Technology enabled the student to extensively research music and print productions online, which would have been difficult 20 years ago without internet access. Modern software like Photoshop and video editing programs allowed for professional-quality creative works to be produced, while social media facilitated collaboration and audience research. Some technological issues arose but did not prevent conveying the student's ideas. Overall, 21st century technology was instrumental in creating high-quality, realistic coursework.

1. Technology enabled me to research music/print productions to a significant extent, as I carried out technological
approaches to help me discover more about the conventions of music videos. This element of my coursework would
have been extremely difficult to achieve if this was done 20 years ago. In this time period, there were no internet &
search engines to find musicians and music videos to give me inspiration for my own. As an alternative, I would have
had to gather information in practical ways, such as reading books and articles about film and music, and through
primary methods e.g. talking to peers. This process would have taken much longer because details about media 20
years ago would have been incredibly limited as it was only beginning to develop.
The majority of my research came from secondary information I found on the internet by using search engines. Google,
for instance, has an ‘Advanced search’ setting that helps you find pages with an exact word/phrase in them, and
narrows the results through region, language, last update and file type. This is an effective piece of technology that
helped me find information about the genre and target audience of my music video, as well as the varieties of visual
styles to help me incorporate them in my print productions. 20 years ago I would need to go to a record store where I
would be introduced to a variety of artistic styles, including ones I have not heard about. However, there would have
been artistic styles such as contemporary that would not have existed at the time. This is because artists at the time did
not have technology to experiment with new techniques – this would have made it harder to find styles that would
relate to my theme/intention. Google has other features enabled within the website – Google images, for instance,
exhibits several images in relation to what you search. Like Google’s advanced search, it can filter your results through
colour, size and usage rights. This helped me find specific images representing the subjects of particular blog posts,
illustrating my ideas and how I perceive the tasks e.g. Narrative Structures.
YouTube was a fundamental aspect of the research stage of my coursework, as I was able to look at music videos for my
case studies quicker and easier. YouTube has a feature called ‘recommended videos’, which provides me with a list of
videos that are similar to the ones I search, which helps to extend my ideas. I was also able to look at the music videos
of past A level media students who were from around the country, which greatly made me aware the differences
between a good and a bad music video, as well as giving me inspiration for the effects and camera angles they have
used.
Research

2. The internet and social networking sites (e.g Facebook and Snapchat) implemented our group to communicate with each other
outside school. It was necessary to do this in the planning stage, as this is how we developed and debated ideas for our music
video. It was easier for our group to organize dates and times for filming, as well as making other members of the group aware of
emergencies/important details. Facebook and snapchat are the two social media apps we used the most because they have a
group chat feature enabled which means we can share the same conversations with the whole group, as well as sharing photos
instead of emailing them, which is now viewed as being an outdated method of communication. If the internet did not exist then
we could still correspond through SMS texts, but this can be an expensive way of communication and some geographical areas
do not get service. Having a mobile phone encrypted with these applications implies that we were able to get reach of the group
last minute e.g. forgetting a piece of equipment, running late to a shoot, or unable to find where the members have positioned
themselves. However, this could have been an issue if one of our phones ran out of battery, or if one of us did not have a phone
at all. There were also periods of time throughout the planning stage where members of the group did not reply to messages I
thought were important, e.g. asking questions about our media coursework. It is easy to click on a message and forget to reply to
it later, as social media apps do not tell you that the other person knows you have ‘seen’ the message. If phones did not exist
and we relied on talking to the group face to face to plan and ask information, then this would not have been an issue. I think
this factor of communication helps to explain why it was a rush to get elements of the planning posts completed because at
times we were dependent on other members in the group. For example, the first scene of our music video took far longer to film
than the others because everyone was blunt or unsure about when they were available.
Personally, I did not always use technology to plan my music video and print productions. I sometimes found it easier to draw
mind maps on paper than on software and websites like Photoshop and Prezi, as I felt as though it took longer that way. A lot of
time is used up and wasted waiting for a computer to load & connect to the internet/wait for software to load, then adding and
dragging boxes to write in. I only used these handwritten methods to briefly jot down ideas I would eventually go into detail, as
my handwriting does not look presentable & is hard to read.
I was not faced with too many technological issues when it came to planning – as described above, more of the issues were to do
with reliability and communication, and I do not think technology was to blame for it.
Planning

