Google is used by near enough everyone to

search for everything, which can lead you

to find more information on sites such as

blogs and Wikis. Using few key words, the

most relevant searches appear, which

include links to other, most relevant sites. Its

like one world-wide index page to the

internet. I've never come across any issues

in regards to using Google, its really helpful

and I doubt i’ll switch to other sites, as it is

most convenient.

Wikipedia is seen as the go-to place

by anyone for information regarding

almost anything, even if its obscure.

We used Wikipedia for confirming

dates and facts found about artists

we searched for. (convenient for

double checking!) We did this to

see which record label Tegan and

Sara were listed under and it was

Sony Music, which we then used

this information to find their address to send the copyright

permission letter!

Blogger was used for hosting our

coursework portfolio.

PowerPoint - for making work

look more interesting on the

blog, splitting up walls of text

and to add more of an

interactive interface to the

portfolio. It was interesting to

use, as the only other blog site I

am used too is Tumblr and

blogger has more of a technical

feel to it, so its good to learn

how to use another site which

will be useful in future

Camera- To take WIP stills and the photo-shoot. We

shot Jess on a green screen on two separate

occasions, one for work in progress shots (as seen

below) while we filmed so we have evidence of this

work to put in weekly updates and to do the actual

photo shoot of Jess where we later used the images

on the ancillary tasks.

Powerpoint - for making work look more

interesting on the blog, splitting up walls

of text and to add more of an

interactive interface to the portfolio. It

gives a more interesting layout too, as

you can alter text positioning and make

it look much more interesting than just

editing a blog post or using word. Slide

transitions are also a great feature,

though I don't use them as they are

irritating to use at times, and sorting out

slide animations takes a while, and isn’t

really needed.

I used YouTube to find

the inspirational videos and to use the

embed codes to use on our blogs. The

site hosts and embeds video, so its so

useful for when our media product was

made, and we needed to host and

upload it, same for our directors

commentary. The only problem I faced

with YouTube was with uploading my

videos took too long, and they

repeatedly failed, but in the long term,

YouTube is the easiest to used, so I kept

on trying.

We used Slideshare (like now) to host

PowerPoint's so that they are viewable

on our Blogger site. This gives a nicer

interface and more use of technology. I

also found no issues with it and felt it was

easy to use, with a minimalistic user face

so uploading and embedding can be

done easily. It was also easy to log

on/register, with the use of the

facebook connect application!

Through this section of planning, an issue

I came across was the reliability of

sources used; but this was only the case

of Wikipedia, but following citations at

the bottom, it quickly resolved that issue

to more reliable websites (e.g. Official

homepages)

Also; magazines are based on only

opinions, though those subjective

interpretations of things are useful in our

work.

The main piece of technology we used throughout our work was Final Cut Pro, as if we used the same program as last year, Imovie, the skills shown would have not been enough, as you need a more complex program to do more interesting things that we used in out video more professionally, e.gChroma keying.

We did all the work on a

mac, which I found

difficult, but there was no

way around this. I am

normally used to working

on PC’s so the lack of

right click and adjusting to

Command controls was

irritating, but macs are

well known for their uses in

graphic designs. But I

really did not like using

them and will avoid using

them in future if possible.

To use Final Cut pro to its full potential, we used the college's HD camera for our filming. This got the most crisp images and easy to work with shots to use with editing, green screens and image manipulation. However; a downside we faced to all this was that due to the HD footage and editing, the video's rendering took a very long time, sometimes even a whole lesson, which was very inconvenient, though worth the hassle.

The camera was very easy to work with, using the manual or automatic focus, and it was interesting to use white balance, where as last year, it wasn't that much of an issue in my work, as working outside its not completely necessary. Lighting was also fun to use as we could try new things, with the camera angles also, so we could create different feels to shots and manipulating was an interesting use of technology.

In the Ancillary tasks, the main technologies used

were Adobe Photoshop and InDesign. I also used

my graphics tablet; The Wacom bamboo pen and

touch.

I used a site called Dafont, which allows

free to download fonts for any needed

style or theme. We used this for our

ancillary tasks in the logo of the album

cover, the inner texts and the back

cover.

With these programs I drew images of Jessica, edited them, used photo manipulation and removed the backgrounds from the photos from the photo-shoot. In Design came into use to make the inner panels, though I didn't use them personally, as I am more used to Photoshop and could do the same on there. On Photoshop, I used the colour replace tool lots, and used different layers manipulating textures and opacity to create my 'space' theme. These programs were used as they are very high standard editing programs and can give the best possible results of photo editing, to make the work look much more professional.

Powerpoint, Youtube and Blogger where the main things used here in the evaluation, blogger to host all the evaluation, Youtube for having video embed codes to show other videos as comparison in the 'how does our media product conform/break conventions' part.

Powerpoint was used for making work

look more interesting on the blog,

splitting up walls of text of our evaluation

and to add more of an interactive

interface to the portfolio. Also, using

different media types for our product

allows for easier information processing,

as its not all boring to look at.

I was going to use Prezi in my work,

however through previous encounters

with this program, I always found issues

with it, such as in a computing lesson, my

work didn't save correctly, so I lost an

entire teams work. It also lags on my

computers so I’d normally prefer to use

something I am more comfortable with

working on. I also thought Prezi was very

hard to use, because its very confusing;

but I did consider it!

For the evaluation, we also did a directors commentary, which we recorded the same as the footage, on a HD camera and edited on Final Cut. This helped the interaction between audience and our product through the use of another form of interface. An issue I found from this was that it was far too time consuming for just one task, as Final Cut was only on the college Macs. Rendering also made things irritating and having to wait for the footage (HD) to convert to a usable file on FCP. I should have used a standard definition camera to film my footage, it would have resolved time issues.