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

Throughout this project, I used many different types of media technologies to create my final products . These can be placed into two categories which are hardware and software. Hardware is equipment that is used to capture or used in the process of capturing something. Software is programs that are used to put together or create media. Some of the media technologies used for this project were completely new to me but there was also some which i was very comfortable in using due to using them in the past.

By using different forms of media technologies, i have been able to successfully complete my project and also picked up many new skills either be through using the hardware or software which can help me in the future.

HardwareDuring this project there was a number of different pieces of hardware used at various different stages. Firstly the most important piece of hardware used was the camera. The camera which was borrowed from the college allowed us to capture alot of footage to be used to create our music video. To get used to the camera, we were asked to film a short chase sequence and this allowed us to get to grips with the camera and use some of many functions. To actually have a copy of the footage, everything was recorded straight to a tape. The tape was then connected to the computer where we were able to collect all the footage together and save it onto a hard drive.

The computer was most definitely the second most important piece of hardware. The computer allowed us to collect all the footage together and keep a record of what clips we had. The computer was also something new to every member of my group as it wasn’t a regular computer which we all use, it was an apple imac. The imac was a very difficult computer to use at first as we had to no idea how to use it but we managed to explore the imac and soon enough we knew how to use it successfully and learnt all the shortcuts.

Many other pieces of hardware were used such as a digital camera. The digital camera was used to take photos of the artist which was then used for the magazine advert, front and back cover and booklet. Thankfully the camera was from a member of my group who fully knew how to use the camera. With our artist in place we took many photos in various different angles to get different types of photos.

Another piece of important hardware was the music box, this allowed us to play the track while we filmed our artist. This meant the artist could have accurate mouth movements which would then sick into place on the computer.

A tripod and light was also during filming so we could get good steady shots with the camera connected to the tripod and the light would help whilst we filmed during the night.

Mobile phones were also used as this allowed me to contact any member of the group whenever needed and this was used to help plan recording and editing sessions.

SoftwareWhilst working on this project I have used many different types of software. The two main programs used were Final Cut Pro and Adobe Photoshop. Final cut pro which is only available on the apple imac was completely new to me. I have never used this program before and using it for the first time was a challenge however you can see as a group we managed to overcome this challenge and produce a complete music video. Final cut pro was used to put together the music video, this is where we had collected the clips, added the track and added effects to our video. This was a difficult task but as we progressed through the video, with time we were learning how to use the software correctly to our advantage. We also looked to get help from peers and even media teachers on some things which we would get stuck on but this would allow us to learn from others. Final cut pro is very good program to use despite being very difficult to use, I would recommend it to anyone.

Adobe Photoshop was a program which i had used in the past many times before so using this once again was not an issue, this meant i could quickly . I used Photoshop to edit my pictures, add effects and initially create my whole advert and digi-pack.

InternetThe internet has played a key role throughout this whole project. Without it we wouldn’t even be able to start the project. Many websites have helped me through the project, some of which were simply search engines such as google and others social networking sites for example facebook. I was able to carry out research for my project through the use of the internet.

YouTube was used to search for other music videos that could be used to analyse and get an rough idea of what type of video we wanted to create. Once our video was completed, it was uploaded to YouTube so it could be shared worldwide. Another way of sharing the video was through the social networking site facebook, here we were able to share the video with others to gain any feedback and to let people watch our video.

Wordpress is the blogging website where we posted individually how the project was coming along and final copies of our finished work. This blogging website was new to me as i had never used wordpress before but it didn’t take long for me to navigate very easily round the blog and easily create and modify posts.