Evaluation: 4) How did you use technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

During construction, research, planning and evaluation stages, I have used a variety of new media technologies in order to create a successful and high quality promotional package. Some of these technologies I have used before in AS, however a long the way I have used some newer ones. The skills I learned in AS have developed as my work now looks attracting, professional and superior.

Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, documents, and videos anywhere and share them easily, this was an effective and easy way to share our work with one member of your group group as we would use all the same images. By using Dropbox it saved a lot of time as we wasn't passing USB's back and forth.

This is the Dropbox account I set up and I also suggested that the other members of the group did as well so that we could create a shared folder to view all the work such as, images and logos.

During our research I used the a new technology to help me through this process as I able to look Google for existing digi packs, album release adverts, band shots and existing logos. Research was a key process as without this I wouldn't of been able to gain influentual ideas in order to create my promotional package.

This is an image to show how I used technologies within the research processs.

Youtube was a technology used within planning our song choice right at the start when the project was set, we searched music videos of the same genre and that of contrasting genres in order to make sure we had the right song choice for our music video. Not only was it for planning but also to research music videos so we could understand what camera shots they use, mise-en-scene, codes and conventions, props and setting. After constructing the music video this was our source of where we would upload our final videos, pitches and feedback.

Our main task was to create a music video and with to make a professional video we used technologies such as, a hand held camera to film all of our footage in locations such as an isolated studio, someone's house, a car and Mick Jagger Center but the hand held camera also was effective as this is when the audience could feel like their in their shoes. Other equipment that helped us to create the video was equipped a jib,dolly, tripod and a tracking system to create movement and  different heights/levels to our video. We used different lighting for the video such as dark then low key lighting(main spotlight) when filming the band shots as this emphased an isolated environment. We also used a a hand held camera when taking footage of the creative arts evening and audienc's feedback.

As we started the construction process this is when the technology, Photoshop was used so that we was able to uload our images and then adjust and edit them to how we wished. Photoshop specialises in images as I was able to use the magic wand tool, hue and saturation, brightness and contrast, crop, solid color, rasterize, layers to create more professional and effective images. Photoshop was also used to create our band logo as well as the bands name logo.

Indesign was a technology that I used to contruct my my digi pack and album release advert as well as the tray card and CD. I found Indesign is the best software to use when creating these tasks as they have all the tools you need, cropping, text, enlarging, layering, drop shadow, rotation, masking, opacity etc. All of these are tools that I used within my final ancillary tasks. Indesign was very helpful when creating my tray card and cd as they had borders, measurements and instructions templated onto it for me to follow for my work to look professional. However, I developed more skills as I learned how to make an image transparent so the image blends in with the background, which made my tray card look effective. To learn these skills I used a tutorial from YouTube to teach myself how to make the image transparent.

 This is what I was able to create in Indesign as I learned the skill to transparent an image with the tutorial that I found in Youtube.

Premier Pro was the newest media technology I have used. This was used to place and edit our footage of constructing a 'real' music video. We had very little experience with this media technology, however we did test it out when we was set a short tasks of creating an open day video. Premier Pro allowed us to place a song onto premier pro and layer the footage over(removing footage sound) it. We cut down all of the footage so that the lip syncing was in time with the music so that it looked realistic. Effects and transitions we used were cross dissolve, zoom, blur, black and white effect and ghosting.