How did you use media technologies in the

construction, research and planning and evaluation

stage?

During the research and planning stages I used a

number of different programmes and websites.

We used YouTube for a lot of our research and planning. We had to look up different music videos from our chosen genre and analyse them. For example, we chose the song Sticks ‘N’ Stones by Jamie T, so we analysed the real video for this song as well as artists like the Arctic Monkeys and The Kooks. We learnt how to embed videos off YouTube and on to Blogger.

We also used the videos we researched to come up with ideas to use for our music videos, and see what sorts of shots we needed to use in our particular genre and what sort of props we needed, like fast takes and using shots with alcohol in them.

In our planning, research and construction we also used Blogger a lot, as it is where we recorded all our information from location ideas to videos from YouTube. I have used Blogger to upload images on to so I can show my different ideas for our music video. I have also uploaded images of potential actors, locations, print screens of graphs we made showing different results for things.

Microsoft word was one of things we mainly used during our planning and research stages as it is where we made drafts of things before putting them up in to the blogs. I also used word to write up a shooting schedule to make it more presentable and easier to understand. Word was also used when we needed to type up lyrics we needed, certain ideas we had for our videos and our target audience questionnaire.

Microsoft excel wasn’t used much throughout the whole of the planning and research stages. We had to make a questionnaire asking people about their favourite types of music, how often they listen to music etc, and excel was the best and easiest way to record the results we collected.

Wikipedia wasn’t our most essential tool used when we were doing our planning, but during our research I found that it was good for information about Jamie T. I had to find out things like his full name and some of the different songs he had realeased to type up on to my blog. It also came in useful when I needed to find out what record label Jamie T was with.

During my research and planning, Google was constantly used as it is my favourite web browser to use. I used Google to find out information on Jamie T, as a link to get to YouTube and Google Maps to get print screens of some of the locations we might have been using.

Facebook wasn’t used that much during the planning and research, although it was where we asked Jamie T’s permission to used his song for our music video. I also used it to get in contact with the other person in my group and the actors to plan when what days we needed to film on and who we needed on the particular days.

This is Jamie T’s website. We used this to get bits of information we needed about Jamie T that wasn’t on Wikipedia. The website also gave us an idea of what style we needed to make our music video, as the font on the website showed the genre indie quite well.

I also used a still camera (Nikon Coolpix L23, 10.1 megapixel) for

different location and cast shots during the planning, which helped me

visualise the finished product. It is how we took our location shots as well.

During the construction stages of our music video, we used a lot of

different technologies and equipment.

We used Premiere Pro CS3 a lot during the construction stage, as it is where we edited all of our music video. We used different effects like ‘crossfades’ which is when it moves from scene to the next and over laps each other. We also used premiere pro to speed up some of our shots to fit in better with our chosen genre of music. Premiere Pro was a very easy program to use, once I had got used to it and knew where each tool was. This image is showing how we

used the crossfade tool on premiere pro. You can see two shots merged together in the middle and to the left of the image is where we found the tool to do this

The camera was the main thing involved when it came to construction, as this is what we used to capture all of our shots for the music video. We took the camera to all different locations, for example, Willingham Woods. The camera helped us get the professional looking type of music video.

These images show various shots we did and some of the locations we used like the woods, train station and under a bridge in Lincoln.

Photoshop CS3 was used during the construction of out Digipaks (album covers). We downloaded a font n our genre off the internet and had to use it on photoshop to type in our album name. When making our digipaks we edited the photos changing them into black and white, and increasing the contrast. We also used the tool ‘threshold’ to edit the back cover of the digipak. The stages are shown below.

We used IMac’s to carry out research and planning but also to construct all of our products. The computer had Photoshop and Premiere Pro on them, which helped produce professional looking work to industry standard. The IMac also enabled us to surf the web during research and planning – helping us find out more about the Indie genre, Jamie T and his influences. I found the IMacs easy to use as I found them to be fast and reliable.

Mobile phones were used a lot during the planning, research and construction stages as we used them to contact each person in the group, and the actors, to let them know when we were planning on filming and where. I sometimes used my phone for research purposes as well when I was out filming and needed to know certain things, like when we were filming at the train station, I had to look up the train times on my phone to ensure we were going to be safe when filming there.

When filming, the tri-pod was a very good thing to use as it ensured we got a good clear shot, that wasn’t moved making the shot wobbly. We used the tri-pod a lot when we filmed because we wanted to make sure our shots looked quite professional and were up to the best standard we could get them. We used the tilt device on the camera for one shot in particular to make it look different a effective.