1. Evaluation Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

2. Throughout producing my coursework this year have used a number of different technologies. Without many of them, it would not have been possible to complete it. My work could have been significantly improved if we would have had different technologies at our disposal. For example, even though the college have a few HD video cameras, it was very hard to book one to use because other studies students were also trying to book them at the same time that we needed them. Using these could have improved the quality of the picture. They would have been less complicated to use seeing as they use memory cards instead of tapes. This would also mean it would have saved us a lot of time during the editing process the import the videos onto the computer; we wouldn’t have had to use the Adobe OnLocation program.

3. The internet was a huge help to me in producing the coursework. I first used it as an aid with my research and planning. I used Google heavily to search for images, videos and theories. Blogger is what I use to post all of my work onto, it is a lot easier to use than having to write it all out by hand, especially seeing as a lot of my work contains videos and content created online. I used Youtube to research other videos and to help me gain some inspiration for my own. I also used it to upload my own videos. This website was and still is very useful to me, it allowed me to upload my video so I could embed it onto my blog. Prezi is a very handy new website which lets people create their own presentations, you can be more creative with it than you can with Microsoft Powerpoint. The social networking site Facebook helped me collect the audience research. It is useful in setting up focus groups; you can add members and easily post questions for them to answer. However, that doesn’t mean that everybody will necessarily answer. Face to face interviews may be a better way of collecting feedback due to that reason.

4. Facebook focus group:

5. I used a range of equipment to produce both my music video and print work. For the print work I used a Nikon D60 DSLR camera. This was useful to me as is it quite a high quality camera, and in my opinion I managed to acquire some very good photos using it. For the main video task we used a Panasonic DV camera. It was useful to us as without it we wouldn’t have had any film. However it would have been even better to have been to able to use a HD camera. We also used a tripod to keep the video camera on, so we could get steady shots.

6. In order to edit my productions I had to use different programs. When I produced the print work, I used Adobe Photoshop CS5. I have experience in using this program as I used it to produce my AS coursework and I used it when I did an art graphics course, so for me it is relatively easy to use. In order to put the film from the tape onto the computer I had to use Adobe OnLocation. This is quite a time consuming process, especially when there are is a lot of video to capture. Even though I have never used the program before, I quickly got to grips with using it. I has a few technical issues such as some faulty video clips which caused the computer to crash, but other than that it was fine to use. To edit the footage, I used Adobe Premier Pro. I thought this program was really helpful, as it did everything we needed it to. This too was not very difficult to use, once I got some practice I knew what I needed to do. If we didn’t have this program it would have been much more difficult to put together the film and edit it.

7. Technological Determinism This theory presumes that a society’s technology forces the growth of it’s social structure and cultural values. I don’t think new technology had too much of a ‘say’ in my production work. I believe I controlled the technology skillfully so that I achieved what I wanted. Also I think it helped that I knew how to use the technology and software to an extent that I didn’t let it determine or take over my ideas and plans.

8. Media 2.0 I’ve used media 2.0 technologies such as networking sites to my advantage. I’ve tried to push my work in different and new directions which they wouldn’t have reached without media 2.0. I communicated with the artist via Facebook to put across ideas, and also YouTube to show her the animatic/storyboard. I responded to what she had to say, and I think it improved our video in some ways. I also responded to what my audience had to say about works in progress, albeit some of the ideas were not suitable.