During the construction of my media work I have used a variety of different technologies to help me through the stages of my research and planning. The first main technology that I used for my work was the Apple Mac that I created all of my work on for my blog. My computer became a huge part of my course and all of my free time was spent on the device. This helped me to learn how to use the computer which has a lot of different qualities that normal computers don't have. Unfortunately there was a downsize to using the Apple Mac is that a lot of videos that would have helped me with my research were not able to play due to a 'blocked plug in' something that Apple products suffer with.
As a group the first technology that we all used together is the digital camera that was used to capture all of the different scenes of our music video. This camera became an asset to our media work as with out it we wouldn't have been able to capture our movie in good quality shots. Along with the camera, there was other different items and technologies that went along with it, such as the tripod, which I find easy to use as I used it a lot last year, and then other accessories such as camera lighting and a sort of home made green screen. To be able to use the lighting, Jess, Keira and I, the whole group, decided to attend photography club, this came in useful when we had to set up the lighting for the photo shoot for our digipak's and magazine adverts. Using the lighting and the media department camera was difficult at first as I was scared to experiment with brand new, high value equipment, but in the end it was fun to get stuck in and it has taught me a new skill. In the media room, there has been a dedicated space that has been re-decorated especially for photographs to be taken. The wall has been painted white so that it makes it easier to edit the backgrounds on photographs, and lots of props are available.
Another social networking site that I have been using every day after starting media is Blogger, the site that I have ended up loving and hating at the same time. I love that all my work is documented online as it is a more up to date way to record everything, as you wont loose it or get it ruined like you might with a book full of work. Although there is the upsides of using blogger, there is also a lot of downsides, like the fact that blogger was blocked on all school computers by the council at the beginning of the course, which didn't give us the best of starts. There is also the problem with uploading pictures and videos, as they all end up being blocked and invisible, so organizing them becomes a huge unnecessary task. Saying that, I do enjoy using blogger and I believe that if these problems are fixed by blogger and other appropriate authorities, that using this technology to do course work will get more and more popular.
The next main technology that we used as a group was iMovie, this also became a big part of the course as we had to edit and cut our whole music video on the Apple product. As we used this application last year for our horror movie, we already new how to use it and make a good quality video, so less time was taken up trying to learn how to work it. Although we did learn a few new tricks along the way when it came to editing the colour of different shots to reflect the shots that were flashbacks.
Another application on the Apple Mac that came in extremely useful to me was the Photoshop app that I used to perfect all of my images so that I could use them to make a professional looking Digipak and magazine advert. At the beginning of this course when the prospect of using Photoshop became clear, I was worried due to the fact that I had never used this application before. So after taking all of the photographs that I needed, I decided to dedicate some time to practising how to use the app so that I could edit my photographs easily. After spending time trying to work out how to use the app, I became better at doing the simple thing that made my images and ancillary tasks look better. I am now happy to use Photoshop in my spare time as I finally know how to use it successfully, I am also happy to help other people use it and teach them how to do the simple things on there that lead to the more complicated tasks.
To do my evaluation I decided to use more technology so that I can experiment to the very end of my course. For my first evaluation question I decided to use Prezi as a way of displaying my answer, creating a sort of PowerPoint to break down masses of text and make it more interesting to read, as chunks of text can often be extremely boring to read.
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