Final Evaluation Question for A2 Media Studies

2. The Media course this year has been extremely
fun for me as I love learning about technology
and how to use it. At the beginning of the A2
year I had some experience in the technology
we would be using from our previous AS year.
However, there was a lot of new technology
myself and my group needed to come to terms
with and I was amazed by the amount of
technology we used this year, that wasn’t used in
our AS year.
So this course has challenged me a great deal
but also benefited me an even greater deal. It
has turned me into a much more competent
media student through the use of technology.

3. All of the technical work done on our three
media products was completed on our school’s
Macs and we spent the majority of the year in
the school’s Mac suite. They were installed with
all the programs we would need such as, iMovie
and Photoshop, and they were incredibly helpful
to us. Their straight forward set out was really
easy to understand and if we were ever stuck we
could simply go on Youtube where there are
videos by the dozen on how to do anything on a
Mac. Without our Mac our products would either
not exist or they would be incredibly lacking in
terms of technology.

4. Camera Tripod
The next type of technology we We use a lot of straight forward
used was the camera we were still shots in our music video and
given by school. We used a so the tripod was incredibly
Sanyo Xacti, apart from a few useful in the creation of it. The
shots of cars on a motorway music we chose (Crystallised-
(for which we used my Nikon 1 The xx) has a lot of beats and so
camera), we used this camera we wanted a lot of sharp shots,
to film our whole music video. for this to be done effectively
We really liked this camera as it we needed the footage we
was really straight forward and captured to be well framed.
the picture quality was really Without a tripod our film would
good considering how basic have seemed a lot less
the camera was. The only professional.
negative of the Camera, is that
the battery ran our really easily
and so if we forgot to charge it
before we shot new clips the
production was taken back by
about 30minutes.

5. iMovie Photoshop
iMovie was used to edit our Photoshop was used to create
whole music video and offered the digipak and our digipak
all the technology we needed. If advert. Without the advanced
we didn’t have access to iMovie picture editing software we
we would have had to use a far would have had to use Paint or
less professional program, something similar, which is the
nowhere near the standards of most basic tool for photo editing,
iMovie. With iMovie we could cut and our products would have
and add effects wherever we suffered in doing so. With
wanted and as our music video Photoshop we were able to
has so many short clips, this was erase flaws and add pictures.
the ideal program for us. The only negative of Photoshop
is that it is incredibly technical
and was difficult to get our head
round it the first few times we
used it. However, we were able
to search for anything that we
didn’t understand on Youtube.

6. Youtube was where we posted all the videos we
created. It is the perfect place to post videos as it is
public and anyone can see your products. This is
great because it means that our music video has the
potential to have one of the widest audiences on
the internet. However, it is unlikely that our video will
get many views. This is because on Youtube, if
you’re not famous or a well-known Youtube star, it is
unlikely that videos such as our music video, will get
much attention. This is YouTube's only fault where we
were concerned.
Youtube was the best way to get a good quality
video onto our blogs.

7. Finally, like last year, we had to post all of our research, planning
and construction onto a blog. Blogger (or BlogSpot) was the blog
of choice. I really enjoyed blogging, and creating a blog that
both looked good and contained the work we needed to gave
me a feeling of accomplishment. However, after a while blogging
became side-tracked as we focussed predominantly on our three
media projects and so the amount of posts I did per month
diminished as the months went on. Though in the later months of
our coursework I managed to pick up the pace and add some
needed work to my blog.
Blogger was the best option for blogging, this is because it is
incredibly simple and if you make a mistake you don’t have to
delete the whole post, it keeps it saved in the Edit Post section
where you can change your post as much as needs be. It also
doesn’t focus too much on aesthetics (as my AS blog, on Wix, did)
which encouraged me to increase the amount of work I did.