Question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

YouTube: From the very beginning of the course, technology played a big part. YouTube was an obvious choice to allow me to try and find inspiration for the sort of music video that I wanted to create. By looking at videos that seemed to the same sort of genre that I was working towards, it meant that I was able to distinguish a list of conventions that would be necessary to include in my video. When working towards the plans for my music video, being able to easily access the official video of the song that I was using meant that I could work out timings – allowing me to construct storyboards and the animatic which were accurate and representative of my ideas for the video. Although YouTube was incredibly useful, there were several restrictions in terms of the accessibility during college hours. Nevertheless, I was able to access another video sharing site, Vimeo, meaning that I could easily continue to filter through videos. As I began to construct my music video, I was able to upload drafts onto YouTube and embed them onto Facebook and Blogger to get feedback and to show by how far I had progressed.

TimeToast: In order to move through this course smoothly, it was necessary that I kept to the deadlines for when each section of my work should be completed by. So that this was possible, I created a timeline on TimeToast where I could add events and make small checklists of what was expected by each date. By doing this, it meant that I was much more aware of the workload, allowing me to balance it all out within the time that I had.


The digital video camera: this was very convenient, because it allowed me to easily record over any unusable footage, such as when the lighting was incorrect. It also meant I didn’t have to rewind the tape to watch my footage back, as it was all saved straight onto the camera’s hard-drive. This also meant that I could import the footage straight from the camera, and didn’t need to look after a tape as well as the camera. It allowed me to import the footage at home and email it to myself for editing at college with PremierPro, which sped up the process massively. However, a drawback to using this sort of camera was the limited battery life, which meant having to preserve the battery in order to get all the shots I needed done, sometimes resulting in having to rush some shots.

Photoshop: In order to produce my ancillary texts (the digipak and the magazine advert), I used the programme which I thought would allow me to create the most professional looking pieces. By being exposed to a great deal of tools and effects, it meant that I essentially had creative freedom in terms of how I wanted these two pieces to look:1. Cutting Tool – Also known as the lasso tool, I used this to cut the main star out of the original image to allow me to put her on a different background, to keep the same background throughout the whole digipak. By doing this, I could get an exact copy of the image, suggesting an image of uniformity and skill. Although they weren’t cut out perfectly, I think the rough edges added another dimension to the overall look of the digipak and, to a lesser extent, the advert, like it was intentional.

2. Colour charts – Using the “colour libraries” was really quite significant to the way that I undertook this project, as the colours black, grey, turquoise and red were things that were important. Using these colour libraries allowed me to keep check of the exact colours I was using, to keep them coherent throughout the whole project.
3. Fonts – As well as the vast amount of colours, the sorts of fonts that I had access to was also something which helped my ancillary tasks turn out as well as they did. Looking through, I could select fonts that would suit the genre and help my pieces to fit in with other, already existing products. In the end, I used a font from front website 'dafont.com', which I temporarily downloaded onto the college system each computer session and was able to then use in Photoshop for my digipak and advertisement. Doing this allowed me to 
4. Opacity – Having the flexibility to change how solid the images were meant that I could layer one image over another to create a different effect. I decided not to use this effect in the final production pieces, but doing this method of editing helped me to generate more ideas for the images used, such as changing the opacity to 100% and colouring in the image black, for the inside cover of the digipak.

Premiere Pro: For my music video, I also used software from the Adobe Master Collection. Using this meant that I could be a lot more accurate with the editing and use effects which would help suit the music and the messages of the house style that I was trying to convey. 
1. Speed/Duration – By being able to alter the speed of certain shots, I was able to suit the pace of the music a lot better as well as exposing areas that needed to be worked on to allow me to fill the time effectively. I used this tool to increase and decrease the speed of certain shots, in appropriate places throughout the song.
2. Zooming tool – This allowed me to zoom in and out of the timeline. For me, this was one of the most important tools, as it allowed me to make my editing a lot more accurate throughout the video. Without it, I would have missed certain cuts and blank spots where the footage had not been lined up properly. Most importantly however, it let me more accurately and precisely line up each clip with the section of the song it was for, particularly where lip syncing is featured, as getting this wrong would ruin the whole video.
3. Snipping tool – Along with the zooming tool, this helped to make my video fit the pace and style of the music concisely.
4. Copy and paste – Although something so simple, being able to copy and paste different shots, helped to make the video uniform. Also, it saved a lot of time as I didn’t have cut down particular shots (which would have had to have been done exactly to get the right effect).

In conclusion, having all this technology meant that I had greater opportunity to fulfil the creative brief for this task. In terms of the pieces that I made, these technologies gave me the ability to improve them through post-production even if the images or footage wasn’t the greatest. 
As suggested by David Gauntlett, the impact of all this technology has allowed me to become somewhat part of the 'making and doing culture' through the increased power that we have as we have transformed into the 'pull' media model. This has, however, meant that the project was partly vulnerable to technological determinism, resulting in decisions being made as a result of the technology that was on offer, rather than me making every decision beforehand.