The student used various technologies throughout their media production project. They began by researching on a Mac computer provided by their college and setting up a blogger account to document their process. During production, they used Photoshop to create a logo, YouTube to research music videos, and a Canon camera to shoot photography. They edited photos in Photoshop and videos in Final Cut Pro. Social media was also used to share the final piece and get feedback.

1. A2 Media Production Evaluation
Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and
research, planning and evaluation stages?
As expected, the nature of my course would be to use many different types of
technology to carry out my project. I began research for my project on a
college provided Mac which I started my portfolio on. Mac is a line of
computers (PC’s), designed, developed, marketed and distributed by Apple
Inc. Steve Jobs introduced the first Mac 128K on January 24, 1984. I think the
Mac is the best computer I could have used for this because apple allow a
range of useful software, which run faster on the mac, to be used on their
computers such as Adobe Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. The mac is also useful
for when I needed evidence of my work, to do this I could screen shot a full
page and use the image as evidence. I also have my own MacBook Pro at
home meaning when working at home my project could run fluently.
The first thing I did to start my project was set up a blogger account, which
caused me to make a google account meaning throughout the project the
search engine I used was google chrome. This is a free tool for creating blogs,
a form of an online journal. A wide range of people can use Blogs, from
bloggers at home to bloggers in business for many different reasons. You can
update on your personal life, friend’s life, family life, work life and in my case
the progress of my A2 media course! The best thing about this was that
everything was all in one place, my research, planning, construction and final
products, this really helped me in evaluating my final products too. When it
came to presenting my work on my blog I used all different types of formats
and sites to do this, which was really handy when I realized I could embed
things on to my blog, meaning I merged other sites and formats onto my blog.
As my project progressed and I had a production logo, I could add that to the
actual template of my blog which I chose to use classic template. This
template kept my blog looking organized and tidy which benefit me with my
management.
Before starting research, I did some experimentation on Photoshop to see
what I could use during my project. I did in fact use this when I created my
production logo. I learnt to do this on a tutorial provided by my teacher on her
own Pinterest blog.

2. When creating my portfolio, as my main task was to produce a music video, I
had to use YouTube for many different things. YouTube was founded in
February 2005, it allows people to discover, watch and share original videos,
which I used each aspect of in my project. I discovered and watched many
indie-pop music videos to carry out my research and increase my knowledge
about the codes and conventions of indie-pop music videos. I then used,
Microsoft word to complete my first detailed music video analysis where I
uploaded this to a site called slide share in order to embed the work onto my
blog. Other ways to present my work required using a site called Prezi. This
site allows you to share your own work in the form of a presentation. You are
given many different animated templates, which you can customize and make
your own. I used Prezi for many tasks and I feel it was very useful when finding
a way to present my work creatively. An advantage of Prezi is that it could
simply be embedded onto my blog in a small amount of time with no technical
issues getting in my way.
In order to create a promo package, I had to complete two photo shoots of my
artist in order to provide images for both the digipak and advert. For these
photo shoots the camera I used was a 15MP Canon 500D SLR. I felt that this
camera complimented my photos as I used the setting auto focus meaning it
was much easier to take a clear, high definition shot. I also think the lighting in
the images were completely accurate due to the auto flash setting. To film my
music video, I used a Panasonic HC-V510 and set it to high definition. I found
this rather educating and exciting as it was my first time ever doing something
like this however thanks to the camera I was using everything seemed pretty
straight forward. I could even create a good effect to my footage before
editing it by using the setting focus to create a pull focus and so on. The
quality of the camera also gave all three pieces of my work a sense of
professionalism, which really helped in post-production.
When I uploaded the photos and footage to my mac, I automatically used
Apples iPhoto, which is originally built into a Mac. This is where I organized
what I wanted to use and what I didn’t. From here, my photos were sent
straight to Adobe Photoshop for editing and the footage went to Final Cut Pro
to be edited.
For my photos, I started off with the advert. Photoshop came in very handy
when trying to create a powerful image for my artist, I had to clear all face

3. blemishes in order to portray an idol. It is not one of the best things to do to
an artist however I believe most artists use Photoshop to enhance their
appearance much more than just clearing a few blemishes. If an artist doesn’t
use Photoshop to improve their appearance the public will just criticize. As it
was an advert, I had to include bits of text to advertise the artist’s album;
Photoshop had proven its ability to do almost anything when I managed to
split the artists name in order to insert the album title between. This was
probably my most favourite part of the advert when it came down to the end
result. I also used effects and changed the colour settings of the image to
make it look brighter. As I wanted to create a good brand identity I wanted to
use a bright effect, which could be used for the digipak too. I changed the
overlay effect by making it more transparent in order to see the image clearly
behind. For the digipak I used the same font as the advert, ‘Orator’ in white. I
did everything the same as the advert, cleared blemishes, brightened the
colours and added an overlay effect to fit with the theme.
When producing the video I actually ended up retaking the full video, meaning
when I finally got to edit my final product I had a bit more experience with
using Final Cut Pro. This sophisticated video editing software is to be used by
creative video editors- for example myself (an A2 Media and Film student).
One of the many useful things about Final Cut Pro is the amount of media it
can hold once you have imported, and then once you go back to work on your
project, all used and unused media stays where you left it. The software is
quick and simple and it doesn’t take long at all to put together a rough draft
video due to the way you can drag and drop the clips you want to use. Also as
Final Cut Pro is an update from Final Cut, you do not have to spend time
rendering the video, the software does this for you. You can also place clips on
top of clips to experiment or compare clips to see which looks best. Once
putting each clip into place I started adding effects to the video to enhance
the narrative, meaning I chose different effects depending on which character
was on screen.
For Marilyn Monroe I wanted to keep her 50s style throughout therefore I
used the black and white effect. As this character was mainly close ups and in
the spotlight I used the effect ‘glory’ which focused and outlined her
silhouette, and finally I used the effect ‘Brokeh Random’ which added random
circles of light to enhance the kind of stagey style I gave this character. For
the other girl, I wanted a contrasting image, with bright colours therefore

4. meaning I used bright effects. This includes effects such as: ‘memory’ which
made it brighter, ‘orange and teal’ which made it look more colourful, ‘side
lights’ which added that little bit more brightness and sometimes ‘sepia’
which added to her indie look. Final cut also allowed me to create great
transitions between each cut. For this I used cross dissolve which made my
video look rather slow paced which I didn’t like as the thought beats I created
with my cuts weren’t visible. In order to enhance the big thought beats, I took
away the transitions where the video needed a thought beat more. I really like
the way that even if you add something to the video and it turns out you don’t
like it, it’s very simple to take it away without disrupting the rest of the video
too much.
One of the biggest advantages of final cut Pro is the hovering scroll across the
video, meaning without clicking on the video, I could preview the parts of the
video I wanted to see, the faster I moved the mouse the faster the video
would play. Overall, Final Cut Pro was the best video editing software I feel I
could of used for my project as I have used this in the stages of research,
construction and evaluating.
Another type of technology I used, was social media. I shared my final piece
on Facebook to get some feedback. I did not receive any comments, but
people did share the video onto their own profiles which is a great
compliment to me. I also used apples iMessage to contact the performer in
my video, this was our kind of meeting and organization place, and was very
easy as we both have our own iPhones to contact easily. IMessage allows you
to send not only messages, but photos and video meaning after I had started
editing I could sneak peeks of my work to see what she thinks. Her feedback
was almost always positive which, was a good thing to help me keep my work
up to a good standard.