Evaluation Q4

Below is brainstorm of all the different media technologies that I have used in my A2 media project. Whilst being familiar with some of them, I faced the challenge of using new media technologies which in turn developed my skills further.

AS TO A2

In AS I personally think I was an amateur in the world of media because it was a brand new topic to me that I had never studied before. However, I knew it was going to be interesting from the products I had seen. It also would allow me to showcase my creativity in another subject other than art. Therefore, I was happy to be taking on board something new because I felt I would learn a lot of skills through using different equipment and media technologies. Throughout the AS year I began using blogger, slide share, Final Cut Express, Prezi as well as the dominant technologies such as YouTube and Google. Out of all the different media technologies, I found Final Cut Express the hardest because not only is there various stuff that you can do on it, but numerous ways of operating it to create an advanced edited piece of work. Despite of this, I was able to edit our final opening sequence to the best of my ability. At the beginning, the coursework for AS was manageable nevertheless it became a challenge due to the fact that there was a lot more work that was needed in order for it to be good. The hardest part to the coursework was however the evaluation which came as a great surprise because it was detailed and time consuming. Overall, I learnt a lot of effective skills that I carried with me into A2 – in particular preparation skills and finishing tasks. After reflecting on my AS coursework and comparing it to my A2 coursework which was greatly in depth and required a lot more dedication I discovered I had made a lot of progress throughout all my work and showcased my ability much better.

For A2, the brief was a promotional package for the release of an album, which consisted of us creating a music promo video. It also required us to make a website homepage for the band and a CD cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package). I took interest in this task because I felt that making a video would be an exciting task that would allow all the members of my group to showcase their interests and ideas. It would also bring out a lot of creativity skills from myself in particular because I like to create things by constructing images, text, music and videos into one.

Research

Throughout the media project we did a lot of research to give us a better interpretation of what we had to create. At the beginning of the project we researched into different music videos, theories, other student’s videos and the history of it. Whilst some tasks were very time consuming (such as the history of music videos), all the tasks were beneficial in the long run because we could later apply it to our work in an effective way.

To present these tasks I used the following media technologies: Slideshare, PowerPoint, Prezi and blogger. These were all technologies that I had used prior to the task and therefore had no problem operating them. However, the green screen analysis of an inspirational video was a challenge which required a lot of concentration skills. To begin with my group and I all decided on one inspirational video which was ‘Destiny’s Child – Bills Bills Bills’. We next researched into the song to explain what we liked about it, the conventions it met, general information about it and so forth using Google (Wikipedia) as well as YouTube which we referred to numerous times (to view it). We later were filmed in front of a green screen whereby we read our analysis of the music video. We all found this very difficult due to the fact that we hadn’t learnt the script off by heart and was unable to look at the camera whilst reading. The most difficult task was however editing on Final Cut Express. In AS we were introduced to this advanced video editing software which we found very hard to operate.  This difficulty increased in A2 because we had to try and change the background from a green screen to show our inspirational music video. This whole process was very time consuming and consisted of altering the gages in order to get the right consistency of colour. I did however, manage to grasp the technique and complete this task with guidance from my teachers who showed me how to do it in the beginning.

After Preproduction, we did another set of research on our ancillary tasks.

The first ancillary task I researched into was the digipak which required me to explain what it was and analyse the examples are teachers provided for us. I found them really interesting to look at and was excited to produce one of my own. Other student’s digipak also influenced me to come up with different ideas such as using Photoshop to edit pictures. Two of these tasks were presented on Microsoft PowerPoint because it was a good software to present my research on in a clear and detailed way. To show other students digipaks I used Prezi because I could show all what I needed on one page rather than on numerous slides. Although Prezi takes long I still felt this media technology presents work in an effective way. Lastly, I uploaded my work on slide share which is a quick and easy process to work.

For the next two tasks which consisted of researching into album covers, I decided to use Mixbook because I liked the enhanced way of presenting ideas - which I discovered from one of my peers. Much like all technologies that you have never used before, adapting to it and discovering how to navigate through it, is always a long process. Nonetheless, I felt I was keen on figuring out how to use this software to my advantage and produce effective work. After completing these tasks, I was very happy with how it looked as well as proud of what skills I had obtained which would come as a benefit in future tasks.

I found researching into websites really interesting because it allowed me to see how music genres influenced the way a website was presented. All that I discovered from researching this task was very detailed, and so I used Microsoft PowerPoint to present my discoveries.

Production

In our group, we made a decision to split the pre-production tasks between us in order to get the work done in a quicker time. We also made it fair by choosing a mixture of easy, detailed and long winded tasks. I chose to complete the idea treatment, moodboard, risk assessment, crew requirements, contingency plan and artist logo. For each of these tasks I used a variety of media technologies such as Word, Prezi, Mixbook and a Samsung Galaxy camera phone to take pictures on. As a group, we all helped to create a casting for our music video which was really fun because it gave us the opportunity to do some practical work with the camera. I edited the casting using Final Cut Express which took a very long time because I had to cut out unnecessary footage and amend faults by adding transitions and so forth to the timeline. During this task, I learnt how to add music from YouTube on to Final Cut Express and effectively make the footage flow. Overall the Pre-production stage of the task took long but I benefited from it by developing my skills.

