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

During this porject, I feel that different media technologies have helped me on the course to create effective products similar to real media products. Without these different technologies, I couldn't of been as creative as i would of been due to limitations. I have used technologies ranging from physical equipment, professional software and a variety of online resources open to the public.

Online

Throughout the whole project I have actively used the technologies of Blogger to keep record of my project and post my work, I have also used Google extremely usefully to search for new ideas and for research. I found Blogger very useful in organizing my work, and even more useful on recalling work I had done weeks ago to bring forward to help with filming. As long as I had WiFi, I could access Blogger on my iPod or iPad, making it extremely useful to recall work up when i'm moving.

Facebook has also been a very useful technology for me as its provided an easy way to gain audience feedback on work I have previously posted on there. Thanks to technological convergence, I had the luxury of accessing Facebook feeds on my phone, making sure that i could access this feedback when we were out filming for our video. Also, Facebook sued real time technology, which made it easier for me to gain feedback  extremely quickly and efficiently.

Software

The availability of advanced software has been extremely useful to me in my project and has enabled me to create work I couldn't make without it. I already had extensive knowledge of the Adobe suite as i had used it quite often before. Adobe Photoshop was very useful in my print task, for example, the tools in the program were useful in helping me edit my work. The dodge/burn tool helped me darken/brighten parts of the pictures, I could add colour filters to slightly change the tone of the picture and use the magic wand tool to select parts of the photo to edit and change.

For editing, I used a program called Adobe Premier which allowed me to edit the clips I had recorded earlier. I could cut clips down, extend them, speed them up, rewind them and place them in time with the music. This was useful when it came to lining up the lip syncing with the music to make it look realistic.

Equipment

For my photography work, I used a digital SLR camera for my still shots and stop motion animation. They were very useful with out still shots for our digipak as I found them simple to use and took photos quickly and easily, of a high quality. These cameras also made our stop motion increasingly simple, as all we had to do was photograph a series of images, in order, that we wanted to animate, then followed the directions through settings>animate>stop motion>AVI. It quickly merged our images into a stop motion film of about 14 frames per second. Fast enough to move, yet slow enough to give our film a 'home made stop motion' effect.

For our filming work, we used a HD handheld camera, with attachable tripod. These cameras were simple to use and control and were very useful, as they recorded our clips in full high definition. The only thing I found difficult about the equipment was importing the video clips into premier for editing, as more than once I lost footage because I hadn't saved it into the right place. If I did this project again, I would be sure to take more care with importing files.