Evaluation Question 4

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

Media technology has been vitally important in helping me plan, research and film my production. Firstly I will discuss the platform which I have used the most throughout my entire research and planning; YouTube. YouTube has been an excellent resource for me as it is a large, free and online video community. I have used this website to upload, embed and refer to throughout explaining my plans, my feedback and ideas for and the effects that I am going to use for my music video.

Some examples of videos I have uploaded onto YouTube are my qualitative audience research (above) and my shotlist video (below). These are 2 of 4 videos which I have exported and updated onto YouTube throughout this project. Producing the videos allowed me to practise my camera and editing work, uploading the videos to YouTube was quick, easy and convenient for me to then blog about them.

I have also used YouTube to watch a vast amount of existing music vieo products for my textual analyses. Watching a range of videos within my genre of hip-hop/rap allowed me to understand the stereotype and conventions that I could use, develop or challenge. Furthermore I also used YouTube to learn a number of new skills, for example learn how to colour correct when everything didn't go as planned during filming. YouTube was also used in order to enhance my camera skills and to know what settings to make and how to set certain equipment up, such as the Rode microphone. The videos are easy to embed onto the blog post simply copying and pasting the embed code onto the html side of the blog and then shuffling it about to where you want to see it. I used a wide array of YouTube tutorials to help build my confidence in using a range of different hardware and software.

The next media website (and example of technology) which I have used is Scribd - this has been used by me twice for PowerPoint presentations. It is a convenient and easy platform to help me upload and embed certain research and planning tasks onto my blog.

The website is incredibly easy to use as all I had to do was link my PowerPoint presentation and then I was given an embed code to put into my blog post, much like the videos that I linked from YouTube in this post, and the many others which I posted throughout this year. I used Scribd for documents such as the pitch presentation that I delivered to my class (below).

Pitch Presentation PDF by Andreas Nicodemou on Scribd

If I used Scribd, I therefore also used Microsoft PowerPoint. This was used for another evaluation question and for my pitch presentation which is one of my earlier blog posts. 

This was a useful stepping stone for me as it allowed me to get my ideas across better and to convey what I wanted to a lot easier allowing me to communicate with my studio audience and my target audience. PowerPoint allowed me to inform my class and my examiner on my initial ideas and why I liked my ancillary products the way I did. IT is a particularly useful programme as it combines visual elements with text and explanations.

Another application that I have used is called Survey Monkey. 

This is a free and online and accessible service that allows me to collect quantitative data on my target audience. This was used for my online feedback from my questionnaires, this was one of the key turning points in my ideas because it told me what my audience wanted, what they didn't want and who my audience actually was in the first place. From survey monkey, I learnt that my audience is aged from 16-25 and is male dominant due to the artist. Survey Monkey is excellent at summarising my results in the form of tables and charts. Some examples are below which helped me to understand my audience.

These are some of my survey monkey online questionnaire results. Next up are how I edited my photos for the digipak and for the poster. I used a combination of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom.

This is the Adobe Lightroom user interface where I edited this photo. It allowed me to edit the image in post-production and enhance it in a number of ways. I adjusted the colour balance, the lighting and the contrast to create a more appealing main image for my promotional poster. I did not have much experience with Lightroom at the start of the project but found it a particularly useful media technology resource in creating my print products.

This is the Adobe Photoshop user interface. I used Photoshop to design both my digipak and promotional poster. Whereas at the start of the project my understanding of Photoshop was rather basic, throughout the project I became more confident using a number of tools. After producing my poster and digipak I was confident in doing things like adjusting the levels, using guides and grids to improve my composition, and adjusting layer effects and styles to produce a more appealing product.

These two applications were very useful in helping me to develop the synergy between my two products. I used colour correct to ensure a consistent colour scheme, the spot healing brush tool to remove any irregular elements and the clone stamp tool to complete a similar concept (used to clean up what the healing brush tool couldn't). I also experimented with the layout of the digipak and to see which fonts would be the most suitable for what I was aiming to create. In order to learn how to use these and how to incorporate them, I also used YouTube tutorial videos and learnt about how to use the Lumetri colour scale and what things such as the saturation and exposure actually meant. I also used things such as the margins in order to divide my page in two informing me how big the front and the back of the digipak will be.

Moving on the the video editing software - Adobe Premiere Pro

Adobe Premiere Pro was easily the most important application that I used; without it I would not have been able to create my final product! I learnt how to use so many different tools and techniques within the programme thanks to YouTube tutorials, advice from my peers in class and my teacher. By the end of the product I was very confident in my editing ability. I achieved a number of advanced effects, for example the flashback effect towards the end of my video. 

Next is Dafont, a website that allowed me to use typography.

Dafont is the website which I used for the typography on my digipak outside covers and my poster. All of the fonts were downloaded from there and were consequently very eye-catching. The website allows you to search for different types of fonts, and you can also write in the words that you want and it previews the fonts for you. This helped me to choose the right fonts that would fit the style of my poster and digipak and also appeal to my target audience. 

Finally is the website which I am uploading all of my research and planning onto - Blogger

Blogger is very useful and allows me to write until my heart's content, which is why I enjoy using it. I have uploaded over 50 blog posts and that shows how simple it was for such a difficult job of uploading what may be over 4,000 words and over 30 videos. One of the issues with the blog posting itself is the formatting of the blog page, sometimes the layout can be difficult to work around having issues with some of the words being highlighted in white, however, other than that this website is very useful and I like it. It allowed me to keep track of all of my ideas, plans and research. Now that I have finished my project I can look back at all of the posts and how my ideas changed and evolved.

Finally is the hardware (media technology) that I used. My camera and microphone.

The camera that I used was the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, and attached to it was a 16 - 35 mm lens. Throughout the entire time I was also using the Rode VideoMic Pro, which attached right onto the top of the camera.

Overall, technology has allowed me to complete all of this work and to be able to find different ways in order to explain my idea because if it was merely text and that was it, then I don't feel that it would be very presentable and I also feel that my moderator would find it rather boring to just read through a load of text without showing screenshots and videos which also explain my aim but in a better way. In addition the ability to use both hardware and software has allowed me to understand the vast variety of how much I can actually do. Without things such as Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Premiere Pro, my videos and photos would be too overexposed and the ISO would be too high, but with applications such as these, I have turned what I thought would be some videos which I should abandon into videos and photos which I have used for my final products. Furthermore, the use of YouTube, Scribd, DaFont and Survey Monkey have been formidable for me as these have been important in finding my audience, getting the best and most fitting design, explaining to my moderator and my audience better and overall developing my idea and finding the best way to develop it.