Question 4 – How did you use media technologies in the construction and research,

planning and evaluation stages?

I used a number of different technologies throughout all stages of the coursework. Some enabled me to do things which with out the technology, I wouldn’t have been able to and others were less helpful and restrictive either due to my lack of ability with unfamiliar equipment or simply that fact that you are relying on something other than yourself to produce what is already in your head.

Panasonic HD DV cameraI used the camera for-• Photograph locations• Take pictures to make part of my mood board• Take images as the main points of my media

texts

Photographing locations This was useful as it enabled me to see how the locations translated onto computerised images, e.g. as a result of this process I did not use the woods as a filming location very much due to the natural lighting making it really hard to get the summery glow effect on camera, even if it looked perfect for it to a human eye.This may have achievable for someone with more time to understand the features of this camera in full. However I did find the camera fairly easy to understand, the manual focus was simple to instigate which made playing with the depth of focus and the sharpness of the images quite interesting. Also, the automated settings were clear and useful to help me get a crisp photograph in all of the different location sights.

These images represent what conditions you should use them in to get the best picture you can. This is helpful if you are not used to taking photographs where quality is important.

A feature I didn’t enjoy was how it didn’t take a picture if it didn’t like he lighting, this could be down to me not using it properly or correctly. However I wanted the [picture as it was, I thought it looked okay but I couldn’t take it. This could be an example of technological determinism – this theory is about how technologies available directly affect the societies they are part of, and the people in them. This example shows how is can be apparent, as a camera is the first way I now think of translating an images to show others, when this didn’t work for me I just moved on. I didn’t think to draw it or re-create it in another way, the technology didn’t work for me so I gave up! This is also an instance of where hindered my creativity to some degree.

Pictures For My Mood Board This was an important thing to include as it was the first thing as part of my pitch were I could include something I had made – the first time I showed something which had been influenced by research and translated it into something original and creative. The easy-use-ness of the camera was vital for this as it didn’t take u too much time to set up and meant that I could wait until a break in the clouds and still get the image I wanted fairly spontaneously.

In this way the simplicity of this camera very much helped me in terms of creativity as there is no other way I would have been able to show what I was trying to create as I am not artistically gifted, and even if Iwere the convinces of this process wouldn’t have been matched.

Pictures For My Final Pieces The features of the camera, which allowed me to get remotely professional looking images were very useful as the feel I needed for my texts were creative and the images were to be the vocal point of the digipack and the advertisement. So, having good pictures was important to make the overall pieces look professional.

Another good aspect of the camera for this was that it’s really light, so I was able to walk around the locations in Worcester from 12:30 until 8pm taking pictures of locations for he video and images to be included in the digipack and its advert. However, I did run out of card space and battery without getting all of the images i would have liked, but i probably just got a bit carried away to be fair!

Panasonic HD DV camera I used the video camera for- • Filming the music video• Filming audience feedback

Filming The Video• This camera was very useful during the shoots for the music video as it was

easily to move around meaning I had freedom with the takes and could get a lot of different angles of the same thing quickly.

• Also being able to move the screen to see what’s being filmed was helpful as it enabled me to direct performers while seeing how it was translating on camera.

• The quality was not the best in the world, some of the panning isn’t as smooth as it could be, more shots per minutes would have been good. But I don’t think it is enough to make the camera work look obviously unprofessional, if it does it is most probably down to me!

Filming Audience Feedback

• This was good as it allowed me to collect more in depth quantitative data. This can be done in written mode but that is more premeditated so there is more tendencies for people to over-think their answers, where as videoing people means their answers are spontaneous – this results in less demand characteristics (hopefully).

Photoshop cs5 This was amazingly useful! It helped me make my images not only stand

out but also made my work look more professional. This may be due to my lack of skill as a photographer, but also when making the text having the loop selector, which predicts what item you are trying to delete, move or copy and selects it for you makes putting in icons for twitter and facebook look so much more professional, or take so much less time.

Other effects which were vital for me to change the feel of my work was the brightness and contrast levels. This is ridiculously easy and changed my pictures all in the same way which helped them to have a synergy.

Gmail- calendar Things i put onto my calendar here were e-mail

to me reminding me of things i had to do, this flashed up on my home screen on my phone so i would not forget, it also sent reminders to other people who were involved with that particular task. This was useful as it made it more likely that everyone I needed to be there would be there or that they would at least remember to let me know if they couldn’t be there so plans could change.

Channel 4 ODI used this to get images of the television texts i had taken ‘inspiration’ from, this is useful as the things i like are always available for me to see at any time.

I used this for-• Researching target audience • Researching theory• Sharing my work

Researching Target Audience

This image is taken off the statistics available on youtube, it allows you to see who has watched the video, where they are from, there age, gender etc. This very quickly gave me a good idea of who the music video need to be aimed at.

Researching Theory I used youtube to watch videos about enchasing

creativity, researching other music videos and watch how some music videos were made for ideas – it is very helpful because of how quickly you can source a lot of information.

Sharing my work Its all connected and all of my work is in the same channel It is also useful as i have made my work global! There have been people from America and Canada who have seen my

music video, this means that even if my target audience live in another country they will still have access to it!

It is really easy to connect my work with media 2.0 so getting target audience feedback was made a lot easier as i could put this on a tweet and @ them in it so that they would have a direct link to the video.

TwitterThis was a useful social network to have available, being able to update people such as performers all at the same time instantly is useful. Being able to tweet people who work at Island Records, to show that I had attempted to contact the business who have ownership of the song.

BloggerThis is where I can easily update all the things i am doing and bring together things that have influenced me and develop my ideas, this is a good thing to have as part of the process as i can go over the things i have blogged if i have been doing other things for a while so that i can understand where i was going with my ideas. This i did find useful as a general rule, the only thing is that its not that good on-the-go so it takes time to make a blog post.

SmartphoneHaving access to all of these thing all of the time was extremely useful being able to do coursework for 20 minutes when I was on the way to college was helpful and having everything in my hand all of the time was definitely useful as it is similar to having a pen and paper with me all of the time, this meant that i could write down an idea as i had so that i didn’t forget it.