4. Evaluation - New media technologies in all stages

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

Research

As we are living in the "information age" the Internet is a vital element for research and information gathering. Firstly we found out that we couldn't use copyrighted music, which may had led to legal complications. Using websites such as http://www.unsigned.com/ and http://www.newgrounds.com/ to find not-copyrighted music that we liked so we could make a video around it. Other useful websites were search engines like http://www.google.co.uk/ and http://www.yahoo.com/ to find out about the genres our song was titled under. Also we needed these to find important images that could help to illustrate our ideas. Furthermore we needed social networking websites such as http://www.facebook.com/ and http://www.myspace.com/ to research the songs artists.

Planning

During our planning we wanted to brainstorm ideas so we used Microsoft word to create a clear, neat layout of a mind map. This would have all our basic ideas and requirements for our music video. We also used email technology to contact our artists to ask for their permission to use their song for our music video. Furthermore we needed to put the song onto a portable device to help us with our lip synching, therefore we transferred via USB the song onto Ryan's "iPhone" so it could be played out loud so that it would be easier to lip synch. Additionally we used an iMac and the programme Final Cut Express to create and edit our animatic.

Production

In our construction of our film we used a High Definition digital video camera to film with. This was accompanied by a tripod to rest the camera on so we could keep it still. To take screen grabs of locations and scenes we used my LG touch screen "smart" phone as well as Ryan's iPhone to take images and then bluetooth the images onto the iMac computers which allow this technology. Similarly we used the iMac and Final Cut Express to edit our video, then we uploaded our video to "Youtube" by converting our video format into "Quicktime" player. In addition we used the iMac programmes "Picnik" and "Photoshop" to create our advertisement and digi-pack designs, this would allow us to use several editing techniques to create a unique design.

Evaluation

Within our evaluation we viewed our music video on Youtube via my iPod touch to show a random selection of audience and ask them for feedback on our survey. Also we used the website "Surveymonkey" to create a questionaire so we could understand and analyse our audience feedback. Additionally I used Microsoft powerpoint to create a slideshow and then uploaded this to "Slideshare" and put it on my blog.