1. Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the research, planning, construction and production of your work?

2. Researching music videos To research the form and genre of music videos, the first resource I used was the internet. YouTube has become one of the most important resources for media, as many artists, big and small, use it as a way of promoting user-generated content. The convergence of music and the internet produced a new way for consumers to access their music and even encounter music they wouldn’t have before. Other, albeit more traditional, resources for music video are the music channels that propagate in our televisions today, and each cater to every musical taste. Such examples include Kerrang, Viva, Kiss, VH1 (a sister channel of MTV) and 4Music.

3. Audience Research There are many ways of researching the audience, but I found using an online survey being the most accessible; normally this would have taken longer than a few hours to do, but once again the internet has made it so much easier. I used the website freeonlinesurveys .com to create a survey one to research the audience; the other to gain feedback for my music video. Unfortunately, my survey on freeonlinesurveys .com was only allowed to be active for ten days, hence my data was lost. Other ways I tried to gather information about the audience were through social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. The internet has really created a whole new interactive environment where the audience can access music easily and even discover music they would never have encountered otherwise.

4. Planning In planning my production, I had to create a storyboard and make it into an animatic sequence to show a rough idea of the music video. To do this, I used my Canon EOS D450 SLR to take the pictures of the storyboard and transferred them into iMovie to create the animatic.

5. Production of the music video Filming the clips was a lot easier now that I have had the experience during AS. I used the Panasonic SDR-H85 camcorder to film the video clips with a tripod for stability, making camera movement and panning easier. The camera was very easy to use and the quality of the clips came rather well; with an easy interface on the menu, I adjusted the white balance to suit the lighting of the location, which wasn’t very good considering I was filming during the winter. To edit, I once again used iMovie as it was very easy to use and I have used it in my AS work.

6. Production of print products For my print products the images were taken with my Canon EOS 450D SLR camera as it gave a hi-quality finish and the images were big enough to be edited well. The editing software I used was the Adobe Photoshop CS3, which I have used before and therefore am familiar with. The first time using it was not so easy, but with enough practice with it I found it very useful in creating convincing print products.

7. Distribution and audience feedback To get my content distributed, I used YouTube to upload my music video. It is a great tool to use in order to distribute user-generated content as people have now become ‘prosumers’ (producers and consumers) of media content whereas it would have been different in the past. Social networking sites such as Facebook have been helpful in gaining feedback on the music video; because of the growing convergence and synergies with technologies in the recent years, people can now share YouTube links, post them on Facebook and people can comment on it. The website SurveyMonkey has also helped in gathering more responses from the audience by creating online surveys.

8. Presenting my work I used Microsoft Powerpoint to create presentations and Slideshare to upload them on the internet. Websites such as freefonts.com allowed me to download fonts suitable for my digipak and magazine advert. Slideshare is a website where I can upload my Powerpoint presentations to embed onto my blog. All my work goes into the blogging website Livejournal. It is a very useful tool in as I can use html formatting and CSS layouts, which make my work look more presentable. The interactive interface means that I can get feedback from my teachers easier.