Evaluation: Question Four

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

New media technologies are internet based concepts such as websites and digital mediums (CD's and DVD's) whereas old media technologies are televisions, film and paper based products. During my research stage I used both new media and old media technologies through the use of real media texts such as music videos. I found these music videos via the internet (youtube) when I was searching for a music video in particular, and television music channels when doing research on music relation to the R&B genre. I found that the music channel ‘FLAVA’ tended to play a lot of R&B music and thought it was a good place to start some primary research on the genre, and thereby get an idea of what types of conventions I need/wanted to include in my own music video. I used blogger to record all of the research I made during this stage.

During the planning stage I used mostly new media technologies such as the internet which I used to get pictures to explain ideas. I used real media texts such as music videos to make comparisons of ideas and to get an idea of the types of conventions I wanted to include in my own video which made planning process a lot easier. ( See research)

I had previous experience with the programme Final Cut Express from using it to create my short film introduction in AS thus, was competent/confident with Final Cut Express and this made the editing process of the video a lot easier. However, I had never used photoshop before so at first found it difficult to use and figure out. In order to get around this obstacle I used new media technologies through the use of Youtube to view tutorials on how to use it properly, and so after using it to create my Digipak and advert I feel a lot more confident in using the programme. I also used blogger to record progress and any changes that needed to be made, made construction easier as I could see exactly what needed to be done. Furthermore, I used blogger to book equipment.

Media technologies have also helped me a lot during post- production and the evaluation stages through the use of powerpoints and the website slideshare, and the use of excel to make pie charts and graphs. I also used a lot of media technologies when making my directors commentary, through the use of the apple macs, recording equipment and final cut express.