Question 4 Evaluation.

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

For both AS and A2 we used a range of technologies. The main program I used was blogger, I used this throughout the course of AS and A2 to document my process. Blogger from the beginning was always easy to use, the only thing I found difficult was at the beginning of AS when I had to get into a routine of blogging almost everyday.

During the construction stages we filmed each other, this was so we knew what to do when it came to film for our actual video. At first the filming felt quite surreal, as it was exciting but difficult at the same time. We learnt different camera movements to help us with our filming, such as Panning and Tracking. To introduce us to Final Cut Pro X we used the videos we took of each other and practised putting them onto the timeline, whilst doing this we learnt a whole range of new techniques for example, how to cut, add markers, under/over cranking and colour correction. This was very different to what we had to do at AS as before we were only using Photoshop, which I do not believe is as hard as Final Cut Pro X.

During the research stages I looked into what makes a good music video, I looked at websites by Paramore and You Me At Six. Doing this research helped me gain an understanding of what works e.g. colours, fonts and pictures.

I also watched videos from popular pop punk bands, I used YouTube to watch music videos by You Me At Six, Paramore, Marianas Trench and Beyoncé, this helped me know what different angles compliment particular genres and what colour correction to use that would look good with a Pop Punk theme.

These pictures are from behind the scenes, they show how we filmed part of the video and show how we made sure the two actors were happy with what we had filmed as well as we were.

To help with the Creation of the advert I researched Pop punk and Pop Rock magazines. These helped most with deciding colours and deciding where to take particular colours from e.g. from a band members trousers or like on our actual advert, we used the roof from where the band were performing.

I researched Digipaks in the same way in which I researched adverts, except I research more genres such as pop. I found researching the Digipaks quite interesting as I had never taken much notice of them before, I did not realise how much information they held.

To present all my information I used slide share, Prezi and PowerPoint. I prefer to use these programs to present my research this is because it makes it easier to look at, its interesting and I can show it in a creative way - enjoyed adding pictures to my slides to make them more exciting.
I took photographs from various locations of which I wanted to use in my music video. From the locations I visited, they were all used in the video.

For the planning stage, I used my Blog continuously throughout. I used my Blog to show my journey, if you scroll down through my Blog it shows how I chose particular pictures and how I came to creating the final music video, ancillary products and extra 'tour date' poster.

I used word to write up the lyrics to the song, this made it easier to annotate, it also helped when it came to linking lyrics and visuals together, as it was right in-front of us.
I used cameras throughout the planning stage as they were vital - the camera's we used were Panasonic TZ62, I used a memory card reader and external hard drive to keep the videos and pictures taken.

When developing the evaluation we used different techniques to present my answers.
For question 1 I took a video of my screen, (using quick time) my group and I spoke over a screen recording showing the process of what we did. This is a good way to portray an answer as you can physically show the audience what you did, it helps you to explain yourself. I found this technique difficult as once we had spoken our script, we then had to put it with our music video, this required us to continuously cut and add stills into our video which took a long time, once we had done this we then realised that our video was out of sync with the music, we music have added a still but accidentally moved our video a touch to the right, this was easily overcome by finding where the video began to be out of sync and then begin to move it back to where it should be. Because Final Cut Pro X is such a large program we have to use an external hard drive to help run it on a mac.

For question 2 I wrote up my answer onto Blogger and added screenshots to backup what I say. The screen shots make this answer look more intriguing.
For question 3 I used PowerPoint, this is my favourite way to present work as it is exciting to look at and does not get boring - I like to add lots of pictures when creating these as it makes the slides more interesting rather than just plain writing. I embedded this PowerPoint so that you are able to play it from my blog, this is easier than having just the link.