The document discusses the various media technologies used at different stages of the project. These include a Canon 600D camera, tripod, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects for editing, Photoshop and InDesign for ancillary products, an external hard drive and SD card for storage, Google, Blogger and YouTube for sharing work, and PowerPoint for presentations. Issues with file compatibility between different versions of software were overcome by exporting files as MOV or MP4.

1. Question 4: How did you use media
technologies in the construction, research,
planning and evaluation stages?

2. Canon 600d
The first technology that I used in the production of my music video was this camera. Having never
filmed before and only using this camera for photography I was basically a novice. This camera
proved a vital technology it the production of media product because it was the only camera that I
used to film my music video. I also used various camera accessories such as the tripod. This piece
of technology was useful in the sense that the camera filmed in high quality giving me excellent
footage to use for my music video.

3. The two pieces of video editing software, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, are where the
majority of my music video was edited. Premiere Pro was the main platform for the structure of my
video and After Effects was where I created a lot of visual effects in post production which I then
imported into Premiere Pro. Like the Google trio it is useful that these two pieces of software are of
the same developer because it means that they are so compatible and files are easily transferred.
However, one problem I encountered was when I attempted to use different versions of both
software. At my college we had access to Adobe CS6 Creative Suite whereas at home, I ha
downloaded the newer version, Adobe CC Creative Cloud. This meant that any file made in any
Adobe software in CS6 version could be opened and reformatted to suit the CC version but it could
not be transferred back into CS6. This hindered me in my editing process as I could not easily edit
the same files as collage and at home. But I managed this problem by exporting any file created at
home in either of the software and importing it as a .mov or .mp4 etc. file at college.
Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects

4. This is the pair of software which I used to create my ancillary products. Photoshop for photo and
image editing and InDesign for the layout of the products. I had used both of these pieces of
software before in AS media when producing a music magazine so there weren’t many problems
t=for me to encounter; apart from of curse the same issue that I had with Premiere Pro and After
Effects with files not being interchangeable between home and college.
Adobe Photoshop and InDesign

5. The Media Encoder is not a commonly used piece of software in the Adobe packages. People often
don’t know what it is for or even think about using it. I discovered it when trying to solve the problem
of my After Effects files being too big. It re-encodes or reformats any video, image or audio files to
whatever new format you want. Luckily this dramatically reduced the sizes of files; in some cases it
was a matter of a few gigabytes to a few megabytes. This freed up space on my hard drives and
helped the video files to run more smoothly.
Adobe Media Encoder

6. For storing all of my work on hardware is used the CORE by CnM external hard drive which I
purchased a few years ago at a time when 80GB was considered a large hard drive. However, due
to the rapid pace to which technology advances my hard drive had become inferior to larger hard
drives which have capacities of over 100 times mine. Due to my hard drive being so small I did have
to delete some unimportant footage and watch how much space I was taking up; compared to my
peers who, with their terabyte hard drives, could store hundreds of multi gigabyte files without
worrying about reserving data space. Never the less I managed quite well with this hard drive.
To store my footage as I was filming I used the SanDisk 64GB class 10 SD card. This being at the
better end of high street data storage hardware; class 10 is the best you can get and 64GB is quite
high for an SD card (for now).
External Hard Drive and SD Card

7. The three primary websites that I used for this project are; Google as a search engine and web
browser; Blogger as a platform to upload all of my coursework; and YouTube to upload the majority
of my coursework that is in video form. Luckily all these websites are under the same ownership of
Google. In the presentation of my coursework this was a very good thing because it mean that I only
needed one account for all three websites so once, I am signed into one I am signed into all three.
This is saves time and keeps all of my work in one place. Also it means that the three are easily
compatible with each other for instance a YouTube video will embed easily onto Blogger. The only
downside to this is that in the rare event of Google’s server going down all my work which is saved
on their servers will be lost. Putting my faith into this company all the way over in Silicone Valley,
California is potentially quite risky.
Google, Blogger and YouTube

8. I had used Blogger in my AS year to present my foundation portfolio and at the time I felt it was quite
restricting because your options of presentation are set out by the layout you choose. But this year I
have discovered how to use the HTML terminal. I wouldn’t go as far to say as I am a expert website
developer but I can use figure out how to use code to tweak my blog’s overall layout and blog posts
slightly to suit my preferences more. This means that I have found Blogger much less restricting and
more liberating in my A2 year than in my AS year.
More on Blogger

9. Prezi is an online presentation software which I used to present my hot desking summary for my
music video. As for as ease of use goes Prezi is pretty straight forward. All you do is choose a layout
and fill in the boxes with your information. However, the formulaic nature of this program meant that
it is quite restricting; there are a limited number of fonts to choose from and any motions that one
might ant to create are limited by the way in which the layout is set up. It is for these reasons that I
chose to only use Prezi once.
Prezi

10. Issuu is a free online word processer publisher. Its defining feature it that it can turn any Microsoft
Word or PDF document (or most word processing files) into a virtual book. I am a big fan on Issuu
because I like the way that the book folds and moves. It has led me to be quite creative with ways of
using Issuu. My most creative have been my response to the evaluation question 1. For this I used
Issuu make my PowerPoint document, which I had designed to seem like a media text book, come
to life. I did run into a few problems with Issuu, mainly that when uploading a word document it tends
to rearrange any images or change the font and font size. However, I overcame this issue by
exporting all my documents as a PDF file and then uploading them. The PDF file helps to keep all
components in their right place.
Issuu

11. Scribd is another free online word processer publisher. It is more straight forward than Issuu in the
way that it presents documents. It presents as a box which you can scroll though instead of a book. I
found this useful when I wanted to present large amounts of text on my blog because I like my blog
to be tidy and large amounts of text take up too much room. So by uploading the text as a Word
document through Scribd I was able to save space. Also by using HTML I was able to change the
height of the box which helped me to save even more space. For this reason I found Scribd quite
empowering and useful as a publishing tool.
Scribd.

