Evaluation 4

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

During all stages of our project, we used:

Safari and Mozilla Firefox were used on both the Mac and the PC when surfing the web during our research stages.For example when we were looking for a recording company or when we were using social networking sites.

Timeglider to help us create our time lines for the 'history of a music video'. A process which took a while to figure out but gave us a choice of many fonts colours and pictures. From this, we could present simple facts in a fun way!

Bubbl.us to create a brainstorm chart of all our initial ideas for the video. This layout was very effective and from it we could see how our thought could lead on to a new idea.

Surveymonkey.com to show the audience research responses and results in a colourful and creative way. It was then posted on Facebook. This meant the survey was available to a wide range of people and we could collect many different answers. The responses however were  from a public of the similar age range and so it was hard to access what a younger child or older person would have answered.

Power Point for the presentation of our initial ideas and the making of audience feedback bubbles. This was I believe an original and colourful way of presenting our research and planning.

Youtube to search for an unsigned artist or band and also for music video inspirations. Youtube has a very wide variety of music genres and songs. As well as 'official music videos', you can find videos in which fans have created to a particular song. These people often have very original and creative ideas! We also used this programme when having trouble editing on Final Cut Express. All we had to do was type in 'tutorial' into th search box and 'voila!' theres all the help you need!

Using Youtube, I also learnt how to use Go Animate!. This programme, is a resource that allows you to make an animated video. I used it to create an overall video on my 'positive feedback'. You create character's and give them text to repeat out loud, it's a great way of producing an entertaining way of giving out information that may be boring reading from a long wordy paragraph!

Microsoft Office Word when looking for a font for the magazine and digipack. The newest version on this programme offers a wide range of fonts and so was very helpful when I was going through 'trial and error'!

Picasa to modify and change colour and size of any pictures we had for the magazine and digipack. This programme is one of the best for picture modifications, it however was only available on my PC at home and so I could not use it whilst at school in lessons.

A camera and tripod for the filming of the video. We, OF COURSE, had technological difficulties with the battery of the camera running out and an unstable tripod, we however did the best with what we had!

A digital camera for all the photography needed. Photos were taken when we were creating our storyboard which then went on to become our animatic! When we needed 'couple pictures' for the narrative aspect of the music video. The quality of these pictures was very good as it came from a top camera! This however didn't contrast so well with the school filming camera's and so we had to fiddle with the colours and brightness to make them look similar.

Final Cut Express for the making and editing of our music video. This was a programme new to us and so made us all believe that it would be impossible to work out! It was however rather straight forward and provided many different and new effects and transitions.

Itunes for the import of the song. I also used it when searching for my unsigned song. What i did was download a few songs from youtuve and added them to a playlist on my itunes. From then on, I played them through and finally decided to go with 'She Was Mine'.

Blogger was used during all stages of the project, when it came to blogging posts about the research, planning, making and evaluating. Blogger is a very good programme, it is easy and simple to use and provides you with many possibilities of layout and design. I, however, experienced some difficulties when it came to adding pictures and links to my posts in which it took a lot of time to load. My only solution for this was to leave it until I was on my own pc at home - where it took a matter of a few seconds to upload!
Fotosketcher is a programme I newly discovered , just in time to be used during the creation of the digipack. With it, you can 'turn photos in to art'. I for example, used the effects of 'pencil sketch', 'filter' and 'oil painting'. It gives the images a nice glow and original touch. This programme unfortunately cannot be accessed on a Mac and so I downloaded it for free on my laptop and did the work from there!
Imovie was used on several occasions. This was when we had filmed footage during our reserach and planning stages. For example our explannation of the storyboard animatic and later, the CD Digipack research conversation. We used both the camera and the tripod OR simply, the webcam on the Mac.

The Mac itself enabled us to use programs such as Photobooth and Iphoto to help us with recordings of our research stages but also for pictures used in the music video itself! As we had used the MAC during our AS year, we had grown familiar with its programs and ways of working!

Slideshare was used earlier on when I created the brainstorm and pitch powerpoint and loaded onto this website. I unfortunately experienced technical difficulties and so the clip was unable to be posted on my group blog. And so instead, I layed out the power point slides, printed the screen, cropped it and posted it as a picture onto my blog.

Paint was used on several occasions. It is often the easiest place to crop and picture to then be imported somewhere else like the film itself or the blog. All in all, it was very helpful.