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

2. construction In terms of construction we used a variety of New Media Technologies to our advantage. Most notably during the filming stages of production we were able to use Digital camcorders allowing us to record parts of the music and upload them automatically to the I Mac. This allowed us to save a considerable amount of time, furthermore the different functions on the camera such as changing focus to film in snow allowed us to experiment and have a greater diversity of choice with our camera shots and generally our whole production. NMT’s also gave us a cutting edge with editing. Being able to use Imovie HD allowed our group to easily add credits at the beginning and end, and use different transitions such as a fade effect once the music video was complete. Camera Functions Credits - Imovie

3. Research As for research NMT’s played a large part. Use of the internet allowed for us to save time in looking for characteristics of our chosen genre, its history and other important information that would contribute to the planning stages of our music video. Most notably the use of Google as a search engine and use of Wikipedia for researching artists and directors amongst saved time. Rather than going to the library, having to dig through hundreds of books to find the right piece of information we were able to just type in the desired information on Google and find the research instead. Most importantly the use of websites such as Wikipedia and Google allowed us to keep our product close to the ideologies of Goodwin's theories, in particular look up genre characteristics of Grime and R&B. Also key to research was looking at existing products. It was important for us to find out how they conformed, developed or challenged the conventions of existing media products. YouTube played a part in allowing us to do this for free. YouTube helps in globalising music making them readily available at the touch of a button rather than having to wait hours on end for one video to come onto music video stations such as MTV or VH1

4. Planning It was important for us as a group to stick to a schedule to ensure we kept our time well not wasting any of it. New Media Technologies played a part in this also. Use of Microsoft Word allowed us to create a table in next to no time, showing all our free lessons and spare time that we would be able to dedicate for filming and planning. The computer allowed us to upload this to our blog. Also in planning we had to consider Location. As a group we decided that the audience knowing where the location was going to be key to creating an identity for the characters. To find the right place we had to take pictures of the locations we were considering to decide if the landmark was good enough for filming. These pictures were taken digitally, rather than having to spend money on developing the pictures taken, waiting for the prints to come back we were able to save time and money, uploading the pictures straight onto the computer. My photobucket account allowed for me to create a slideshow using the pictures adding different effects. Evidence of planning can all be found on my blog... www.matthewtibby.blogspot.com

5. Evaluation With evaluation we called upon the use of handicams again. This was a quick way to get audience feedback to our music video. We were able to upload the recorded footage in next to no time and cut and edit it into our DVD of our final product. To record our own feedback we decided to use webcams on the IMac in the media suite. The quality of the camera was quite clear and voice quality was good. It saved us a lot of time as the recording on the webcam was streamed automatically on IMovie HD. Also imperative to our evaluation was the use of YouTube. This allowed for people with YouTube accounts to comment on our video, offering their own input on the music video. Other evaluations were created using Microsoft PowerPoint. This allowed us to create slides in a presentable way, giving us a large diversity of choice as to how we wanted the layout to be.