4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction

and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Software

Final Cut Pro• Final Cut Pro is an editing software which we used to

create our music video. This software allowed me to take video clips which we filmed on the camera and transfer it across to to final cut where we edited and processed a variety of formats. This software is mainly used by independent film.

• Final cut pro allows us to view our film in different formats; the viewer, canvas, timeline and a small toolbox. The viewer and canvas have a shuttle interface which is variable speeds forward and backwards.

• I used final cut pro for the editing of my music video, it was a useful piece of software as it enabled me to edit the video clips we took into factions. We also were able to add many effects such as blurs, slow motion, black and white, all of these were ones that we have used.

Photoshop CS5 - Version 12.0

• Photoshop CS5 was the software we used to create our ancillary tasks with these being the Digipak and the Poster. We used some different graphical effects as it linked with the genre of Hip Hop / Rap.

• We wanted the digipak cover to not look too complicated therefore we approached a simpler look. We made sure there was synergy from the music video to the digipak and poster.

WordPress• WordPress was the most frequently used

site that we used throughout the process of creating our music video. This was used for research, planning and evaluating our work. We set up a joint blog so that we could both post all relevant work on to it. We made sure all our work was kept up to date with the progress of our work.

• WordPress allowed us to post different types of media onto our blog, this included images, links and videos which helped our blog look more visual and interesting to look at. Presenting our work on here was also very easy to do.

YouTube• We used YouTube for many different reasons. The first reason was we were able to

watch professional music videos from our music genre so that we stuck to the conventions for the music video. The most important reason for using YouTube, was so that we could upload our music video onto it and then share this on our WordPress blog.

• YouTube was easily accessible through the internet.

PowerPoint• PowerPoint was effective as it is a software built for presenting.

Although PowerPoint isn’t always the most interesting and visual aspect of an evaluation, it was key as it allowed me to collect images of different hardware and software used and then write about each one.

• It helped me talk about each piece of equipment on a separate slide which makes it look more professional and appealing.

Hardware

Camera• The camera we used in order to film our music video was the Canon Legria HF

R506. It was able to shoot in High Definition with 3.2mp, 32x optical zoom and 57x advanced zoom.

• The camera used to take photos for the digipak and advert was a Canon DSLR. It was able to produce amazing image quality and was able to pick up the lighting on our model and this made it easier to edit on Photoshop. The camera had very responsive performance and the camera was very easy to use.

Amazon Basics 60-Inch Lightweight Tripod

• The tripod used to film the music video was very strong and created a solid base for the camera which allowed us to film very steady shots. The three legs on the tripod could easily be extended by undoing the traps on the bottom of each leg.

• There was also a camera clip at the top of the tripod so that we could screw the camera into a solid place without it moving which gave us very accurate shots especially when we zoomed in and out.

• This piece of equipment was essential in the filming of the video as it allowed us to get the smoothest transitions and without it, the video would not look as smooth.

Softboxes/Backdrop• A soft box is a type of photographic lighting device, one of a number of

photographic soft light devices. All the various soft light types create even and diffused light by directing light through some diffusing material, or by bouncing light off a second surface to diffuse the light.

• We used the soft boxes when taking the photos for our digipak and advert. They were very useful to us as it gave us the correct amount of lighting that we needed.

• We also used the backdrop during the shoot for our digipak and advert. It was a simple white background which allowed light to bounce off the backdrop to create a good balance of lighting in the photo.

• Using a white backdrop meant it was very easy to remove in Photoshop so that we could just keep the image of our model without any background to place on our digipak and advert.

Mac• The Mac computer we used throughout the process was an iMac. The computer

included 2 GHz core Duo, this meant that it was much faster therefore it was useful for us as we could use Photoshop and final cut pro at the same time without any problems. The Mac included two transfer USB and fire wires meaning I could transfer videos to YouTube and to Wordpress.

• The keyboard used was also part of the iMac. It was very easy to use and was neither too big or small. There was also no Lang time between typing and the words appearing on the screen making my write ups quicker and easier.

• The mouse used was also part of the iMac. There was also no Lang time between the mouse and Mac. The mouse was small and had an LED for optical tracking making it easy to use and meant a mouse pad was not needed.