1. How did you use new media
technologies in the construction and
research, planning and evaluation
stages?
By Aaron McGreevy

2. New Media
Firstly the definition of new media is the reference to
the latest forms of communication in many forms
mostly electronically with such examples such as Web
sites, Email, web 2.0 such as blogger. New media is also
interactive with its users and example is twitter where
they can communicate about a particular world or
trending event. So not only do new media products
give out information but also allows users to comment
their own thoughts on it and as technologies improve
new media is ever changing.

3. Blogger
This is the second time I have used blogger as I also used it last year in
the making of short film opening so I had a brief idea of how it works.
It was the main website where I created and edited some of my posts,
on blogger I could add images along with text and also embed videos
from sites such as YouTube. This was very easy and helpful when it
came to creating my work as the videos I created such as the lip
syncing task the makes it easy when reading as well because you have
text and videos together for example the explanation. It is also easy to
embed other task from other online website I used such as Prezi
,Mindmiester and Slideshare. I used Blogger in my Research, Planning
and Evaluation stages which is why it was an important part of my A2
coursework as well as my AS.

4. YouTube
YouTube was an essential online tool that I used for many of my
research tasks for example when I had to analyse several music
videos from the genre that my video will be. In my case it was
rap and YouTube has a large variety of music videos and I was
able to analyse these videos then embed them on my blog. Also
as I have previous mentioned for the research stages YouTube
came in useful as well as rap videos came up that I had never
seen before so it gave me a better idea of the generic
conventions and gave me a rough idea that is included
stereotypically in the rap genre.

5. Slideshare
Slideshare was another useful that I used for my planning and
evaluation stages the reason that I used Slideshare is that it
makes a normal PowerPoint presentation more presentable by
transferring it into Slideshare. I used this for many of my tasks in
the planning stage of my music video then just used the embed
code, when using Slideshare it is similar to a PowerPoint as in
you can include images and text together. It also allows you
could display your work in a different form and is much more
presentable when viewing it on the blog.

6. Prezi
This is another online tool that I used in all the stages research,
planning and evaluation. As I have previously used Prezi in other
subjects and last year in AS media I have become more
comfortable with it and this year was able to make it more
presentable for example on the second evaluation question. One
thing that I liked about Prezi was that it was able to access both
inside and outside school so when it came to doing theories of
production task for research which was a group task it was easy
to share our work between us. It is also a change from the boring
PowerPoint presentations that are used by many so it adds
variety and with the different transitions to the text it makes it
more watchable in presenting my research, planning and
evaluation tasks.

7. Photoshop
Using the programme Adobe Photoshop helped me in the
production stages in creating my Digipak, I planned what it was
with hand drawn pictures but for the production I used
Photoshop. This was very helpful as I was comfortable with the
software as I had previously used it before in year 12 creating my
horror production logo so I was able to know the basics such as
crop and colour fill. However this year I needed to know a lot
more as I needed to create a Digipak as well as a poster advert,
for these I needed to know how to crop and remove the
backgrounds of a particular image an example of this was the car
I used the magic wand tool which allowed me to get rid of the
road and house in the background which I would not of been
able to do without the use of Photoshop.

8. Adobe premier
Adobe premier was another software that I was new to this year
the reason for this was that I used IMovie last year in editing my
film opening and for this year I also used the same programme
for the lip syncing. The reason that I choose to use to for the
production of my music video is that there would need to be a
lot of lip syncing with cuts in-between and on Adobe premier
you can be very specific with the timing of the cuts to the very
second whereas on IMovie you cannot. While using Adobe I used
many of the feature such as reverse, split screen and slow
motion. During my time of editing my video I had several clips so
instead of cutting them all individually I used layer so I would
layer clips over each other then just cut out the parts I didn’t
want which save a lot of time.

9. Hardware Devices
Throughout the completion of my A2 I have used many
hardware devices one of them was the Sony handheld camera
that I used for filming and taking pictures for all of my
production tasks including my Digipak. The camera that I used
has the ability to take pictures and film so was very helpful
when it came to the completion of them. Also for the planning
tasks such as the casting and location tasks I took pictures
using the camera. Also on the camera there was a setting to
adjust the contrast so for the scenes shot and night which
where not a visible I changed the settings to make it brighter
which was beneficial for the audience. It was also HD so the
quality was clear and made it easier to show the narrative and
also the fact that it was handheld meant it was easy to carry
and could still be used without a tripod.