Evaluation 4 (PLAN)

Evaluation 4

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

Construction

To construct the media products (Video, DigiPak and Poster) we had to use a variety of programs. These include:

Final Cut – This was the main tool that we used to edit the film and to put all of the clips together and make the video a professional one. We were able to edit the timing, positioning and length of shots, meaning that we were able to edit the parts that we wanted to and put the parts where we wanted to. Some of the tools that we used in Final Cut were: the razor cutter tool, the in and out markers and the time changer. The razor tool that we used allowed us to cut out certain parts and then if we didn’t think they fit, we could move them around. The in and out markers allowed us to select certain parts, and we could then edit these parts, either with the tools available in Final Cut or the ones in Photoshop.

Photoshop – This was the tool that we used extensively to edit the photos and was the tool that we used to create the digipak, advert and CD for the Ancillary task. It was good because it meant that we were able to change/ add different dimensions to the products, which originally were just pictures from a photo shoot. We used filters, background erasers and filler tools to create this effect. Although we mainly used this for the ancillary tasks it was also useful for the creation of comic effects in the video, for example the bridge between cartoon and reality scenes. To perform this task we had to take stills, frame by frame, and then import them into the program. Once they were in Photoshop we added a filter so that we had a comic effect and then if they needed extra editing this then we would add extra effects. For example we could have added blurs or fades on the pages.

Canon XL2 – This was the camera that we used to film the video and because it was a high quality camera we were able to get professional looking footage. We used this with a tripod, which meant we were able to get steady shots and this meant that the shots we needed didn’t wobble or distort. With this camera we were able to frame a variety of shots, including overhead shots, meat shots, close ups and establishing shots.

To research the media products that we created we used:

YouTube – We used this as a major part of our research into the video part of the eventual media product. We were able to look at similar videos from the same genre and this was able to look at regular conventions and we were then able to add these conventions to our planning stage. We could also look at the original video for this song and look at the themes that the song has had portrayed by the original artists.

Google – Using this popular search engine we were able to pretty much find all of the information that we need to construct a professional media product. It gave us the links to millions of websites and these were what helped us to get ideas and advice on creating the products. This was helpful for all 3 media products; Video, Digipak, Poster.

To plan the media products we used:

We used lots of programs for planning the media products. These included Prezi, Wordle, Blogger, Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint. Prezi, Wordle and PowerPoint were very good for presenting our ideas, which was good because it meant we could show people and could get early audience feedback. Blogger and Word were more used when we wanted to make a note of our ideas and so that we had somewhere to record it, and could use these as a document of our work and we can see how far the planning went. We had to ensure that our work wasn’t lost in the case of an accident so we always ensured that we had work backed up in a separate folder, meaning that it was highly unlikely that we would lose any work that we had previously created.

To evaluate the media products we used:

Social Networking Sites – Sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were very good to use when we were seeking feedback from our target audience, which was more of a teenage audience and these were the people our channels/ profile would be likely to attract. They were good because it meant that people were able to see the video easily and could comment or ‘like’ it on the sites. This meant we could get feedback and could look at said feedback and possibly change our video if we felt that it was necessary.

Prezi – We used a Prezi to display our evaluation as we felt that it was a good way to display all of the text and pictures that we wanted to and it also meant that we didn’t make it so complicated that it was impossible to read.

Video (Using HD Cameras) – we filmed videos for some of our evaluations so that we were able to visually represent ourselves whilst evaluating our media product. This meant that we could use the studio, with green screen, and this added a different dimension to the evaluation stage.

Class Evaluation - we got people in our class to watch the video and because they were all 17 or 18 years old, they were the perfect audience to use to evaluate. We asked them to watch our video and then look at our ancillary tasks and then asked them to write down what they thought of each text. In a similar way to the social networking sites we could look at this feedback and then decide if it was relevant enough to mean that we needed to make a change. If we had to then we would make this change, usually if it came up a few times on different peoples answers. Once we had done this we could show the same people the video again and then they could add more feedback and this meant we could keep improving it until we had a media product that everyone though was of an excellent standard.