12. Thinklink is another great way of saving space on my blog by tidying up the text. With this
application I was able to add tags to images that are embedded into my blog. This is also another
way of demonstrating my developed HTML skills; usually when using Thinglink one would have to
upload an image to their site, add the tags and then embed it to the blog. But I found a way of
embedding the application as a tool onto my Blogger using a HTML code to place it into the layout of
my blog. This mean that I no longer needed to upload imaged through Thinklink’s website; I could
now simply add links to any image on my blog. This application, however, came with some
restrictions. I could only choose one font and size of text was automatic. I could have more room to
customize my presentation but like any program of this kind I would have to pay for a premium
account.
Thinglink.

13. Pinterest is a photograph sharing/blogging site where one is able to create boards and pin any
image throughout the world wide web or upload different images. This incredibly useful when making
mood boards, such as my audience profile, especially when the Pinterest add-on is installed to the
Google Chrome browser (it makes pinning images on any web page easier thanks to an icon that
appears over the image). However, it is hard to view boards if you do not have a Pinterest account
so if someone wanted to follow the link from my blog to my Pinterest board and they didn’t have an
account they wouldn’t be able to see the full board. Also it is very hard to get the dimensions of the
board right to embed it onto my blog. Since it is quite incompatible with Blogger I only used Pinterest
the once.
Pinterest

14. I have used PowerPoint to present many blog posts throughout my coursework (such as this one). I
have also used it to create images as it is simple and easy to use for making quick pictures,
especially with text in them because Photoshop does not have as good text functions as
PowerPoint. I used it in part to edit the images of the jackals on my ancillary products. I have also
used PowerPoint instead of Microsoft Word to produce documents full of text a lot as well because I
feel that personalising the layout of the document it easier in PowerPoint. It is probably one of my
most used programs for this project and one of my favourites, mainly because of its versatility; it can
be used as a word processor, image creator/editor and primarily a presentation creator.
Microsoft PowerPoint

15. When I create a presentation in PowerPoint I need a platform to upload it to in order for it to be
readable on my blog. For this I use Slideshare which is a website that allows you to upload a
presentation which it then creates a slideshow out of. This slideshow can then be shared online or
embedded onto a blog. I have no problems with Slideshare, for me it is a great way of uploading a
PowerPoint presentation and once embedded onto my Blogger I have been able to customise it
using the HTML code functions.
Slideshare

16. My mobile phone is an Apple iPhone 4s. I have used it in some areas of this project such as taking
pictures of my flatplans or digipaks that I have analyses. The camera is good enough quality to take
a picture in high resolution which means I did not have to use a scanner. This made taking the
photographs faster than a using a printer/scanner would have taken each time. For this reason it
was quite empowering to have such an adequate quality camera in my pocket at all times; it means I
can take reasonable resolution photographs at any time.
iPhone 4s/Camera

17. iMadeFace is as simple iPhone app that allows the user to create and personalise a cartoon face by
choosing from a range of features. At first I was just playing around with it but then I realised that it
may be good to use to create a graphic for my digipak. Yes it is qutie restricting because of the
limited amount of features to choose from but what can I expect from a free iPhone app. Also the
simplicity of the cartoon face is they style that I desired.
iMadeFace

18. Quicktime is a video playing program made by Apple. I used it a lot at college to play .mov files
because it was installed on the servers at my college. However, the time I learnt about it and came
to appreciate it is when I ran into a problem with my computer at home. I have filmed a short clip
using my iPhone’s camera and uploaded the clip onto my computer. I then tried to import the video
file into Premiere Pro but I was not able to; an error message came up. I then found out that
because my Windows computer didn’t have Apple’s Quicktime Player installed it could not support
my Apple iPhone filmed video file. Once I had installed Quicktime the problem was solved. This
meant that Quicktime was actually quite liberating for me in this project and helped me learn further
about the differences in software developers such as Apple, Microsoft and Adobe.
Quicktime Player

19. As a pre-production research exercise my class and I experimented with the green screen facility at
our college. Although I had no desire to use this facility in my music video, I took part because I
wanted to learn about filming, editing and software as I was new to it all. Because we were working
as a large group we didn’t all get to discover how the process worked in great detail but it was a
good welcome to the world of filming.
Green Screen

20. Also as part of our pre-production research my friend Fraser and I tested out some photography
lenses for the Canon 600d. This exercise helped us further out filming skills and competence with
the camera. It also helped us realise that as artistic as the lenses were we did not wish to use this
technology in our music video. The last benefit that came of this was when we edited our findings
together and uploaded them to our blogs via YouTube. This helped further out editing skills and
competence with Premiere Pro.
Camera Lenses

21. Throughout this project I have learnt about multiple file formats which are all new to me. These
include image files such as JPEG, PNG, GIF or PDF and video files such as FLV, MOV, MP4 and
AVI etc. I have also learnt about the different uses and components that make up these file formats
for example PNG image files encode the alpha channels (opacity) and so do FLV video files. I learnt
most of these file types when experimenting in Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere Pro and
especially the Media Encoder. All of this learning has proven helpful in the development of my
computer literacy and the process of this project.
File Formats