Evaluation Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Research and planning

In the research and planning stage we used a lot of technology to be able to find theories and look up other music videos, digi-packs and adverts to analyse. We needed inspiration of what to do with the song we found and used these sights to help us plan our 3 products out.

Youtube is a sight where video are uploaded on, this was our main way of finding music videos to analyse as this platform is where they are all mostly uploaded onto. The site was useful as we used it for inspiration of music videos and conventions of genres for artist, at the start in out researching of other artist which gave us idea. It was also good as it allowed us to see another music video officially released by Oleena. Some of the bad things was that (annoyingly) youtube was blocked on our school computers meaning we had to do a lot of research on our own. 

Soundcloud was actually where Anna managed to find the song and artist for our music video and products, it's a music listening sight usually for less famous and known artist to put their music on. The pros were that its really easy to use and allows you to be able to find a whole range of music and artists and is how Anna came across Sea Oleena, it also allowed us to listen to other songs that she had only put on that platform and not youtube. It didn't have any cons.

Google Docs and Email was a really easy way of contacting our artist when in the beginning we had done the research of her music, we just emailed her asking of permission to use her music for a video we were doing. To which she replied by email and said that we could use her song. The google docs also let me be able to write up information on media theories and then screenshot them, adding them to my blog. The pro's were that we could contact our artist and write up planning and research info - being able to email information to Anna such as powerpoint slide when we had audience research.It didn't have any cons.

Blogger was the sight we used to put our course work on, being able to document everything we did so it would back up the products we made. The pro's to blogger was that it generally is an easy sight to use and it uploads multi media onto such as youtube, videos and gifs, which is useful to help us document as best as we could what videos, shots and images influenced us. Its also a good way to express what you wanted to say quickly without forgetting, you can put the posts in drafts if you aren't finished to be able to work further into them without posting. It didn't have any cons.

Google.co.uk was generally used in every stage but was pre-dominant in the research stage as it allowed us to get a lot of information. The pro's to google was that it allowed us to get on blogger the site to document our work as well as soundcloud, youtube and google docs. We managed to find a lot about our artist and get more of a vibe of who she was as an artist through social media and her own website. It was also useful to get media like photos off of google to then use on our blog. It didn't have any cons.


https://seaoleena.bandcamp.com/

Construction

The iMac was a very consistent part of our media technologies, it was used in every part of planning, making and evaluating our products. We used the iMac to upload all of our information onto loading our footage onto from the camera, then using the features on the iMac to group our footage so we had it all. iPhoto was also used to upload all our photos onto so we could see what we wanted to use or not. The pro's was that on the iMac it was all really easy to use, everything was all in one place and ready to start up very lesson which was really handy.
It didn't have any cons.

iMovie was overall the editing software we used for our final music video, as well as our audience feedback that we filmed about the music video. We actually weren't going to use this software but due to the easy use we just used this one instead, the pros that every lesson it loaded well and had everything already saved and left in place to where it was before. This meant it was really easy to carry on and finish where we left off, saving time!
A few of the cons were that it's limited in the features that it has, even though its easier to use it isn't always as good as some features that we wanted to use such as adjusting the colour wasn't a good as we wanted it to be. Also with layering videos you cannot layer more than one onto of the main layer at a time, which was really annoying as it would've been good to be able to do that.

On this chart we only used Adobe Photoshop and premiere pro. The photoshop was used to construct the magazine advert and the digi-pack. They're both very easy and also complicated to use, once you understand it the software can be really easy to use but starting off we found it quite difficult! The premiere pro is the video editing tool and one we used in creating the projection in front of Ella, we wanted a couple features and imovie wouldn't let us do it so we used pro instead. The biggest pro was that Adobe as a whole always gives a really finished look and looks very professional.
The cons were that we did find it a bit difficult to get used to and did have to watch a few tutorials to get to grips with a few features.

This was the camera we sued to do our filming on, its a canon 600D! This technology was used in the construction of the music video and the other two print products (we didn't use the pictures for the print products in the end). The pro's was that this camera was very easy to use and filmed really well, it had a large capacity of memory so we could get all four filming done on it. The camera filmed in HD so improved the quality of our footage and even managed to capture a really beautiful light glare when we were at Ashton court.
The cons was that due to it not actually being a filming based camera it didn't do thing like auto focus which would have just been a lot easier and better to have as some shot were harder to focus or don't look focused enough. 

The Go Pro was the other camera used in filming our music video, this camera was a real plus as it had the effects of being able to film underwater and film in hard conditions- we also didn't have to worry about getting it dirty or anything as you could wipe it off! It also had the pro of being able to film in really high quality even 4k! The main feature which we used though was the time lapse and slow motion, the time lapse of the sky was really handy as we could just put it somewhere still and it could take a photo every 5 seconds and create a video for us!
The Go Pro honestly didn't have any flaws apart form the trial time lapse but that was due to I put it on the wrong setting!

The scanner was the technology we used to scan our disposable photo in for our magazine advert and the digi-pack. The scanners pros were that it was really quick and efficient in getting the photos from one place to another, it scanned all the pictures quickly and kept their disposable look about them!
Again it didn't really have any flaws to using it.

The disposable camera was the only non digital piece of technology we used, we decided that we wanted to take photos whilst filming of what we filmed to eventually try and use them for our digi-pack and advert. The pros were that luckily practically all of the photos came out really great and they captured the look we aimed for, to look oldish and have a film camera look about them! The photos were really cohesive with the music video as well as they were used for both the advert and cd cover.
The cons were that sometimes photos don't take very good and come out well, and a few of them the lighting was no good so we couldn't use them in the end!

Evaluation

Youtube was most relevant in the research and construction of our media products, we used this platform to put our music video on when we finished it, this would also allow a range of people to view it and allow us to get feedback on how we did. The pro's were that it can reach a wide range of people and be able to be seen! We used this technology to market our music video and create stigma!It didn't have any cons.

Blogger was used in the evaluation of all 3 of our products, it allowed us to be able to document our finished products and see how we developed ideas from other artists to create our own iconic image for our artist and song. It was a pro for self reflection, we can see what we did and how we did it, giving us pointer for the future for how we could market our artist further and develop the image more with conventions and ideas. 

The iMac was used to record feedback for our mostly our music video, with the webcam we filmed responses to our questions to help us evaluate the positives and negatives of our music video product. The pros were that it was really easy to film the feedback, but the con's was that on reflection the sound quality wasn't very good:( and was hard to hear.