1st draft for evaluluation question 'How did you use the media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?'

Plan for evaluation
How did you use the media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Blog:
To record all aspects of our research we used the blog to post posts of all the information we collected.
You can either type the post up on blogger, copy and paste the text from word or even upload documents to slide share and then embed them into the blog.
Embedding pictures into blogger either scanned in that we created, for instance our storyboard or get pictures from the internet and upload them right to the post by using the URL.
The blog is meant to be utilized in such a way that when you have finished a document or piece of work it is advisable to put it onto the blog as to keep track of the work and show evidence that the work has actually been done. I used the blog for such things however I always had trouble keeping up to date with what needed to be blogged and when, this sometimes lead to deadlines being missed and bad organisation. Therefore if I would change one thing about the whole blogging process, it would be that I would try and keep more organised and attempt to have put more of the work. However using blogger was most useful when it came to keeping up to date with the college blog, this allowed me to keep track of what was needed and there would also be useful suggestions to what we should od, by this I mean that when we were making our album covers our college blog was utilized by the staff to show us useful covers of other bands work that we may find useful when we were making that of our own. So in conclusion I feel that I could have used blog more successfully, but it was useful as it allowed us to put stuff on slide share on it would relatively easy to embed music videos.


Music video:
Lighting:
As we began to shoot our music video we had a limited time schedule to shoot, we only had around 2 hours before it got dark. However, this enabled us to use the light in a way that from inside the barn it wasn’t too well lit, this helped us to give the audience the eerie feeling we needed. However, this did mean that some of our shots had to be discarded because we either didn’t have the right light or they just weren’t visible enough to use.

Camera:
To best use our camera effectively we used a tripod for steady shots. For the majority of shots we took we used the camera tripod. It was most effectively used to the long zoom into the barn from on top of the hill. With the tripod it would have been an extremely shaking shot. However we did not always have to use the tripod, for one scene in our music video we decided that it would be better if we did not use the tripod as we decided to go with a perspective shot. This was used while walking and held at eye level to give the feel of someone actually walking. The tripod was also used for all the panning shots
Editing of our music videos
For the editing of our music video text, we used final cut express. Final cut express on MAC computers. This was what I think a relatively easy editing programme to used but in the right hands it can be really effective as you can put on loads of effects. Went first had to upload all of our clips we decide to used then we put the clips into two initial categories which where shots we thought were good enough and shots that we thought were not good enough to go into the music video, this was done by making to such folders so after viewing each shot me and Chris would critically assess whether or not the shot should be put into the final piece. After this we would put the clips into chronological order and try and fit in the transitions with the pace of the music, special effects where added later.
Print productions:
What was used: Photoshop+ various resources given to us by the band
To start with the band had initially given us some pictures and resources that we could use of them, they gave us some pictures of them practising and other just general pictures of the band together.
After deciding that for my digipack I would be using only one picture of a eye that was suggested to me to use by the band i just used Photoshop. Firstly i cropped in a image for the dimensions that a digipack would have to use and set that as the layer so i could work round it, this helped me put everything into place, subsequent layers were put on until the work was finished. I found this a very simple piece of work; this may have been partially down to my relative lack of experience when it comes to Photoshop, I feel therefore that for my next piece of print production, which was the magazine advert, that I utilized Photoshop in a better manner as I was more experienced with using it.
As for when it came to my second print production o was slightly more confident with using Photoshop, I used very similar methods to that of what I used for my first print production. However the main difference between what I did for my first print production and this one was that for the magazine advertisement I decided t crop a picture in of the band. However the techniques I used were very similar for this for Photoshop but i feel and hope that i managed to utilize Photoshop more effectively and this will be evident in my second print production. Therefore i am happy with my use of Photoshop however i do feel i could have used it in a more advanced way to attempt to get more advanced effects, however I still feel that i have improved when it comes to Photoshop while making my two print productions