1. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? When writing and presenting my work, Microsoft was important as I was able to use word and PowerPoint to write and present and save my work documents. Word allowed me to type up my work and keep my work perfect by using spell check and editing the text via different fonts or added images. PowerPoint enabled me to type up and present my work using different slides and I was able to converge different types of media such as text, images and videos. Throughout the presentation of each stage when carrying out our final media product, I chose to use a number of different media technologies. These varied throughout but come together to show my understanding of all media technologies and to present my work more in depth, clear and intriguing. When presenting each stage, I used the website Blogger.com. The blog based website allowed me to create an account and use blogs to present my work. Once logged in to the website I was able to create a number of blogs for example research, planning, construction and evaluation. Once created I was able to add a number of posts for each section of each stage and also upload videos, presentations and recordings to the posts, Once I had created a post I had the choice to publicise the post on my blog or just keep the post saved and private. For each blog I was also able to use a different theme to make my work more presentable and also link my blogs together so that I was able to keep my blogs together and accessible by the other blogs. When presenting the word and powerpoint presentations, I was able to use slideshare to convert the microsoft document into a complete uneditable presentation. The website the produces a embed code for the presentation so that we are able to upload the presentation onto our blog.

2. Research When using the imac I was able to use the screengrab feature which enabled me to take an onscreen crop of anything displayed onscreen and save the image as a document. Google was the starting point of my research as the search engine enabled me to search all types of website or information relating to my chosen band or the indie based genre. YouTube enabled me to search and view any official music videos. The website allows me to use the search bar to find any music video I needed. Once I had searched for a certain indie based band, the website provides me with thousands of videos related to my search and once viewed, it provided me with a number of videos related to the video and also allowed me and others to comment on the video and view others input into how the video was made effective. To find the all important music track to use for our final music product, my group used the website Unsigned.com. The website was able to allow us to refine our search to a certain genre of music such as the indie genre and search thousands of tracks within the category. This website also includes a search bar to find a certain artist as the website provides us with music tracks performed by the band to listen to and also features information on the artist in question such as contact details which we were able to use to contact 4kicks and gain permission to use their single. Amazon.com was important when researching the digipacks of indie artists as the websites search bar enabled me to search for the albums of any chosen artist. Once the results to my search were presented I was able to view a number of images of the front, back and central slides of the album. The website also allowed me to search for a chosen genre for example indie and find related artists to the one I had searched for. To research posters relating to the indie genre I purchased a number of indie based music magazines such as Q. The magazines provided me with posters advertising the new album of a number of indie based artists. I then used a digital camera to take images of the posters and use the camera to upload the images onto the imac.

3. Planning In the Planning stages of the music video, I also needed to again use a number of different media technologies. When planning to use our chosen music track, I first had to gain permission from the 4kicks band. To do this I used hotmail.com to email the band and ask for their permission aswell as the official mp3 to our chosen music track. In the received email from the band, hotmail enabled the band to attach the mp3 to the email and therefore allowed our group to download and use the music track when recording and within our music video. When planning how we would represent or video as an indie-based genre, the actors were most important in getting across the correct indie based image. We used a digital camera to take the images of our characters so that we were able to upload the image onto our blog and represent how each actor’s image represented the indie genre. Google maps were very effective as the new street view feature enabled use to get a real view of the location. This gave us the eye view of the location without wasting time searching for the location on foot. Finally before filming our music video, the BBC news website allowed us to research the weather at the locations we needed to film when we chose to film so that all of the scenes were filmed in the same weather conditions.

4. Construction When editing our music video, I used the editing software imovie. The software enabled me to upload the clip filmed on the video camera and and save them onto one document aswell as putting the clips together into one whole video. When I had uploaded the clips, I was then also able to crop the clips and lose the unneeded sections from shots. I could do this by highlighting the section of the clip that was not needed and keep the important shots.

5. Construction Continued… Once I had uploaded the shots for the music video, I could then add video effects to the shots for example an aged effect. The shot below represents how we was able to add the “Aged Film” video effect to our shot to represent the clip as in the past and back in time. This is used to represent the shot as a flashback from the male in the video. As represented in this shot, we was able to add a black & white effect to the shot which again represents the past in a flashback. In this shot we used a different effect to represent a flashback, this was because we found that when we used the “Aged Film” effect during the course of the video, we was unable to tell whether the shot was past or present so we found the black & white to represent the same flashback effect.

7. Construction Continued… When editing the music video, we were also able to add transitions to our movie. In the clip before, we were able to use the “overlap transition”, in which we were able to give the effect of the character disappearing and fading out of the scene. When constructing the music video I was also able to add in titles for the music video. The above represents how we was able to add the “Strip Subtitle” to the opening of the music video to represent the project. At first we chose the title and then once we added the text, we was able to edit the size and colour of the text aswell as the colour of the strip. One we had our title we could add the title to the opening of the shot and make our video look more professional and represents the music video. Once we had saved the video as a complete file, we was then able to upload the video onto YouTube. Once we had uploaded the video we was able to view and gather comments on the video from across the world. Once uploaded, the video presented an embed code to enable us to upload the video onto blogger and a number of social networking sites such as Facebook.

8. Ancillary Texts To begin the ancillary tasks, we first had to take a number of images of the band and surroundings for the poster and digipack for the band. At first we took a number of images to use and uploaded them onto the imac using the digital camera.

9. Ancillary Texts Continued… When editing the images for the digipack and poster advertisement, we was able to use our images of the artist and band, and use the “Quick Selection” which enabled us to cut the background from the image and save the only important object in the picture for example the person. Once I had cropped the background from the image, I was then able to add the layer onto another image for example paste the image of the artist into a different surrounding such as a forest. We were then able to to edit the complete image by making he image either brighter or darker or reduce saturation which enabled us to give the impression that our artist was actually pictured in the forest.

10. Ancillary Texts Continued… Once we had the image for the poster and digipack, I then pasted the image onto PowerPoint from where I was able to add a border to the CD cover and paste the font used for titling the digipack. When adding a border added rectangle shape together to create the border for the digipack. Finally when saving the image we used the screengrab feature which enabled us to group the background image, text and shapes together into one image document. Google images was important when editing the advertising poster. We was able to search for a number of images such as the _____ logo. To find a font for the digipack and poster, we used the website Urbanfonts. The website presented us with thousands of fonts and we was able to refine our font search as the website provided us with categories such as, Adventure, Comic and modern fonts.

11. Evaluation In the evaluation stages of the music video project, I had used a number of different media technologies although the filming shots of the evaluation was created and edited the same as I have highlighted above, although for one question in my evaluation, I was able to record my answer to my evaluation task. To do this I was able to use a recorder and upload the recording onto the computer as a file. Once I had saved my file as a recording I was then able to upload the mp3 file onto blogger as a recording. & When gather comments on our video for an evaluation task, we was able to gather comments from when our video was uploaded onto YouTube. We also uploaded our video onto the social networking site, Facebook where we again able to gather comments from across the world on our video and how it may possibly be improved.