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

Camera’s

• Camera’s were a vital part of the making process. I used a Canon digital video camera for the filming with a tripod.

This camera worked really well as it allowed us to upload footage to the mac’s easily and had a long battery life which was great when filming on the beach.

Canon Digital Camera

• The camera and tripod allowed us to experiment with a variety of camera angles and movement. We have several shots where the camera was positioned on a skateboard to mimic a tracking shot. We could have just walked with the tripod but the wheels of the skateboard allowed a smoother movement.

Camera’s

We used this high quality camera for the main images on the ancillary tasks. It produced vibrant images of a good quality which really helped improve the overall finish of the products.

This Kodak camera allowed us to delay the shutter time so with sparklers we wrote out ‘Light up the streets’. However once they had been edited we decided they looked unprofessional and were difficult to transfer across the products.

Lighting• Lighting wasn't a concern in the music video as we

chose locations were the natural lighting was good. When taking the images for the ancillary tasks we wanted night-time images. We sourced a bright handheld light and torches. The larger light was very bright but not practical as it had to be held and the battery run down which made us have to re take shots. The torches didn't produce enough light to light the images effectively.

One of us had to hold the light in place whilst the other shot the image which was difficult as the person holding the light couldn't see the camera angle.

I definitely think that if we were to do this again we would need to source better lights, brighter and larger to prevent this from happening ........

Desktop publishing software• The main program’s I used were serif page plus and photo plus. On page

plus I created the final products, it allowed me to arrange the layout e.g layering the images and text and helped me determine my colour scheme and font style’s.

Page plus

I used photo plus to manipulate my images. I increased the brightness, saturation, contrast and hue of my images. This is the image on my magazine advert before editing.

Image after editingThe use of editing has made the image brighter and much more eye catching. The increase in contrast makes the image very defined which creates a very bold effect.

The software I used helped to produce good final products however I think programs like photo shop would have helped me create more original images because the light effect I used was hard to blend so it gave the appearance of lines which spoilt the overall effect.

This effect was created using the shape tool of page plus. I then coloured each circle and made them transparent.

Weblog(www.blogger.com)

• Blogger.com allowed me to keep an online diary of all the changes I made, filming and helped me plan effectively. Overall blogger works well however sometimes it is difficult to get work uploaded onto your blog. My storyboard was a good example, as I had drawn out A3 sheets I then had to re draw them as my scanner was not big enough and photo’s were not clear enough. This takes up time and sometimes work is not as clear as it could be after it has been scanned.

Software used within my blog• I used a wide variety of

free software to help create my blogposts. I frequently used slideshare as it allowed me to create work in powerpoint which is a more interesting way of presenting my work than a block of text and I could easily upload work to my blog.

Software used within my blog• I also used prezi. Its really exciting way

to present work however I found it time consuming and complicated to use. By looking at my finished products I do believe it was worth it and I would use it again. For free software there is a huge variety of settings, fonts and layouts.

Collage showing equipment and software used in the production of my 3 products.