Note to the Moderator

Hello, my name is Alice, welcome to my A2 Media Studies blog. Here you can view the work I have posted as a real time record of my coursework through the stages of research and planning, production, post-production and evaluation. The 'Archive' and 'Labels' down the right-hand side of my blog will help you navigate through my work, for example the 'Research and Planning' label will show you all of my research and planning work that I have done during the course. My final products are labelled under 'Final Product' and my evaluation questions under 'Final Evaluation'. I have really enjoyed working on my coursework, and I hope you enjoy viewing my work and progression throughout the course.
Thank you

Final Music Video

Final Advertisement and Digipak

Final Evaluation Question Four

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

Throughout the coursework I have used many new media technologies to help both create and enhance my work within all the stages of my coursework. Many of these technologies were specific to each stage as they helped me in different ways; however, there were still several new media technologies that helped me all the way through my coursework. For example, I used Blogger within all the stages of my coursework to post my progress, ideas, changes, feedback and evaluation; therefore this was one of the most useful technologies used within my work. Other new media technologies that helped me throughout include my iPhone and the Blogger app, which allowed me to work on my blog, posts on-the-go and keep my work up-to-date.

Research and Planning

Within the research and planning stages I used several new media technologies for different reasons within the different research and planning sections for my digipak, advertisement and music video. Within the initial research stage I used many different websites such as Tumblr to collect images of album cover artwork as inspiration for my digipak and advertisement, and YouTube to look at other music videos from which I could take ideas for my own. I then started to create my audience and artist profiles and made decisions on what genre and style my artist and products would have, I used Blogger throughout this work to post my decisions and progress. I also began to build up my artist’s profile and branding by creating a Wix website for my artist and a Twitter account. After doing this we created our pitch using Animoto and began to refine our ideas and experimenting with ideas for my digipak and advertisement using Photoshop CS6. I also began to plan my music video, drawing a storyboard and then scanning in the images to create an animatic storyboard on iMovie.

Production

During production, the new media technologies that I used varied from those used within the research and planning stages, however, some were similar. For example, within the production of my digipak and advertisement I, again, used Photoshop CS6. Using this worked really well, as the features within the program helped to create strong ancillary products and make changes between my draft and final products that would greatly enhance the end appearance of my artist’s brand. Whilst doing this section of my coursework I also used several other new media technologies such as a SanDisk Memory Stick, which I used to transfer files between my windows laptop, my Apple MacBook Pro and the school PCs, so that I could work in many different places and allowing me to better use my time by not being tied to one platform.

Whilst creating our music video, other than the continued use of Blogger to post progress and feedback on draft products, the new media technologies that we used differed greatly from those used within the creation of my digipak and advertisement as well as the research and planning stages. During this section of coursework we used equipment such as a Panasonic HD Video Camera and lighting such as spotlights and reflectors. We also used a portable Hard Drive to save the footage, as the files were too large to store elsewhere, this was also a platform that was compatible between PC and Macs. We also used an HD SD card and DVD’s to save our footage within production.

Alongside this, I also used my iPhone to help me keep organised, storing feedback to refer to for my digipak and advertising as well as organising props, costume, location and dates for filming.

Post-Production

During post-production of my music video I used various editing software, this was because I found new features on more advanced programs that allowed me to continually enhance my final video. The first editing software I used was Adobe Premiere Elements 8, this program allowed me to edit the shots together, trim them to time, mute the clips and add in the sound track over the top. However, we discovered problems with this program as the project files would not transfer between PC and Mac formats. Due to this I began to use Adobe Premier Pro CS6, a more up-to-date program which had many more features and better image enhancements for the lighting and saturation within the clips. However, again we encountered problems with this program as it struggles to read certain file types that some of our footage had been saved in, and although I managed to complete a considerable amount this issue became frustrating and caused me to move on to different software. The final software I used, and completed my final video on, was Adobe Premiere Elements 11. This was the most current and up-to-date version of the original software I had used and was therefore easier for me to understand and learn to use. However, as this software was more recent it also contained many of the image and lighting enhancements that I had found useful within Adobe Premiere Pro, this was consequently the best choice of software to use. 

On completing my video I used YouTube to upload the music video and post it on Blogger, allowing my teachers and class peers to give feedback. I then also posted it on my artist’s website and Twitter account to enhance her branding and also posted the video on my own Facebook account to generate peer feedback for my evaluation.

Evaluation

Within the evaluation stage I used even more varying new media technologies as well as some that I had already used throughout my work. For example, within the evaluation stage I continued to use Blogger both on the computer and my iPhone. I also used Microsoft Word Mac 2008 to write up my draft evaluation questions. I then used Scribd to post these documents on Blogger.

When creating my final evaluation questions, I used more different new media technologies to produce interesting presentations of my evaluation. The programs I am using include Glogster and Prezi, free online facilities that allow me to create interactive presentations. I will also use Animoto to create a montage of images alongside my evaluation, and iMovie to create a short movie including my evaluation question answer.

Final Evaluation Question Three

Final Evaluation Question Two

Final Evaluation: Question One