3. As part of the development process for my print productions, I used my DSLR Canon 600 D to take photos
and Photoshop CC to manipulate them. I explained the process of this on my blog post. 20 Years ago there were
cameras but mine has been developed since then to capture photographs in an impressive quality, replicating
human eyesight. I like the quality of film cameras but their washed out effect means that it would have been
hard for me to gain the precise shape of the mask. If not, I would have had to draw the mask from scratch, which
would be more challenging to do so accurately.
The version of Adobe Photoshop I used for my print productions is the most recent, and the programme itself
has only been around for the last 10 years. I used Photoshop to alter the brightness/contrast of the drawings and
various tools such as the quick selection tool to select & delete lines, as well as aligning the images to my
preference. Before this, photographers used double exposure to distort images, meaning that it would have
been impossible to make slight tweaks to a photograph without changing the entire image. In this case, adding
text to my print productions would’ve been handwritten – this would grab the audience’s attention less because
it would be harder to read. Therefore, technology would have affected the market and distribution of my
products. Album adverts are easier to distribute than videos because they can be printed then plastered
anywhere, but they would be less quality and more expensive – printers have been developed to this day to
replicate the quality of an image seen on a screen. More magazines are produced to suit the lifestyle of
particular people (e.g gardening magazines, rock magazines), meaning that my print productions can be
distributed closer to my target audience. Furthermore, social media has enabled people to spread their ideas
across to the public from all over the world by offering more options than ever to connect to their consumers,
implying that it is much easier to market & distribute a product if it is shared by friends. How I see it, is that it
will become easier in the future for the product to meet the customer because the population is becoming
digitally attached and relies on the necessity of a phone.
Dafont opened up my eyes to a whole world of fonts I have never seen before. This shows that the internet is
extremely diverse and you can find anything of your preferences.
I was not affected by too many technological issues whilst creating my print productions. I was faced with more
difficulties trying to decide between different designs than Photoshop being a nuisance. This is because I have
had plenty of experience with editing in Photoshop before this year, and my designs were hand drawn first so no
super technical strategies were needed to create the images that would catch my audience’s attention. By
combining scanning, drawing on paper, printing and digital, I would say I used these technologies in a creative
and experimental way – the original image looks very different to the outcomes I produced.
CD Cover and Magazine advert

4. I used my DSLR Canon 600D camera to film the shots for our music video, because it was my camera so I knew how to use it. Whilst filming, I learnt how to
tackle errors of the camera being unable to film by erasing some of its storage. Not too many problems were caused by the camera because I made sure it was
always full battery before use, although the battery life drains quickly which means there was more stress to film the shots we needed. 20 years prior, people
used film cameras to record their surroundings, but the quality of the images was incomparable to a modern day camera.
Technology definitely impacted on how I was going to apply creativity to my music video. By using YouTube and Google, I researched how to create the effects
in Premier pro which I imagine to incorporate in my music video. The ones I mainly used are:
Change Colour: Enables you to change the colour of a shot after allocating a certain point (by pressing the stopwatch button). By clicking the stopwatch every
couple of seconds in a shot and changing the ‘Hue form’ from 0 to 100, it forms a psychedelic notion as it quickly alters from all sides of the colour spectrum.
Ghost effect: The official name for this effect is ‘echo’, but the outcome looks ghostly (replicated the shot but makes it slower with a low opacity – as in seeing
double vision).
Strobe Light: conducts a strobe light effect once placed in a shot. Helps to recreate psychedelic effects as the vision is sensitive.
Wave Warp: Applies a wave distortion to a show. The height and the speed of the wave can be altered to create a dizzy or intoxicated vision.
Dip in Black: Fades the shot into black – effective to use at the end of a video.
I feel as though they make my overall production link to my genre, audience and representations closer because they create a psychedelic, cinematic and
creative flair to the narrative, as if the substance the male character took affected him. I also think that they made my video look more professional because
surreal music videos and films include effects to bring their ideas to life, demonstrating them to the viewer. 20 years ago, it was a lot harder to create effects in
films than it is today, because people had to create special effects physically/ by hand. Now, they can be done in a few clicks of a button. Producing these
effects did not cause too many issues for me, as following the YouTube tutorials meant that I could not have easily gone wrong.
There was other technological equipment that contributed to the making of my music video. The SD card in the camera allowed the footage to be imported to
our computers through an SD card reader. As well as using a memory stick, I was able to transfer my videos to different computers, including my laptop at
home, so I could edit my video in my free time, making my schedules flexible and organised. If I was editing my video 20 years ago, I would have to remain at
the same computer I imported it on, because USB/memory sticks were introduced in 2000. However, this would not have been too much of an issue because I
caused myself a lot of stress trying to export my music video. My laptop kept crashing whilst it was exporting, so I transferred all my work to another computer
using my memory stick but the notification ‘Premier Pro is not responding’ kept on arising. The allocated computer at school was unable the read the file
because it has an earlier version of premier pro on the system. Luckily, I got over this by dividing the entire edit into four sections, exporting them one at a
time then combining them all together. It managed to not crash because it did not read the properties of the effects and sequences individually, but this did
affect the quality. If I was to create a similar project in the future, I would stick to one computer instead of moving my data around all the time.
Music Video

