How Did You Use Media Technologies In The Construction & Research, Planning And

Evaluation Stages?

A – Level Media Coursework Evaluation

IntroductionI have used a lot of different types of media technologies in the construction and research, planning and the evaluation stages of my three media products which where a music video, digipak and an advert for the digipak.

One piece of media technology I have used for the whole course has been WordPress which I have used as my blog to upload all my planning and research, all my production updates and my evaluation. I used the same blog site for A/S however this year I used it to its full potential; what I mean by this is last year I only ever posted the document, screenshots and images to go with the text however this year I have uploaded documents through SlideShare and Prezi which I will talk more about later.

WordPressWordPress has been easy to use as it is layout in a very spaced out way, this is good as a very clustered website can look very intimidating and can be rather frustrating to use. Once your post is up it is extremely easy to edit the document if you realise you have made a mistake but it also looks very well on the whole webpage, WordPress also allows filters when looking for posts so if I wanted to load up a post from December I could click on the December tab and all my posts from that month were there. This was extremely helpful to me as when I was referring to previous work or if I needed to look something up then I knew exactly where to go.

This is an example of one of my documents that has been uploaded onto WordPress

Music VideoFor the planning of the music video I printed off a blank storyboard template from Microsoft Publisher and drew in what I was going to do in the video with a brief description on what is going to happen in the shot, the types of angles I will film from, the duration of how long the shot will be and the mise.

en scene of the shot i.e. costume, facial expression and setting. I did this so that I had a brief idea on what to do while filming and to see whether what I have in mind will work and if it did not work then I improvised to fill the space.

To get more of a wide range of different music videos I looked at a lot on YouTube. I did this as part of my research and planning, looking at all the different styles of videos and all the possible camera angles. I also took note on how many views each video had, this was to see whether the video was popular due to the song or video. An example of a video being popular for its video is Coffee and TV by Blur, people are big fans of this video because it is so different.

This is the blank template I planned my music video on

Music VideoA video that I had in mind on replicating or heading down the same line as was Yellow by Coldplay. The reason I wanted my video to be similar to this is that it is extremely effective compared to how simple it is, the video has gained millions of views since its release and the video is just Chris Martin walking down a beach and singing. I wanted to film something similar as in the performance aspect however I also wanted to film in more than one location which I successfully did.

When I eventually got to filming the cameras I used were the Sony Handycams. I used two of these to film the video from different angles, I also used tripods to keep the cameras in place and centred; this was helpful to me as when I was using one camera to film handheld shots, the other one was filming the shots at a distance to establish the shot on where our character is. Using this equipment was pretty easy after we were shown how to properly use them and how to get the best out of them; this was helpful as when it came to filming there was no worry about not having knowledge on how to use these pieces of equipment.

Music VideoMost of our filming was taken outside so lighting was not really an issue for us as the cameras adapted well in the natural light, this worked to our advantage as all the shots taken were good to use where as if we were to film indoors and use artificial lighting then you may not get the best lighting from the camera.

Once I had finished all the filming it came to the editing stage. I had to export all the videos off the two cameras onto my external hard driver. This was a new piece of technology that I had never used but it have used a memory pen which is extremely similar, the only difference being how big the storage is.One I saved them onto the hard drive I opened the files to see all the different shots and clips I had, I then sorted them out putting them into folders so it was easier to locate when it came to editing. The editing of the music video was done on Adobe Premier Elements and the first item I included into the document was the song so when I included a video I deleted the audio and made the audio fit so the lip syncing is in time with the song, this took a while to get right as the video had to be perfectly in time with the music.

This is one of the cameras I used

Music VideoUsing Adobe Premier Elements was easy to use once you knew the basics of the software; so my class had an idea on how to use it as well as the camera we shot three different video with the class which we were then made to edit and make more interesting, this not only gave us the knowledge on how to use it but also an insight on how to put videos together, for example, you do not want the same shot being used for a long period of time as it may get boring for the viewer.

Once I had completed the video I added a fade to the beginning so the video fades in to start with and does not just start straight away, I also added a fade at the end as the ending is like the beginning in reverse and the fade really helped with that effective of the video.When I had finished with the video completely I exported the video so it could be played through Windows Media Player and backed up all the data as well as the video on an external hard drive so I have an extra copy.

