The document discusses the various media technologies used during the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages of a project. Hardware such as an iPhone, cameras, and iMacs were used for filming, editing, researching and blogging. Software like Adobe Photoshop, Premier Pro and After Effects were used for editing videos and images. Google Images, YouTube and Blogger were used for online research, evaluating other works, and blogging about progress. Feedback was gathered through uploading the final video to social media and having a showing for the target audience.

1. Research and Planning Question 4 – How Did You Use Media Technologies in the Construction, Research, Planning and Evaluation Stage?

2. Portable Hardware Apple IPhone 4 – if i was on the move and needed to research or blog I could use my smart phone to look for images we needed for our video or blog and email them to my computers or post on blogger. I could also plan for when we wanted to film and arrange for all actors and props to be in the right place at the right time. As there isn’t much 3G network around Lincolnshire it was hard when trying to post on my blog but I could just right down notes on my phone and then right them up when I had access to a computer .

3. Camera’s – I used a Panasonic NV-GS500 for the majority of our filming, so all the main long shoots. But we also used a Panasonic HDC-SC500 to film the close-up and green screen shots so that we could get the best high definition shots. This allowed us greater freedom when editing/re-framing footage. For location still shots we used a Nikon CoolpixL23 just so that i could get a good range of locations to choose from. For most of our shots we used a tripod because they look professional and also that handheld shots were not needed except a few shots where this feel was intentional. I found the use of the camera’s relatively easy mainly through a few years experience in using these cameras. Firewire – I used a firewire cable for the downloading of the video off the camera mainly because Firewire is the fastest data transfer cable and process except for Apple Thunderbolt cables but what technology's you can use this process with is very limited at the moment. The Firewire was very easy to use, as soon as the camera was connected capture options popped up giving great ease of use.

4. Grounded Hardware IMacs – I used the IMac to capture, edit, research and to blog all our course work. We captured all our footage that we filmed for our music video from the camcorders. We edited all the footage we captured on the Mac using Adobe Premier Pro and for any images we needed to use we use the software Adobe Photoshop. When researching we used the application Google Chrome on the Mac, researching all the information I needed for the artist and any images to back up the artist information like album covers. I used my IMac at home and the ones provided at school to blog all my work and research I had done for the course work. The use of the Macs was very easy even though they are running Windows XP not the usual Mac S0X.

5. Green Screen – I used the green screen for a large section of my video. It definitely helped create better shot alongside the HD camera which really helped make the video look professional in post production. I found the green screen great to use, just a flick of a few switches for the camera and lighting and you were ready. The HD camera on the green screen aloud us to get really defined and detailed images that we could edit to how ever we want. Lighting – We mainly used natural lighting for most of our shots as they were outside but on the HD shots we used a bright lighting rig so that all the definition was found in the shots. Getting the right position of light could be difficult at times but it wasn’t too challenging.

6. Internet Software Google Images – I used Google Images to find images that I could use in my research and existing product analysis so that I could compare and evaluate other artist’s digipaks and magazine adverts. YouTube – I used YouTube to find professional music videos by real artists in the same genre as our own and then posted them on my blog and evaluated them to see what conventions we could get from them that we could use develop and use in our own music video production.

7. Blogger – Blogger has been great for my course work really easy to use. I have used a lot of the features on it like the ability to change the dates of posts if I have done some work before it should have been posted it was easy to just change the date a arrange my posts. You can either save or publish your post making it so you can save work online so you can access it anywhere and publish once it is finished and even if I decided to publish before I finish the post it is just as easy to press edit and change what I want. As you can see on the image below you can edit the HTML of the post edit page, because of this feature you can embed images a videos strait on the HTML.

8. Software Adobe Photoshop – I Used Photoshop to edit images that appear in our video like the floating images that fly over and around the performer, I used the delete tool to clear the background so that you can still see all the rest of the background layer of the video, then I used the smudge and sharpen tool to either spread the pixels around or pull them together just to help make the images easier on the audiences eyes. Once I got to grips with all the tools and effects available Photoshop was great to use and very helpful in some areas of our editing process. Adobe Premier Pro – I used Premier Pro to edit all of our captured footage to give us the finished product. I use effects such as Time Remapping, Lens Flare and a Chroma Key. I used Time Remapping to sort out all of the out of sync shots and get them up to the speed they should be. Lens Flares were used on the performers eyes to symbolise him coming back to life after being hit by a taxi. The Chroma Key effect was used on all the green screen shots so that we could change the background to the colour or image that we wanted.

9. Adobe After Effects – We used After Effects in postproduction so that we could refine all the slightly off looking shots that needed a little editing so that we could get the professional look we wanted to achieve at the start of this project. IPhone ISO 5.0.1 – The software on my IPhone allowed me to text, call, email, note, blog, social network and research on the move so that I could keep Kate up to date for when we needed to film and blog my research if I wasn’t at a computer.

10. Ancillary Tasks When making our digipak and advert the main programme I used was Adobe Photoshop. It was very hard to produce a advert and digipak that were attractive to the customers and that could be obviously linked to the video and each other. I think I did a good job but the back of the digipak is something that annoys me because the text isn’t as clear as I want it to be but people will only see the front in a shop untill they pick it up but then they will be able to see the back fine. I would say the video, digipak and advert all correspond well together there is a clear link through them. I found using Photoshop on this task very strait forward I simply used a picture from one of our shoots and used the black and white (tint) effect for the digipak and for the advert just plain black and white. Then I chose a text I liked and chose a colour (orange, because it is eye catching) and wrote all the song titles and artist names. The next part was hard, deciding what else to have on the poster like bar code, distribution logos, OUT NOW, release date… Once I decided what needed to be on the poster I found any images of logos I needed on Google Images and saved them as images on my computer the uploaded them in to Photoshop and removed there white backgrounds and changed the colour so that they matched with the poster. I did do a few drafts on Photoshop to get the right sizing and image placement.

11. Evaluation To get the target audiences feedback I will upload my music video I will up load it onto social networking sites such a Facebook, Blogger, Myspace and have a showing of our video that I will invite members of our target audience to come and view our video then ask them to evaluate it after so I can have a good idea on what they all thought. I can then analyse all the results and produce some charts and graphs to show our findings. I will ask people to comment on the upload on the websites (Facebook, Blogger) so we can then also get some feed back.