5. In order for my productions to reach my target audience, I uploaded them onto social media. When I
uploaded them on my blog, I instantly received some views. After uploading my music video onto Youtube, it
came up second in suggestions after typing ‘Tempesst – Tidal Wave’ in the website’s search engine –
suggesting that those who are finding the original song can access my music video. As previously discussed,
Youtube has a comment and description sections and ratings, making it easy for the audience to conduct their
feedback to the prosumer. This increases democratization. Once your work is on the internet, It can reach
consumers across the world who have a connection. This would not have been possible 20 years ago – things
were advertised through the radio, television and on posters as the internet did not exist. Without the
internet the process of conducting my target audience would have taken much longer as I would have to ask
people individually. Printing out posters to stick around places in public would mean that I would be
attracting the wrong audience. The internet also helped me to find members of my target audience to do my
survey, by writing posts of Twitter and Instagram with the link.
I found Survey Monkey an amazing and easy way of conducting audience research/feedback. For instance, it is
free to use so I did not have to worry about payments. Although there are some restrictions that you need to
pay for, it is suitable for the task. It allows you to create questions with a variety of answer styles (e.g.
multiple choice, dropdown box and comment box) in order to conduct qualitative and quantitate research.
The producer can control how many answers the audience choice/how much they write. I used a variety of
these styles throughout my survey, depending on the type of question. Longer and descriptive answers were
suited for questions that asked for their opinion of my productions. Survey Monkey also gave me access to
see individual responses so I could follow their chain of answers. This allowed me to distinguish patterns in
the type of people taking my survey. 20 years ago, a collaborative hard copy would have needed to be
produced. This would restrict members if they wanted to make slight changes to the questions – the copy
would have to be re-written.
YouGov.co.uk is a website specialising in audience segmentation. YouGov profiles Lite provides a detailed
audience profile of an artist. It gives thorough information e.g. demographics, personality, media,
entertainment that are based on over 40,000 people completing surveys, so the findings are accurate
(although this depends on how many people do them for a particular artist). This is also helpful to discover
more about the target audience of an artist but there are none for niche musicians with a smaller fan-base
e.g. Tempesst. This did not cause too much of an issue as I could research the audience of bands that are
similar to mine through this website. This helped me to picture what the demographics/lifestyle of my target
audience would be as the style of music could be alike.
Audience Research

6. In conclusion, I used a variety of mediums to present my coursework e.g. Prezi, SharePoint and Youtube. 21st century technology enabled me to
create my production to a professional and realistic matter, as I accessed software such as Photoshop and Premier Pro that are commonly used
in creative industries. There were issues that arose with technology but they did not affect my coursework to the extent I could not get my ideas
across. Using good quality hardware such as an SLR camera made a big difference in the quality of the shots we filmed. All the websites and
software mentioned in this answer are connected to one another – without some of them (e.g. the internet, Google, blogger, Youtube) I would
not be able to access audience research sites and social media to plan and advertise my products.
Conclusion
Source of images:
google.co.uk and
canon.co.uk

7. In conclusion, I used a variety of mediums to present my coursework e.g. Prezi, SharePoint and Youtube. 21st century technology enabled me to
create my production to a professional and realistic matter, as I accessed software such as Photoshop and Premier Pro that are commonly used
in creative industries. There were issues that arose with technology but they did not affect my coursework to the extent I could not get my ideas
across. Using good quality hardware such as an SLR camera made a big difference in the quality of the shots we filmed. All the websites and
software mentioned in this answer are connected to one another – without some of them (e.g. the internet, Google, blogger, Youtube) I would
not be able to access audience research sites and social media to plan and advertise my products.
Conclusion
Source of images:
google.co.uk and
canon.co.uk