Premier Elements

DigipakFor the research of my digipak I first looked at the physical CDs that I have at home, some of these being Coexist by The XX, Love, Lust, Faith & Dreams by Thirty Seconds To Mars and The 2nd Law by Muse. These helped me in my research as it was good to have a physical copy to look from and get all the detail from, people these days miss out on this due to digital downloads so having the real thing really helped with my creative process. Once I had looked at a few digipaks I took pictures of them using a standard Cannon camera and then put the images into a PowerPoint and I analysed them, saying what works well, what makes it eye appealing and how it is different from everything else. Once this PowerPoint was finished I changed it through SlideShare, this meant that I was able to embed the document into WordPress and the slideshow was visible through my blog rather than what I did at A/S which was screenshotting each slide and saving it as an image and posting it like that. This was a new experience for me as I had never used SlideShare before however it was really easy to use, all I had to do was open the document through their website and then it was converted and posted online, I was then able to copy the embed code which I just had to paste into a new post page on WordPress and it would work once I posted it. The fact that this piece of new technology was very easy to use helped out a lot as it meant that I was and am able to use it in the future when I am wanting to share a slideshow.

DigipakWhile I was doing my filming I took many stills and pictures in general to use for my digipak. Once again for this I used a standard Cannon camera and used a vague plan on what I wanted the pictures to be like. When I had all the pictures taken I saved them all onto my computer and I decided to choose which images I would use and which images I would not use. This took some time as for some pictures I liked the lighting was poor and too dark, this made it difficult for me as my aim is to add text over these images and the text was planned to be black so if the image is too dark then it won’t work. Other reasons I did not choose some images taken were reasons such as the person in the image not being centred enough for the purpose on what I want to use the image for, the picture being too close to the main object so if I were to add text onto the image then everything would be too close together and the cover of the digipak would look too chaotic and be not very eye appealing.

DigipakAfter my images have been chosen I imported them into the Quark Express template which was made available to me. I had used Quark in A/S when producing my magazine so it was nothing new to me however, this year I was a lot more confident when using it. I knew where all the tools were and know what they did, something that would have taken a few weeks to do last year only took me a matter of days.

My digipak while open on Quark Express. It has all the images in that I chose out of the few I had at my disposal.

Magazine AdvertFor my magazine advert I effectively used everything that I used for my digipak, I used the same image from the cover of the digipak, I used Quark to construct the document and I also copied the idea of having the name of the album in a circle, I did not do this out of laziness but I did it to give the viewer of the advert a sense of familiarity as if they see the poster and then the digipak in a shop then they know who the band is and what it is for.

The advert is no identical to the digipak but there are similarities to both products. What is different between the two is I included more writing on the advert, first I went to the shape tool and drew a rectangle and placed it at the bottom of the page, the default setting for this was 0% transparency so you could not see anything under the box however I felt it obstructed the image too much. What I did was change the transparency to 40% so you could still see the image and text but you could also point out that they were on different layers. The box with transparency was effective when it was put on the document as it made the text really clear to read but you also got to see the whole image, if I had not done this then most of the image would be obstructed and in opposition to this, if I did not include the box in the first place then you would not be able to read the text due to the colour of the text which is white and the image being quite bright in lighting.

Problems I FacedI faced many different problems while producing my promotional package. An example of a problem I faced was when I was going to produce my digipak. Because I was intending on using 4 different images for this product it meant they all had to be perfect and somewhat linked. I had planned what I wanted to do however once I looked at the pictures I had taken I had to make a decision on what images to use. These are the pictures I had to chose from for my front cover:

Although all these images look identical I had to chose the one that fit for the occasion perfectly. In the end I chose the image on the far right as it is the most centred image and the colours match the other images better than the other two picture I had to chose from.

Problems I FacedAnother problem that I faced was in the music video I planned to have a 20 second scene set indoors and the quality of the video looked perfect before I started to put the video together however, when it came to the editing stage I realised that I had made a mistake. As the rest of the video is shot outdoors and during the day rather than the indoor scene which was filmed there was quite a substantial difference in the lighting and overall quality of the picture.

How I tackled this was I had to re-plan the whole scene and then reshoot the footage but this time it would have to be filmed outdoors. This meant that I had to completely scrap a scene where the character was with two friends to the character being in complete isolation. This was a problem as it meant I had more work to do when I was already on a tight schedule so finding time to do more filming and completing the video was not an easy task however I soon managed to do it and completed my music video.