Planning

Planning was a very consistent part of my media project because I always found myself planning what work I had to do, how I was going to do it, what I needed to put in it and lastly how I was going to present it. I did however enjoy it because I have a passion to write and organise what I’m going to do in my work to make it showcase my abilities in the best way possible.

Planning the ancillary tasks involved a lot of writing, drawing and ideas being put forward which in all was very strenuous. In our group we all gave our ideas on what we wanted to include which was presented on Bubbl.us (a brainstorm creating website) and Prezi – to give a more in depth explanation of our ideas. To complete the digipak and website tasks, we split the work in to two which resulted in Chloe and Shannon planning and creating the digipak whilst I took on the role of planning and creating the website.

The digipak planning tasks were presented using the following media technologies: Microsoft PowerPoint and Word as well as Slide share and Scribd (to upload them onto blogger). For the design sketches, we drew our rough and final sketches onto a template provided which was later put onto our blog using a Blackberry camera phone which we took pictures on. All our photographs were taken on a professional digital camera in different locations such as the computer rooms and green screen room. We also used the camera stand to help us take a number of poses of our artist.

Majority of the website planning tasks were illustrated using PowerPoint because I already was an advanced user of the software and was ensured that it would show my work clearly. For the design sketches, I used the same process as the digipak to show our ideas. Whilst using PowerPoint for our photographs, I discovered a vast amount of editing techniques that I could use on pictures. This consisted of changing the picture style, brightness, contrast and so forth to improve the picture. One of the most effective media technologies that I used for the photograph plans was Instagram. Instagram is an online social network whereby you can share a series of photos with your friends and others as well as edit it by choosing a filter to transform the image. I thought this was a good media technology to use because it’s a very popular app on Android and I Phones that will in turn increase our publicity. It also allows you to enhance pictures in a really effective way. Another popular app I used via the I phone was Pic jointer which was a collage creator. As I was already familiar with using these apps (on a daily basis) it was quick and easy to transform one single image. I did however discover the effect of re-editing a picture to enhance the appearance even further – which was very helpful.

To make our final ancillary tasks Chloe and I used Adobe Photoshop (for the digipak) and WiX (for the website). Photoshop is a very complex website that has the ability to create a number of things however being able to use each option to its advantage is very hard. Nonetheless, Chloe created a really good digipak which contained all the vital aspects to a digipak. Rather than using Weebly (another website creator), I chose to use a more complex website creator called WiX which allowed me to have flexibility over what I indented to produce on each web page. To begin with I found it extremely hard to use and actually found myself giving up. However after using the website everyday for a week I gained a wide range of skills in terms of how to make my website meet the conventions of a typical website. From using WiX I learnt how to do the following: link pictures to web pages, incorporate music and videos on to the website, insert links to social networks and websites as well as many more interesting discoveries. In all, I really enjoyed using WiX because it brought out my creative side and allowed me to discover and do things that I never thought I was capable of doing.

Evaluation

This year, the evaluation consisted of four questions rather than seven which every one pleased at. Even so the four questions did require us to showcase all that we had learnt in depth as well as how our skills had developed over the two years. To begin with I used Microsoft Word to answer all my questions on so that I could maintain a high content standard that was essential in order for it to be answered well. I then made a decision to present my answers using all different media technologies. For question 1 I did a voice recording of my answer which I incorporated into Final Cut Express. I also added pictures and music videos to this which once again developed my skills because I learnt how to remove sound out of the video. For Question 2, I presented it using a new media technology called Glogster. I found this really fun to use because it was presented in a colourful and fun way which motivated me to use it more. For question 3, we used Survey Monkey to construct our questionnaire as well as Microsoft PowerPoint and Slideshare to present it. We also filmed people using a Samsung Galaxy phone and uploaded it via YouTube. For question 4, I added my information and pictures onto Blogger.

The A2 coursework proved to be a big step up from my AS coursework because the work load had increased immensely from the start and the commitment needed to be in place. Throughout the project, as a group we had days whereby we felt over challenged and lacked the will to do work. However, reflecting over A2 coursework and seeing how far we had already came enabled us to strive to do better and kept us motivated. We also motivated one another to do well with consistent feedback, interaction and support. I felt that I tackled the overall task as best as I could but also believed with better time management my work could have been to a higher standard as there is always room for improvement.

To conclude, I felt that I made a major improvement from AS and surprised myself in terms of showing that I had the ability to construct together an effective website that met and developed the conventions of an R’n’B and Hip-Hop music video.