Q4. How did you use Media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout every process involved in our advanced media production, we used various technologies that helped us along the way. We used multiple forms of media to complete each stage and looked at different methods of production and planning throughout.

 

The main technology that we used during our production was Final Cut Express. We chose to use Final Cut as it is an editing software that allowed to use practice more editing techniques than IMovie or any other. Although we were familiar with IMovie from past experience, we found after research into the editing software, that Final Cut allows more precise editing. This benefitted us greatly as we had a large number of short clips that needed to decrease in length. Once we had filmed all our footage for the music promo, we used Final Cut edit our piece and put together a final music Video. During the process, there were several things that I learnt about Final Cut and the way it works.


The main thing that I learnt was how to insert a fading effect into a clip of footage and how to change the timing of an effect. Knowing that we wanted to use an effect for part of the clip, we looked at the different ways to include an effect and how it fits with the footage. To choose a clip, I knew that there was access to a drop down menu that presents a list of the possible effects. However I did not know that the clip timings could be changed. We then found that we could fade the clip at a certain point of choosing and change the timings when we needed the clip to fade. We did this by opening a new editing menu for a chosen effect. This then allowed us to manipulate the transition period and the time it lasted.

To create the ancillaries we used a programme called Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is a professional image editing software that allows you to adapt an image and create documents that can be edited. We used this to create our digipak and the magazine poster. We chose to use this website as it gave us many options to how we wanted to create the ancillaries and the way we can adapt them to make it fit with the music promo. We used a blank document on Photoshop so that we could add our own text and images of our choosing. We chose the images from our music promo, such as the clock, and added them to the document. We then played around with the effects and looked at the opacity. Although we were each familiar with Photoshop and the way it works, there were still several things that I learnt through the process. When I was working on the digipak I learnt how to create a background layer for an individual piece of text. I knew that I could copy text, but I also learnt how to create a shadow behind any piece of text. To do this I duplicated the layer and changed the font and colour of the text to create a shadow. I then placed the shadowed text behind the original layer to make it look like its shadow.


Facebook and sharing the video
A helpful social media website that we used to research the band was 'Facebook'. We chose to use this website as we knew that it is one of the most popular ways for bands and musicians to advertise their music and share information with their different audiences. Therefore, we looked at the site and found that our chosen band had a page on 'Facebook' that had a large number of information that we could use. The page on their site shared all of their songs and shared their upcoming performance dates. Once looking through, we found out more about the band and their inspirations for their music. This gave us a bigger idea of who influenced our chosen band, therefore we could watch these videos and gain inspiration for our music promo. We also used 'Facebook' to share our music promo once it had been completed. We knew that sharing our finished product on this site would attract our target audience and would be a good way of gaining views. Once a member of our target audience had watched the video; they could then share the video with even more people. This helped to make the video more popular and allowed us to exhibition our promotional package further.





This image is an example of one of the ways we shared our music promo through the use of social media. We posted the video to the website 'Facebook' so that any member of the public could watch it and could also give us feedback on our production. This was an effective way of presenting our product to a wider audience and ensured that we attracted our target audience.