The document discusses the use of media technologies in the planning, construction, and evaluation of three projects: a music video, CD digipak, and CD advertisement. For research, the internet was used extensively, particularly YouTube to research music video conventions and iTunes for researching digipak designs. Photoshop and graphic tablets were used to design the digipak and draw ideas. A variety of cameras, including a Sony HVR camcorder, were used to film the music video. iMovie was used to capture footage and Final Cut Pro for advanced editing of the music video, including adding filters, speed adjustments, and jump cuts. Blogger was used throughout to document the process by uploading

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

2. For all the three productions I
was using an Apple
computer. I did this by
using them it would gain
me experience in using both
Mac and Windows
programs.
I came into a couple of issues when using iMac and MacBook. One
that seemed to catch me out the most was different programs on the
macs. The college owns the iMac’s and I own the MacBook and both
have different softwares. To create a document, powerpoint, etc I use
the iWork softwares whereas the college use Open Office. This has
caused me a lot of agony due to the two softwares not being able to
read each others softwares. So when I save a document that I want to
finish off at college or vice versa, I have to save it as a Word
document so the software is able to read it. There have been many
time were I have forgotten this.

3. Research
When it came to doing researching into the
music video scene I didn’t have to go far. The
strongest tool that I needed for this area was the
internet. Using the internet has allowed me to
find information almost instantly.
The website that I used the most would be YouTube. The site meant I
was able to watch a wide range of different music video of diverse
genres; thus causing me to gain the concept of how to make an
enticing music video, as well as leading me to notice the
conventions of a rock genre music video.
The internet in general is a brilliant research tool. Which also helped
me when exploring digipaks and CD adverts. However, I did find it
harder to find the right sort of information that I was looking for.
Due to this reason I decided to look else where.

4. For researching digipaks I came across some
issues. One was that nowhere on the internet
seemed to have up loaded images of finished
digipaks. However while looking through my
iTunes I noticed I had songs that were not
listened too, from good bands and solo artists. To
my surprise it was interactive digipak that had
come with the download of the album. Using
this service I was able to look into the conventions of digipaks.
However it wasn’t as easy to access CD adverts, I still had to go to my
local newsagents to purchase their music magazines. I bought the
magazines Q and kerrang to look at the range of genre conventions.
In doing this it gave me a better understanding of what was needed
in a CD advert.

5. Planning & Construction
In the planning and construction stages I had to use a wide range of
different technologies to complete my three products.
With the creation of the music video with each process we were going
through I documented it on Blogger, where I have my own media
blog. Using this service allowed me to access my work from home
and college without having to remember a USB.
I also used blogger for the creation of the digipak and advert. I used
it by uploading drawn ideas along with annotations.
I used blogger throughout all of the stages of the three productions
because of it being simple and easy to access.

6. In the pre production stages we had decided that to make the
video energetic it would have to be an edit job. However we
decided to come up with some shots that we could use.
From these idea I drew them on to the computer using a graphic tablet. After
getting the outlines and some sketches of the band equipment and colour, I then
completed them by hand which took a long time.
The drummer is the first one that I did and the guitarist is the last and as you
can see the more I did the better I got at drawing on to the tablet

7. To be able to draw on to the computer via the
graphic tablet I had to use a software called
Photoshop, which is a complex version of
Windows Paint.
I have had to use the software many times
during the three productions. Two of which
were created on Photoshop.
When it came to designing the digipaks I didn’t have much
experience on Photoshop, I had only briefly used it before to edit
images. It was clear to me that I was going to need help, so I went to
Google and did a search for tutorials. I found many and watched
about the same amount.
with the first digipak design (the blue slow shutter one) I was
mainly using tutorials to show me how to create the effect.

8. I used this tutorial
website: http://
graffititools.blogspot.co
m/2009/01/slow-
shutter-effect.html
To create this effect I had to use the pen tool to draw out what you
wanted the text to look like or to say.
After that you need to select the paint tool and make sure the
colour is on one that you would want to use, mine was white.
Then go back to the pen tool then right click on the pattern you
made and click on fill in, which then used the paint tool to go
over the pattern in white.
After that you right click on the layer and click on outer glow
and then choose your intensity and colour and it should look
like this.

9. When it came to the process of having to film
the music video we had a choice of which camera
we were going to use.
We had a choice a of a standard HD sony
miniDV camcorder or the Sony HVR-HD1000E
(top right). We decided to use the HVR because
of our production choice to use only handheld
shots, and this one would give us more
stability than a hand strap.
Due to choosing the large camera we then had to
take a large tripod to keep the camera steady.
We needed the tripod for the opening pan.

10. During the whole production stages I have used
the film editing softwares iMove and Final Cut.
I Used iMovie for small project for me talking
about ideas and what we are going to do.
I have used Final Cut for the music video as the
editing you can do to make it look more
professional.
When we recorded the music video and came to
capturing the clips we decided to use iMovie
because it much simpler and easier to capture
the video on this software than Final Cut. This
meant that after the capture we had to move the
clips over to Final Cut which wasn’t a problem.

11. When we finally started editing the music video we started setting
up the opening scene. When we finished it was a brutal 30 seconds
long - too long for a music video so we had to cut it down to 15
seconds. This was done so that the audience could be entertained
and not loose interest. To cut down so much we used jump cuts,
that happened on every beat which was effective.
After this we started to play around with what worked and what
didn’t. We had a clip of Connor swinging the microphone and I
had the idea of slowing it down in the middle, when he was
halfway through his swing. After doing this on Final Cut Pro we
decided that it didn’t work with the other clips we had, so we decided
not to use it.

12. When we added in the black and white filter to the beginning I felt
it was to saturated so I decided to add depth. I did this by
increasing the blacks in the scene to create a bigger contrast
between the white, thus adding depth.
Further into the editing process we came across a nice drum beat
and decided to reverse a clip. The clip is of the band running into a
corn field. We reversed the clip, but decided that it didn’t fit in so I
slowed it down to 90% so when the band landed on the ground it
was on a beat. When we had finished the video we decided that we
should use jump cuts. We did this because this was the only clip
that we had reversed and it seemed out of place and by doing the
jump cuts it would fit in with the opening.

13. In the music video we only used one transition, a
fade to black at the very end. This was to show how
when the song ended the energy was leaving,
which had a more profound effect on how energetic
the music video was.