Evaluation-How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?(YouTube, Photoshop, Premiere Elements)

Throughout the majority of our project we used many different media technologies, but mostly during the research, planning and evaluation. We used different types of software for different stages of the roject, as they had specific functions that we needed to use

The first piece of media technology thatwe used was the video hosting website YouTube. We mainly used this at the start of the project when we had to research existing videos in the genre that we had chosen. This helped us gain knowledge of what was already out there, and what people liked and didnt like. When we found these videos we analysed them in detail, which can be found at the start of the blog. Here are the links to the following videos that i analysed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLJf9qJHR3E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPuaIJrhdss

We also used the internet fot he website Blogger. We used this to document all the work that we produced so that it was easy to view and it was all kept in one safe place. This was a great help as it meant we could create, edit and manage the posts that we created. Aother reason we used blogger to document our work was that we could access our work from home, instead of just using lesson time to complete it. This was a big factor as we had issues with accessing blogger inside school as the network wouldnt allow it.

One of the main media technologies that we used was Adobe Premire elements, we used this when it came to creating our music video. The software allowed us to cut, trim, add effects, edit and apply audio to the clips we had filmed while being able to carry out a lot more functions. When we first started using the program we didtn really know what we were doing and how to use the functions that the softwarre provided. We didnt really encounter any real problems when editing our music video, apart from video clips not downlaoding properly or being ispalced within the school network.

We also used Adobe Photoshop, we used this to create our tour poster and CD cover. Most of the functions it contained were pretty much self explanitory , and we experimented with each one to see which had the best outcome, before decidng on what we'd have on our final product. We did not use every single function available as we wanted to keep all the ancillary texts simple and not clutter them with every function the software has. One of the main editing tools we used was lighting effects. This was to help focus the audiences attention on certain things on the CD cover, both front and back, and the tour poster.

The final piece of media technology that we used was the video camera we used for filming, a Panasonic SDR S26. The camera that we used was of decent quality, and recorded with sufficient quality. However the tripods that we used worked well for the stationary shots as it made them very still and made them look professional. But when it came to panning, zomming etc. the shots became a little jerky and lost some of the quality.