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

Throughout the research and planning stages to the construction of my music video, digipak and advert I have used different forms of media technologies such as Youtube, iMovie, and photoshop for the construction. of these products.

During the research and planning stages, I found YouTube a very useful resource in aiding my ideas into my own music video. Watching videos from a similar genre allowed me to pick up the conventions of the pop/rock genre and later on in the evaluation stages I was able to highlight where I used, developed and challenged these conventions. Instead of watching a music channel on TV that would not always show the specific genre I was researching, YouTube allowed me to specifically search and select what I needed. Pausing the videos meant I could analyse and go back and view over multiple times. Google Images and Google itself was useful in the research and planning stages of my digipak and advert, as I had an essential range of examples to search for. It was particulary vital for researching into directors of music videos and artists of the pop/rock genre of our music video and I had a rich amount of information at my fingertips at all times.

When constructing our music video we had access to a video camera and tripod at our sixth form. The tripod allowed us to use tracking shots, and steady long shots while the camera allowed for zoom ins and close ups. iMovie was then used to upload our footage onto and then to finally edit. Throughout this process, our work was backed up to an external hard drive, but unfortunately there was a problem with this as at the middle stages of editing, we lost a majority of our edited footage and had to start from scratch. Nonetheless, the rest of the experience was pleasant enough, and we used YouTube clips for tips on effects and cropping as the software was updated and therefore brand new to the production team. Photoshop was used for the majority of the construction of my digipak and advert. The ability to crop images, add effects and use different fonts and tools was a great help in making the products look as professionally done as possible. Using it during the planning stages meant I could create a draft for a certain product and then ask for essential audience feedback, before moving on to develop a final design.