MICHAEL MEROLA EVALUATION - QUESTION 4

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

     Firstly, one new media technology that we used heavily during the research stage of our music video was YouTube in observing and taking notes at not only other popular music videos for inspiration, but in general watching clips from films and television programmes to inspire us to use any techniques that we saw that could possibly work in our music video.

In addition, we analysed many digipaks right from the beginning of the process in order to gain knowledge on the most essential features of a digipak, its style and common format.


     We already knew how to operate our DSLR cameras as we had worked with them on previous tasks and projects, most notably our thriller opening from Year 12. We also had previous experience with the lighting equipment. We noted any mistakes or problems that occurred whilst making our thriller opening beforehand to make sure that the issue would not happen again.



     We used blogger during all three phases of production. In pre production, we used blogger to post our research onto which included things such as research into music genre, music videos and digipak designs. We also used blogger during post production in order to post the final product of both the music video, the digipak and the magazine advert.



     We also used soundcloud as a way of finding the song which we would use. We chose this website as it was easy to access and use in order to search for songs which had not been copyrighted (unsigned artist). It was also simple to download a song from this website that we liked.



     Another media technology we used for the creation of both the digipak and the promotional poster for our magazine advert was adobe photoshop. We chose this software as it was easy to use and it was very simple to make any changes to our product which was particularly useful as we were constantly getting audience feedback on any changes and improvements that we could make in order to ensure that our product was the best it could be. For example, we were constantly changing the font, size and style of the word "SPUR" as there was a varied difference between audiences opinions. However once we had narrowed it down to two possible font designs, one was more popular by a big margin, and so therefore we stuck to the design below on the left hand side.

     We used final cut pro to edit our music video. We chose this editing software as it was not only the best editing software available to use for us but it was also easy to use and it was simple to edit anything once we received audience feedback. We also were able to add some special effects in an attempt to enhance the product.


     We also used the iMac computers to edit the music video on as well as posting things for our blogs. I found the iMacs easy to use as we had used them before for previous projects and it had all of the most important software we needed to use already on it and as a group, we were all familiar with these programmes. Importing and exporting clips was also very easy to perform.