working with a computer makes it a lot easier to get work done and to meet the deadlines in which I have been given. I
can quickly access my work and get it done.
• The work looks a lot more professionally laid out and you can customise your work to suit the style of work you are
doing.
Difficulties;
• If you can’t access a computer at home it means you have to try and find a place to get hold of one. Your work rate could
slow down as you can’t do the work you need to be doing.
• Some things on a computer/laptop needs Wi-Fi to work, if you don’t have Wi-Fi then you could be stuck with the pieces
you need to do and also you are restricted to the amount you can do.
I have relied on computers and laptops throughout the whole unit and this is because everything I need is on it. Whether its
at home or in school I need a computer to be able to edit our footage, create my ancillary texts and post on my blog.

6. DIGITAL CAMERAS
I have always known how to use a digital camera as I do Photography, but I have never recorded on them. For our music
video we used a Nikon D3200 DSLR. This camera was similar to ones I have used before so I knew my way round the
camera. We used various equipment along with our camera like a slider and a tripod. Using the tripod allowed us to get
steady shots.
The benefits of using a digital camera are;
• Its portable which means I can use the camera wherever. This helped when we were out and about filming different
scenes in the music video.
• You can store up to hours of footage on a memory card of your choice.
• The footage comes out high quality and professional looking.
Difficulties;
• It takes a long time to charge the battery which could mean you miss out on valuable filming time. It’s a good idea to
have two batteries so when one is charging the other is in use.
• If you don’t know how to manually work the camera then you may struggle to set it up ready for the filming. Manually
focusing the camera may take a while as it is tricky to get it focused whilst filming.
I already knew how to use a camera like this so it was easy for me to film with it. It allowed me to do better shots than I
have before and really focus on the final footage as a whole. If I didn’t like something I would go back and film it again or do
a few different runs of one scene so I could select the best when it came to the editing process.

7. DIGITAL EDITING LIKE PREMIERE
Before A-Levels I had never used Premier Pro before so it was a new learning curve for me. Premier pro is a digital editing software
where you can insert clips and sound to create short films, music videos and many other projects. There are a few good and bad
things about premiere pro and here are a few;
Benefits;
• You end up with professional looking projects.
• There isn’t a limit on what you can create on premiere pro.
• Its easy to use once you get the hang of it.
• There are tools that can allow you to do anything on it.
Difficulties;
• It can be quite difficult to get the hang of the software due to the long process of learning how to do everything. We had to use
YouTube videos to learn how to do certain things.
• We found that sometimes the system would crash meaning that we lost bits of our work sometimes. This put us back on editing
time.
I learned a lot from this software as I hadn’t use it before. I found it difficult to use at first which led me to watching videos and
googling solutions on how to do things. Another thing is that the quality of work that was produced in the end was really good. As
a group we thought that our final music video came out really good and we thought that the quality of it looked sort of like a real
music video. When we were planning our music video we used premiere pro to create a animatic. We found it was affect in our
planning because it let us see how things would plan out and what we needed to do. During the production we got better at using
the software and we found that we could start challenging ourselves with the editing and try new things.

8. DIGITAL PHOTO MANIPULATION LIKE
PHOTOSHOP
I’ve used Photoshop a lot in my school years so this wasn’t a new software for me. Photoshop allows you to create anything
with photos or anything you find on the software. We used Photoshop to create our ancillary texts. Photoshop can either go
really well or you can end up with a mess.
Benefits;
• Its easy to use. You can start creating a Photoshop project quick and easy, this means not a lot of learning is involved to
create a basic project.
• You can edit things out of a picture or add things in if you need to.
• The outcome of your work looks like it has been made by a professional depending on the images you are using for it
Difficulties;
• Different skills require you to know either a little or a lot about Photoshop. Knowing how to use Photoshop well allows you
to pick things up quickly and create elaborate projects. If you are using it for the first time then you may not be able to use
it very well.
I knew how to use Photoshop really well so creating my ancillary texts were easy to do. I still find certain things hard but I can
easily get around these. Photoshop helped me a lot during my production as I was able to produce a digipak that would sell
my song and a magazine advert that can sell both my digipak and song. I like using Photoshop as it means I can mess around
with different looks and try styles out to see if they would work for my final products. I didn’t use Photoshop in my planning
and evaluation as they were not needed.

9. INTERNET SITES
Google was a useful tool because as a search engine it was very quick and
convenient for me to find resources, I had already used google frequently before
the project as it is the world’s largest search engine, and I still use it everyday
outside of the project.
Benefits:
• Google is easy to use, meaning no background knowledge is needed to utilise it.
• There are millions of web pages available through google, meaning you can find data that is
comprehensive and view a number of different sources
• The search engine is familiar to me so I knew how to find what I wanted.
Difficulties:
• Because there are so many results found on google, it was sometimes hard to find the exact
resource I wanted which was somewhat time consuming
• It relies on WiFi or an internet connection, so if trying to work on the project remotely it is
impossible to use.
• Furthering on from that, with a slow internet connection it is difficult to use
Using google in my project, I have developed the key skill of quickly and efficiently finding resources that were
useful from a long list of sources. I used it throughout the project during the planning, production and
evaluation and it was an integral part to the project.

10. WEB 2.0
SITES
YouTube is one of the worlds biggest media sharing platforms, and I used it in my project to both upload the
music video project and also to upload the focus group’s feedback. Like google I use it everyday outside of
the project and it was a key part to the project.
Benefits:
Both videos were able to be uploaded to the website, which meant that anyone who needed to watch them could
watch them.
I could access the videos from home, which helped during this coursework task as I referred back to both the focus
group and the main media project for guidance during this task.
I could also watch other people’s projects and focus groups for inspiration for mine.
Difficulties:
• Like Google you need an internet connection to access the site, so if working without a connection it would be
impossible to either upload or view the videos.
• Without a direct link or a very close match to the title, due to the number of videos it can be hard to find the
video you want/need.
• The upload and rendering time can be temperamental meaning that if on a deadline, it could be hard to get
everything done on time.
YouTube had a similar effect that Google had on my project. I used it to find resources for inspiration, such as looking at
other music videos by students so I could learn from both their successes and their mistakes. Without it, I doubt the
project could have been a success.