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

During the research and planning process during year 13, I have used many programs and software which have allowed me to accomplish the things I have wanted to. I used such websites as Youtube to get the music video planning that I needed which I either made a presentation in Microsoft power point or write an essay in Microsoft office word. Posting all my research and planning to a blog (blogspot.com or blogger) saves the hassle of all the paper work and also it is just in one place and as the majority of people having internet nowadays it is a lot easier to access. Blogger or Blogspotis a lot more interactive with multimedia as it allows your to embed videos and stills from the internet. Allowing you to put this in to your work for easier understandment or just to interact with your essay or planning.

During the construction of our music video and the digipak product we used a lot more programs. For the music video we used Premier Elements. This software allows you to put clips from your own video camera and connect them together using effects. The program is very helpful mainly for our age group as it is relitively easy to use but at the same time not to complicated to use. It looks a lot more professional compared to another movie maker software like windows movie maker. The effects we used helped us a lot mainly just to brighten the scene of the whole video, such as playing with the brightness and contrast of the video image.

The song we used, we decided, was too long for the footage that we had and wanted to use. Therefore we had to use another program called Audacity to cut the song to the right length that we wanted it to be at. It allowed us to open the song and to cut it precisely to the beat to fit the on screen action.

The digipak i believe was the hardest to make out of all of the media we have used in year 13. This is mainly because i have never used photoshop before. But the more i used it, the more i got used to it. Photoshop allowed me to edit the image by changing the contrast and tone and even just putting an image on top of another without it looking daft or unreal.

Whilst at the evaluation stages, it was a good idea to use different types of media for each question on the evaluation. So for example for a question i may use a Prezi (online presentation) and for another just a word document or a powerpoint. Another way we could do it is either a video-ed or recorded interview answering the evaluation questions. This gives it a nice variation instead of looking at the same old blank document of word on the blog and changes it up a little bit. It also allows teachers to teach students about new media technologies so if they go on to further education or into the media industry they have an insight of what they are going to.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The music video and ancillary texts were quite similar to each other in different ways. They linked in many ways, but the main way was that I used stills from my music video to be in my CD case and magazine advert. I used these as I thought they represented the genre of music well and they were strong, stand out images. I edited them using Photoshop and changed the colouring on the images and put a flourish in the backdrop to make them look different and more outstanding for the digipak.

As our music video target audience and target audience for our band was males, around the ages of 16 to 20. Therefore in our music video, we casted our actors to this specific target audience. This then allows the audience to relate to it as its like mirroring themselves (Lacan Theory) and then the stills in the CD and advert. They also can connect with the sense throughout the music video of the teenagers having fun and just chilling on the beach and just being carefree. This also represents an ideology to our target audience illustrating a carefree and fun lifestyle.

The location of the beach in our music video is the main location which connotates happy and fun as most beaches do. The British beach senses some sort of danger but fun at the same time with the concept of weather and lack of sunlight. The beach theme also links with my digipak based on the flourish I used in the backdrop of most of my photos gives it the beach theme towards all of the photos I used including the actual CD.

Our target audience links with the stylistic genre of the digipak and music video. The genre would have to have an indie/folk characteristic to it as the music for the video is in that genre of music. This means that the style, feel and image of the music video and CD had to be ‘in sync’ and coherent. For the CD and advert we did this by researching similar artists such as ‘foals’ and progressing from that. It was the same for the music video but we had to do extra to make sure it looked like we wanted it to suit the genre.

Target Audience

Planning Prints Production

Actors and Casting

Shooting Schedule