Blogger
Since September, when we first began our A2 Media Studies course, I have been user Blogger to record my progress and present my research, planning and evaluation. I have used Blogger as a safe area to keep all my thoughts and ideas to represent my creativity and abilities in Media technologies. It has helped me an awful lot when I have ever needed to reflect back over my work or my previous ideas as I have always been able to refer back to my Blogger and find any of the previous work I had done. My blog has been completed by me and only me, whereas the media product I have created was done in a group. Therefore Blogger has really allowed me to express my views and ideas and allow my creativity and abilities to shine through as an individual. My own personal abilities in using Blogger have also developed. I began using Blogger at the beginning of my AS Levels for Media Studies. I was very unsure of what to blog, when to blog and also how to blog. I am now very confident in this and have creatively thought up my own blogging ideas. I have gathered photos, print screen images, videos and other texts to show my research and planning. I use my blog like a diary to record everything I have done in the production and research stages. It helped me a lot when it came to evaluating my work and my own performance, as I was able to read back over everything I have done and gather sufficient information in order to produce a good quality evaluation.
Camera
To make my blog informative and to fully represent my findings and ideas, I often used a digital camera to take images of locations, costume choices and actors etc. Taking these photographs allowed me to produce solid evidence of my personal plans. It allowed me to show that I had thought through everything I had done, had planned out everything that I would do in the future, and just made my blog much more efficient and informative. Taking images of locations allowed me to see whether these places looked good on camera as sometimes things look very scenic when you are there, but the camera does not always pick this up. Therefore I was able to eliminate or agree with specific locations based on the outcomes of these photos. We also used camera to take images of me that we would use to create our Digipack and Advert (ancillary texts). As our video was pop genre and therefore very artist focused, I also wanted my Digipack and advert to be artist focused to coincide with this. Therefore the need for photographs of me was essential.
Apple MAC
Each group was assigned a MAC in order to be able to carry out the editing stages of our main product. On the MAC there was a specific software installed (iMovie HD) that we needed to use to edit our videos. The MACs allowed us to save the video as a file that would be compatible with Youtube, so that we could upload the video on here and become distributors of media.
iMovie HD
I used iMovie HD to edit our video. It is a software that through practice I have become very confident using and so therefore took on a lead role in editing the video. Without this advanced software, we would have been unable to put our clips in any kind of order. We needed to do this to, add effects, sync miming, include audio and split clips. It was basically the actual production of the music video, the place where everything was put together and ordered. The effects we used were, lighting changes, flash effects, darkening saturation to set the mood, slow motion etc. All of these things were done to increase the impact of the video and to establish the mood. We also included transitions which allowed our cuts from scene to scene to run a lot smoother. This was important as we wanted the video to flow evenly throughout. We used lighting effects to represent emotions and establish the mood.
YouTube
YouTube was used by me in the research and planning stages of creating my media product. It not only allowed us to research other video and gain a better understanding of our genres stereotype but also audience expectations. We learnt a lot using YouTube as it was our main source of locating real media products to develop these ideas and incorporate them into our own.
Not only did YouTube allow us to carry out research and learn a lot about what we should include in our music video, we were also able to use YouTube to share our own work. We became media distributors through the use of YouTube when we uploaded our video onto this site.
Facebook
We used this social networking site to plan. Often as a group we would have conversations on Facebook about times we would meet, what we would film and also to discuss any ideas we had. We only get 5 hours lesson time, and so the rest of the time is up to us to find a way to continue outside of lesson time. Therefore Facebook became very convenient as a method to discuss in a three way conversation, something which cannot be done via text etc. And therefore we were able to get everybody in our groups input which was very useful. We would often plan dates and times of meeting and would then post these conversations on our blogs to provide evidence of our planning skills.
We also used Facebook to gather feedback. We posted our video as a status and asked for people to leave their comments. Another way we could share our work and distribute our media product. This processed allowed us to gain a better understanding of audience perception of our video and we were therefore able to make good improvements as on Facebook you can reach a very wide variety of people in a very short space of time.
Video Camera
To make a music video, we needed to film scenes to fill the entirety of the song. To do this, we used a school provided video camera. We was assigned a specific camera and memory so that all of our filming could be together in one place. Without this camera, we would not have been able to create a music video and so this was an essential piece of equipment.
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