Evaluation Q4 Draft

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

Since the beginning of the year, technology has played an extremely significant role in creating the three separate tasks we were given. We were asked to create a blog on www.blogger.com which would display a variety of posts including all the stages in our construction, research, planning and evaluation. Having created a similar blog for the foundation portfolio, I was able to use the site easily and effectively. It was necessary that we incorporated a wide range of multimedia to showcase the different stages rather than just a simple essay format. For example, I used features such as Prezi, YouTube, Scribd and PowerPoint. Prezi is a site that allows you to create an interactive presentation which is much more atheistically pleasing that the basic PowerPoint due to the variety of abstract layouts available to use, so I found it effective to use to exhibit some posts. I used YouTube to incorporate videos I had made on Adobe Premiere Pro and also to post recordings of myself explaining what I had achieved in that week.

As well as using these multimedia features, I occasionally would post a production diary log simply as just plain text. Although this is not as enjoyable to look at, I found that this was probably the best way for me to be able to explain clearly what I had worked on and developed in my three tasks for that week. When posting certain tasks, I found PowerPoint to be most useful if I required a lot of space to write and include images, as the space available on Prezi is quite limited.

Using the internet allowed me to research in detail what information I would need for each post that we were required to create leading up to the making of our video. The search engine Google allowed me to access an extensive amount of information on the music industry and my chosen artist, song and genre in detail.

To shoot my music video for the advanced portfolio I used a Canon SLR 600D camera. My aim was to create a high quality, professional product which the camera enabled me to do. I was able to develop my camera skills in the advanced portfolio as I used the manual setting instead of the automatic. Using manual settings allowed me to edit them depending on the location or lighting that I was capturing. A few of the scenes that I shot were at night time when it was dark, with the only light coming from fairy lights and candles. Here, I was able to use the ISO setting on the camera which captured the scenes in a high quality and increased the visibility of the performer. Also, I used a prime aperture lens of 1.8mm in these conditions as it is more suitable to lower levels of light. Similarly to my foundation portfolio I was able to use the digital viewfinder to watch back clips immediately and see if anything needed adjusting that I could instantly recreate.

In creating my advanced portfolio I was introduced to a new software that I hadn’t used before. Adobe Premiere was the software required to edit my music video and make it all come together. It required me to work with moving image on a continuous timeline. Being completely new to the programme, I relied heavily on video tutorials to guide me through making the footage the best quality I could. I uploaded all the footage that I had recorded to the software and created layers for each take, as there were some close up shots some mid shots and some high angle shots. After removing and deleting some of these shots, I merged them together onto one layer so that the video could be played uninterruptedly. Additionally, Adobe Premiere includes a selection of tools that can be used to add effects to the video. I used the black/white effect to transform my video into greyscale. Having recorded some of the clips without a tripod, some of them were reasonably shaky and hard to watch. Using the speed tool and the warp stabiliser I was able to steady these shots and therefore include them in my video.