Georgia Surridge Evaluation Question 4

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


Overall productions

Common websites used for the research & planning of our coursework were Google, Wikipedia & YouTube. These websites were commonly visited as they provided lots of detailed information, which was necessary for our research & planning. For example, Wikipedia was very helpful during the research stages, when we needed to find out characteristics of music videos, music genres & information of artists & albums. As Wikipedia is set out in a clear way it was easy to find the necessary information. You Tube was also very handy. We used this when we researched videos for inspiration & when analysing typical conventions of music videos. Again, this was easy to use as information is labelled & set out clearly, & the videos we needed were easy to find.

Blogger is where we display the work we do in a neat & labelled way so it is easy to find. As we used blogger for our coursework last year, we already had a basic grasp of how to use the website, so it was easy to upload posts & label them into certain categories. We also commonly embedded pictures & videos to the posts, so we needed to know where we could find the embed link on YouTube videos etc. Here are some screen grabs of how blogger has been useful throughout this process:

Video, Magazine & Digipak Production

During the production of our media coursework, we needed a camera & a tripod throughout. We used the tripod provided by the school; they were high quality & easy to use. We also had the option of using a school camera; however we decided to use our own as it allowed us to use it whenever we needed it, rather than needing to rent it out, which led to the possibility of it not being available. The camera we used was also of a higher quality to the school cameras & had more features. A problem we did face however was the lack of memory card space we had. Luckily, I had a lot of spare memory cards to use, but they had little space which meant we constantly needed to swap memory cards to make sure they had enough space. In the end, we ended using approximately 5 different memory cards, so it was often difficult to keep track of what footage was on what memory card & if it had already been imported to the computers. Despite this difficulty, we managed to overcome it by organising the memory sticks & uploading all footage to the computers as quickly as possible so no footage was forgotten or lost. Another issue with the camera was that it ran out of battery quickly. This made it difficult when we were out filming as it would often run out of charge whilst in the middle of filming. This was an irritating occurrence which was not easily overcome, we constantly had to make sure we only kept the camera on at necessary times & shot footage that we had planned & definitely needed. Despite these difficulties, we still managed to film all the shots we wanted, as well as spontaneous shots that we thought looked effective. A final problem that occurred regularely was the time & date being shown on photographs we had taken for stop motion, digipak & the magazine advert. This meant we continually had to use Photoshop to remove the time & date which was time consuming as we didnt want it to affect the quality of the photographs. However, we put in extra time to complete this task & the pictures still looked effective. Here are some photographs of this process;

This is the camera we used during filming: 

Editing Facilities

Programmes we used during the production stages included Photoshop & Final Cut. Photoshop was used continually whilst creating our dikipak, as it was needed to edit pictures & create albums covers, back covers etc. As I already had the basic skills to use Photoshop, I managed to grasp the different features of the programme quite easily; however I did struggle with the more technical aspects. I feel this struggle was overcome once I had completed the digipak as I felt more confident using different tools in the programme due to having so much practice. Another programme used throughout was Final Cut. We used this in our preliminary task where we practiced lip syncing & then made it into a short video. This was a useful task as it allowed us to practice getting lip syncing in time with the music & showed us how quickly cuts have to be made to make the video look interesting. We also had an editing preliminary task where we had to use markers to fit the beat of the music & make the uploaded photos cut to the beat of the music. Again, this was helpful as it allowed us to practice using markers & editing to the time of the beat. As we had used Final Cut in our coursework last year, I already had the basic knowledge of how to use the programme, for example, adding effects & transitions etc. However, this year we needed a high level of skills as we did more technical things in our music video. For example, when we split the screen into four shots & had our performer pass paper through each of these screens. This was quite difficult as we had to line up the different frames perfectly & in time so the paper passed smoothly across the screen.

Here is a screen grab of the editing process of this shot:

The schools equipment did slightly inhibit our ideas as we had some quite ambitious ideas about how we would like to edit our music video. For example, we wanted to put a filter on some of our clips to make them have a cartoon style, however, Final Cut would not allow us to carry this out. Despite this, we still managed to do several technical things with our video such as four split screens, which has been shown in a screen grab above. I believe Photoshop was a useful programme & fulfilled our needs during production. For example, when using stop motion in our film we had to remove the date out of the pictures we had taken. We did this by using the clone tool. It was a long, technical process which needed to be precise to make it look affective. 

Photoshop also slightly inhibited our ideas as we would of liked to do more technical things with our dikipack & magazine advert, but had to simplify our ideas. I believe that despite these difficulties we still managed to produce realistic media products.

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