EC: Evaluation Question 4

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

We used 'blogger.com' as a collaborative e-portfolio in order to collect and construct our progress and production. We each had individual tasks to complete and upload, however, the use of 'blogger.com' became an advantage when we were assigned group tasks. The feature of multiple editors allowed us to collectively work on a single post from any compatible device, as blogger uses online storage and does not require a download to run. This also meant we could use our time as a group to discuss the content and work we were going to achieve, and make a plan to follow when we were not together, allowing a more efficient structure of working.

We used the search engine 'Google' in order to acquire information about the genre of our artist, and we used the video sharing website 'YouTube' to view Flume's official channel, which contains his official songs and music videos, in order to gain a greater understanding of his style and conventions. Another website we used was 'SurveyMonkey.com', which allowed us to construct the questionnaires we needed to in order to get a collective audience feedback, and have a variation in the respondents geographic due to the international access of the internet.

Web 2.0 was the most useful tool in all of our coursework, as it allowed us to research and plan our video, by researching the conventions of the genre and artist, and also view many sources of information, enabling us to check the validity of the information we viewed. Being able to watch existing music videos from the same genre and artist as a key aspect to our inspiration, as we were able to establish common forms and conventions that we could follow in order to make a complying media product.

For principle photography, we used a Canon 1200HD Camera, which is a popular type of item regarding prosumer technology. The availability of such technology allowed us to create a higher quality video, and be more creative in the types of shot we used. The high quality of camera allowed us to film extreme long shots in order to establish location, allowing us to construct our narrative with ease

The editing software that we chose to use was: Da-Vinci Resolve. This allowed us to edit several of our media products, including our animatic and final production. This software allowed us to utilise editing techniques such as colour grading, and cutting. This enabled us to construct the illusion of continuous action, enabling us to form a narrative, which is a key part to the conventional music videos of this genre.

We used Photoshop to edit our printwork. It allowed us to change brightness colour saturation, allowing us to conform with the purple/pink colour scheme that Flume uses in the majority of his media products. Our research on Flume using Web 2.0 informed us that Flume does not appear in his videos, but has previously appeared on an album cover, and appears in the majority of his adverts. From this information, we decided to include a star image in both our digipak and advert - our digipak having two of four images as a star image, and our advertisement image being a star image.

To conclude, the use of modern media technologies was vital in the entire creation process of all of our media products, as Web 2.0 allows for extensive research, and prosumer technology for the creation of our products.