Evaluation Question 4

The above presentation is for evaluation question 4:

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

Below is the more detailed script of the presentation.

Blogger:

Blogger was the main medium I used for the research, planning and presentation element of my production. I used this regularly for action plans and tutorials, my action plans would allow me to plan what I wanted to do throughout the weeks and I would often go and cross these off after I had completed them, I also kept track of tutorials given through members of staff so that I was on track for doing what I should have been doing. As well as this, my blog was used to create textual analysis’ of existing music videos, digipacks and magazine advertisements which allowed me to discover conventions of such as well as inspire my own work. I also analysed many lyrics from the videos I analysed to find conventions within lyric connotations as this  is something I also needed to consider in our own production. Blogger also allowed me to share updates, videos, plans and questionnaires that I had completed for audience research and feedback. We created numerous questionnaires and feedback videos which were then shared on the blog for others to see. I also shared a number of mood boards and used blogger to analyse a selection of narrative theories, these were important to show as it expressed my knowledge and interest in the conventions and theories along with adding diversity to the blog. As well as this, I published a selection of style profiles and character information so that our video was fully planned and we have taken everything into consideration. Blogger allowed us to edit fonts, arrangements, share a range of photo’s and also schedule our posts.

Another technology used was Final Cut Pro, this is the program we used to edit both the preliminary task, the final task and cut the music clips. We often used the blade tool and the cut tool on final cut pro to make clips the lengths that we wished them to be in time with the music and these are also the tools we used to cut the music clip. We also used tools on final cut pro such as the ‘change speed’ section which allowed us to set a percentage speed for the clip so it could be either sped up or slowed down. During our video, we used a selection of filters and transitions ot make the video more professional, for example we used lightening filters on clips such as Lee driving the car, or the kaleidoscope effect over the crowd scene. Along with this, I moved the angle of many scenes to either side or zoomed into the scenes such as the double effect clip of Bella lip syncing so that both scenes could be shown on top of each other without being mixed or blurry. We also layered many frames such as Bella singing on top of scenes and the kaleidoscope effect by layering one scene above the other and lowering the opacity of the upper clip so that it was faded into the bottom clip. Final cut pro allowed out productions to look more professional and allow us to experiment and become creative in our work. Although we struggled initially through G321, our skills were much more refined this year and we were able to sync our video in time to the music in terms of both lyrics and beat and all together make a more successful video.

Photoshop was another technology used within our production in terms of the ancillary tasks. I downloaded a selection of fonts and imported them through photoshop in order to use a chosen font consistently throughout my production pieces. I also used a variety of brushes in photoshop from the star brush, to the eyelash brush from the brush palette in photoshop to enhance sections of my images or add simply effects such as the 4/5 stars added as ratings on the CD covers. A selection of these can be shown in the print screens below. I also changed a lot of colour levels and effects to the images through tools such as ‘selective colour’ tool along with the ‘change colour levels’ and ‘black and white’ tool to edit colour levels to adjust sections such as the models skin tone which may have been slightly pink or yellowed. I also added a selection of layers in my production so that I could easily add or remove sections such as text or images such as a bar code. To allow me to do such things I downloaded a selection of online brushes such as eyelashes to enhance my production and I also changed the opacity's of a selection of brushes so that they were less or more strong, for example I altered the opacity of the burn tool to edit Bella’s eyeliner without making it look unrealistic. These brushes were used in my production to darken make-up features or lighten hair and facial sections.

Outside of online technologies, I used a selection of physical technologies also.For example, we used a Canon EOS 7D camera of extreme HD quality, we used this for around 90% of our entire production to ensure that our production looked as professional as possible and as clear as possible. Along with this, we took a Samsung Hd video camera as a back up camera and to ensure we could always gain footage, we also used this camera to film evidence of ourselves creating the production. At some points, such as the preliminary tasks and the scene of the crowd, we were unable to take either of the video camera therefore we used phone cameras such as a Samsung Andriod phone and an iPhone 4.

There were also a number of minor technologies we used within larger technologies such as Blogger. For example, we used a selection of online codes such as the code for a rollover image to add creativity to the images we were posting when analysiing questionnaire results. YouTube also played a large part in our productions as all of our videos, small or large, were uploaded to this site and then therefore shared, viewed by others or added to our blog. Our images however were all uploaded and shared via photobucket, this was also a way of safely saving all of our images in case they were lost or damaged within a post. Sites such as Wordle or Word-Hearts were used to share our information such as key words in audience feedback, this added creativity again to our blog rather than writing simply in prose. Finally, simple programmes such as Word were used to crop images or create mood boards to be uploaded to the blog.

Finally, are the technologies I used to create my evaluation. For question 1, I used Prezi, this allowed me to create a navigated presentation with text, videos and images in a stylish format. Prezi is also a professional looking website which can be easily used and has a wide range of designs to chose from. Along with this, for question 2 I decided to use the site PowToon, this is an animation website which allows you to create a unique presentation with music, transitions and unique templates or designs. I was able to use a variety of print screens from my own work in this program along with using the track  for my music video within this. Emaze was the site that I used for question 3 of the evaluation, this is a creative presentation website which allows a range or layouts, colour schemes and medias that can be inserted. This allowed me again to enter a range of videos, images and texts. Finally, for question 4 I used Flipsnack to share a selection of hand-made pages for the evaluation. This allowed me to express some creativity again and avoid long and boring amounts of writing as I believed another post similar to Emaze or Prezi would be too much words, not enough creativity.