Evaluation Question 4

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

I used a range of media technologies in my research, planning and evaluation stages to help me further my knowledge of the media industry and develop my skills as a media producer. This included researching new ways of presenting work and showing how I developed my ideas and understandings of existing media text.

Blogger was the main form of presentation I knew how to use to show my work. This was a simple way of presenting my work however as it was just one page of white It was quite limiting on the visual aspect. Because of this I decided to branch out and look for new ways of presenting my work. This is when I found Prezzie and Info-graphic which are design websites that allow the user to create visual power points and posters. This allowed me to show my work in different mediums and also develop skills in a new area of media technology.

To research I used youtube to view video's on how to improve my filming and editing skills, this was very helpful as it allowed me to clearly see a step by step tutorial of what I needed to do when I came across a problem. For example when the shots I had filmed were too dark a youtube video showed me how to change the hue and saturation to brighten them up and show more colour. This allowed me to improve the quality of my video as well as improve my own skills. I also used YouTube to research exisiting media texts for ideas and influences for my own work. These examples are what gave me shot ideas as well as give me ideas for how to pace and time my video.

This project was also an opportunity for me to use Final Cut Express and edit a video for the first time. This media technology is quite advanced and allows people to create videos for various reasons. The program was alien to me at the beggining as I had no idea how to use it however after research and peer assistance I developed my skills to learn how to operate this new program and used it to edit my entire video. This is a new skill I was happy to develop as now I also know how to use the program to a proffesional standard without throwing the screen out a window when rendering for over 40 minutes. I also learned that saving your work throughout was an important part of the completion of my media production.

The equipment I used to film my video was possibly the most important part of my project as I needed to know how to shoot clear and intresting shots that were appropriote for the type of video I was trying to create but also met the criteria for my project. The camera I used was a DSLR Nikon Camera with two different lenses I used to shoot various types of shots. These lenses allowed me to film shots where everything was in focus and also to film shots where the background was blurred and the foreground was in focus, and visa versa.