Amy Heywood used various hardware and software tools to create, research, plan, and evaluate her media project. She used a Mac computer with 8GB of memory to produce her media texts. A Canon 700D camera was used to film footage and take photographs. Final Cut Pro and Photoshop were the primary editing software used to create her music video and design marketing materials. Wordpress and Prezi helped organize and present her work, while QuickTime Player allowed her to demonstrate processes through screen recordings.

1. How did you use new media technologies in the
construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
Amy Heywood

2. HARDWARE
 The Mac I used to edit, create and adjust my music video and ancillary texts was Mac
Yosemite OS X version 10.10.2. It has 8 GB and 1333 MHz memory which was plenty of
storage for me to produce my media texts.
 I could use all of the applications I needed to use to make my product, copy and
download as many images as I needed. It also allowed me to screenshot and screen
record any examples I need to use in my evaluation.
 The graphic were Intel HD Graphics 3000 512 MB. This is important as I needed good
graphics to create my product. I could see exactly how my media texts were looking and
what I needed to do to improve and finish them.

3. HARDWARE
 To film my music video and do all photography I needed to do for my digipak
and advert, I used a Canon 700D. To create the look I wanted for the visuals I
needed for my products, I adjusted the ISO, shutter speed and aperture to
correct the lighting, exposure and to limit the grain that appeared in the shot.
 The lens I used was a standard 18-55mm. I also used lenses like a 35-80mm
and 50mm so I could add depth to my shots if I wanted to.
 This enabled me to get the look and style that I had envisioned

4. HARDWARE
 To light my photo shoots and shots for my video I used two
small, portable and battery operated lights. They had to use
battery as my location did not have any plug sockets to use any
bigger plug-in lights. I bounced the lights off of walls and metal
utilities so that the light wasn’t so harsh.
 The light in my example is not the same light but it is similar and
size and type of light.

5. SOFTWARE
 I edited my music video on Final Cut Pro X version 10.4. On this software I could trim my shots,
speed and slow sections down, overlay shots on top of each other and reduce the opacity so you
can see the overlaid shots and add effects.
 I used the effects such as the automatic, given ones of the program and ones I had created myself
through overlaying shots to achieve feelings of uneasiness and a confusing, disturbed
atmosphere. This is because I wanted to give the audience the same emotions as my performer. I
also used the speed features on Final Cut to shape the reality I was creating and further establish
this feeling with more effects.

6. SOFTWARE
 Final Cut also enabled me to use the colour grading tools to make my video consistent. I made my
video more dark and dull to convey the genre of rock through the convention of a dark colour palette.
This is useful as it more clearly shows what genre my video is as it follows that convention.
 This is a before and after of a shot I colour graded so it wouldn’t be as yellow.

7. SOFTWARE
 I used Photoshop version 12.0 x64 to construct edit the digipak and advert. On this
software I could brighten the images I’d taken and increase the saturation and levels to
achieve the visual look I was aiming for. I was able to rearrange text to balance the
composition of my digipak and advert.
 I wanted to continue the effects and colours I had set up throughout my video through
Photoshop to give my products synergy. Photoshop enabled me to do this with features
such as the colour picker tool which meant I could match colours from my costume to my
fonts with ease. Using Photoshop, I was also able to blur out my performers face on the
album cover and overlay her face on the advert. To blur her face I used the spot
healing/healing brush tool which completely got rid of her facial features and left me with
a faceless effect. To overlay, I used the opacity tool so that you could see all three images
despite them being one on top of the other.

8. SOFTWARE
 I used Wordpress to display and evaluate my work. I created a blog and added
posts that contained my research, planning and evaluation stages along with
images, examples and analysis of different media products like album covers,
magazine adverts and music videos.
 I could use pages, categories and tags to file and organise my work. I tagged
and categorised with labels like “Research” and “Planning” where I put all of
my relating work into the appropriate categories. Through Wordpress I would
put pages on my site so my finished product and evaluation would be clear
and easy to find. Wordpress enabled me to keep all of my ideas and work in
the same place and keep them organised.

9. SOFTWARE
 Another way I’d used software to evaluate and show my work was through
Prezi. This gave me more options as to how I presented my work and it made
it more visually interesting. Prezi enabled me to customise a template so I
could use it to show everything I needed to discuss in my questions.
 I could change the pathway of my Prezi to direct attention specifically to
what I intended the reader to see. This meant that I could add frames and
make sure they were presented in the right order so that my points made
sense and followed on nicely from each frame I’d used.
 This meant that I could properly and thoroughly talk about my music video,
magazine advert and digipak.

10. SOFTWARE
 I used QuickTime Player throughout my evaluation work as it was a
great way to show exactly what I was doing on my screen to
achieve my products on the software I used. I was able to
demonstrate what methods I have done to create my work
without having to explain every step. This was useful as it gave me
another way of showing my work which would be clearly
understood and easily accessible.
 I could also use it to record particular sections of my screen. For
example, I recorded a single tab for a Youtube video I was
comparing against my video.