Evaluation - Q4

Evaluation Question 4 

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

My use of media technologies has significantly improved and developed across all areas of my advanced portfolio compared to my foundation portfolio for AS. I feel that I have gained a much for in-depth knowledge of the media technologies I had already used last year but also gained an abundance of new skills, using media technologies I have not used previously.

A list of the media technologies I have used across all areas of this project:

• Blogger
• Edublogs
• YouTube 
• FaceBook
• Twitter
• Premiere Pro
• Photoshop  
• Prezi 
• Slideshare 
• Websites used to conduct research and plan
• Adobe Aftereffects 

I have summarised the pro's and con's of some of these sites/programmes in the presentation linked below which I created using 'Go Animate'. 

CLICK HERE - Link To 'GO ANIMATE' presentation on pro's & con's

Edublogs

This is an online blogging site which I initially started using at the beginning of the project. I had a look at other blogging sites that I could possibly use and this seemed to be one of the most popular results. At first, the site appeared to be great, however, when I looked at what content you can add to your blog posts I quickly realised that you can not add YouTube videos and this would prove to be a major problem as our final products are uploaded to YouTube and I also find my influences from YouTube which I would not be able to include on my blog with Edublogs. 

Blogger 

After experimenting with Edublogs I decided to resort back to Blogger which I used to blog all my work in my foundation portfolio. This is a site which I am familiar with and I know that it lets me upload the content I will need for my blog posts. The one disadvantage with blogger is that the format of the posts cannot be changed that much, sometimes it can restrict you to where you place images and titles, however, these are very minor aspects. Blogger does let you change and customise your theme which great, this meant I could have my blog exactly how I want it. I chose one of the 'simple' templates and customised the size and colour of my texts and titles along with the backgrounds and page widths.

YouTube 

I used YouTube for all stages of my project; construction, research, planning and the evaluation and it has most definitely helped me. YouTube can in handy specifically in the research stage of my project. I used this site to look at existing music videos to see what inspired me and what influences I could bring to my group. I also used YouTube to look at how other A Level students constructed their music videos and what narratives they consisted of.

I used YouTube during the construction stage of my music video as we uploaded drafts to YouTube as went along. Ollie and Rhys also used YouTube to search for editing tutorials, such as how to add the adjustment layers and how to edit together our 360-degree shot.

Facebook & Twitter 

I used these 2 social media sites during the research and planning stages of the project. These sites help us to organise ourselves and allowed us to contact each other easily.

Firstly, Facebook, as a group we created a group chat where we could all keep in contact with each other and easily send messages that all four of us could access so we could arrange filming times which were suitable for all of us to attend. A Facebook group chat is very convenient for us as we can access it from our phones so almost instantly we all get a notification which we are able to reply to quickly.


Twitter was used to try and contact the artists to seek permission for using their song in our video. Not all of the group use Twitter, therefore, I used my Twitter account to send a message to the artists, The disadvantage to Twitter is that artists and celebrities often get their agents to Tweet on their behalf so they do not get chance to see the messages themselves and the number of Tweets that a particular artist can get is most often too many to go through and reply to them all.


Premiere Pro 

Premiere Pro was the programme which the final product was constructed and edited on; all of us were familiar with this programme as this is what we used in our foundation portfolio to edit our thriller openings.

At first, using Premiere Pro was great, however, our school did not have this programme installed so we were taking regular trips to the nearby college to use their editing facilities and media suite. As we approached the middle of our editing process, the college changed the availability of the rooms we were using due to the lessons that they had to hold there. This restricted us in terms of when we could edit and hindered our process slightly. To ensure we did not fall too far behind we had a look at what software we had on our computers/laptops at home. We soon found out that Rhys could download Premiere Pro on his laptop, therefore, this is what we used to finish editing our music video. This resulted in some of our editing being done by Rhys in his house and also with opinions from us a group when he brought the laptop to school to continue editing.

Photoshop

I used Adobe Photoshop to construct my two ancillary tasks; the digipak and magazine advert. Photoshop is a programme which I felt the least confident with at the start of this project, prior to this I had some experience with photoshop but not much. From producing my ancillary tasks I have learnt a variety of skills in photoshop such as layering, grouping and warping, along with colour and opacity adjustments and corrections.  This has given me confidence in using photoshop in the future as I am equipped with the further skills and knowledge I feel that I needed.

SlideShare

SlideShare is an online site which allows users to view and upload PowerPoint presentations; I used the site to upload presentations I have made in order to get the 'embed' code to copy and paste onto my blog. It would be easier if presentations could be uploaded directly to blogger, however with SlideShare, it does not take that much longer to upload and insert content. SlideShare is a programme which I used last year also, therefore, I had an account which I could log straight into, making the process easy and effective.


Adobe After Effects

Adobe After Effects is a programme which I had not heard off until the editing process of our music video. Ollie knew about this software and decided that this is what we would use to construct our lyrics. From my perspective, the software looked rather complicated however, Ollie knew how the software worked from past experience so was able to successfully complete the lyrics.

Pro's & Con's of technology used table: