Lewis Bulmer A2 Media 2013

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

To create our music video and ancillary tasks we had to use quite a lot of technology in both stages of production (Pre-production and post-production).

The technologies I used to create the product at each stage were;

Pre-Production Stage - In the pre-production stage the technologies that I used were; Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel to create documents and timetables for our music video. This could be easily used on the computers that we use at school as well as my laptop at home where I had been doing some extra work.

Production Stage - In the production stage the technologies that I used were; a HD camera, a tripod and a dolly.

Planning and research

In the research stage of this course, I needed to research a variety of music videos to look at in detail in order for me to be able to identify generic conventions within the music videos so I can use them in mine. To research these videos, the best place to find them in my opinion was YouTube.

YouTube is a place in which people can upload videos and others can watch them. It is arguably the main site for watching music videos as this is where record companies display them. YouTube allows you to see how many views the music videos have so you can see how popular they are.

Above shows a screenshot of the YouTube page with a video being displayed.

To use YouTube, it is accessible to anyone who has an internet connection. I personally used this on the computers we have at school, my personal laptop and mobile phone.

Another website we used in the planning stage was Googleblogger. This is a blogging website which we could use to post our work on.

Positives of using Googleblogger	Negatives of using Googleblogger
You can embed both images and videos to the blog.	It was hard to navigate round the blogger.
It makes your work clearly set out and well presented.	When displaying images, they did not always work for unknown reasons
You can make your blogger your own and personal by decorating it.	It was hard to move images around.

The other programmes I used for my research and planning was Microsoft Word and Excel. I used Word for writing all of my work up on so that it saved successfully and then I would copy and paste it onto blogger. I also was able to create tables on Word which I could also transfer to my blog.

I used Excel to create my shot list. It meant that my shot list was set out neatly and as a group we could see which different shots we needed to shoot and for how long.

The technologies I used within this stage was my Mobile Phone and iPad. I used my phone to communicate with my group and share work with each other. If I had found a good source which might help them, I would send them some whilst they would do the same.

The iPad was used when I needed to research music videos at home. I used this to visit YouTube and look at some of my artists songs.

The camera is going to be used for the filming of every shot. It is a HD camera so it will capture the footage in high definition, this therefore makes it look more professional. The camera is an essential piece of equipment because it is the device that will store and capture our music video.

We used this exact camera in the picture above. The make of it is ‘Canon’ and this is what we was provided with. I found the camera to be quite good to use and it produced a much clearer picture than I thought it would. It included features such as a zoom which we could control the speed of however I found it quite tricky to keep the zoom at a slow tempo.

The zoom was used by the nozzle at the top which you slide from right to left.

The battery life of the camera was good as long as it was charged up however there was points in time within filming when we did not prepare ourselves well enough in a group and charge up the camera beforehand. This meant that we lost time to film and may have rushed us.

The camera also displayed the live footage as you were filming. This came in handy because it meant that you are able to see what the set looks like on camera as sometimes it can look a lot different than in real life. This can look different by the lighting and it can mean images are not always clear. I think this was a good feature to have in the end because we created a set which we thought looked good in one of the kitchen scenes however we had to change things about because when we shot it, it didn’t look as good.

The dolly is going to be used to do the shots where the camera needs to be steady but moving at the same time, we will use this a few times when doing the shots where the camera will need to be steady but moving. The camera will be steady because it will be on a tripod, to operate the dolly properly the camera needs to be attached to the tripod then attached to the dolly.

The tripod is going to be used to steady our shots, it will be used for all of the shots that we do. This is because we want all of our shots to be steady, the tripod also attaches to the dolly so it will be used on the dolly as well. The tripod is telescopic so that it can be adjusted to many heights allowing us to do a variety of shots with it all with them being steady at the same time.

Post-Production Stage - In the post-production stage the technologies that I used were; iMovie, an Apple Mac

The computer that we used to edit on was an Apple Mac, I found the computer ok to use but it was a little bit tedious at times because I really didn't like using the mouse, the editing software that we used was iMovie on the Mac, I think that this software was alright but not the best that I have used. The main reason was because if you wanted to put a file on the Mac, you have to convert the file before it went on there. I have learnt from editing that the actual editing takes longer than filming the film and there are a lot of things to take into consideration when editing such as the CC, sound and how the audience will feel when they are actually watching the film.

iMovie

As a group, we used iMovie in order to edit the footage we created. I found this quite tedious to use because I was unfamiliar with this software. The only other editing software I had previously used was Final Cut Express.

In conclusion, I think the technology and equipment we were provide with was very good and we was very lucky as students of this school to be given this equipment. I also think it was helpful that I owned a good phone and iPad so that it could help me research further in any spare time and anywhere.