Evaluation Question 4

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

When I began my A2 coursework, since September last year. I have used www.blogger.com to create an easily accessible build up of inspirational texts, drafts and final pieces. At first using the same blogger  which I used for AS caused quite a confusion especially how I hadn't used the software in a few months and they had also updated the system. So the layout and format had changed so I had to relearn myself the ways of blogging again. The huge pro of blogging would be the freedom of being able to write down your ideas in whatever creative way you know of rather than simply writing an essay. Also if you prefer to just simply write essays you can add images to make it your own and help you revise from it, adding images and also videos is a quick and easy step. This essentially made my blog have much more in-depth, rich data as I have used many different sites and forms of media. 

I also used YouTube to follow through with research on inspirational songs of the Indie/Alternative genre. I found this site very useful as it gave me instant access to a wide range of songs which were free to listen too as many times as I wished and it also allowed me to copy and paste the link or videos onto another network site. I also used this website to upload my finished music video. I hoped that by doing this I was able to show my work to a wider audience as people from all over the world can access it, it could also help people in the later years who may want to see examples of real students A2 work and how they approached the video making. 

Another website I used was www.flick.com, I used this to reflect development in the creation of my print tasks and also to post pictures of the people featuring within my print tasks. 

Other media technology that I used was Adobe Photoshop. This proved to be quite challenging as I had forgotten everything that I had learnt on how to use it, meaning that I had to learn myself to get used to it made me feel a little behind than others in my class as I wasn't as advanced with the software as were they. Also I had problems with the programmes on the mac computers in college as the college had installed a different system to the ones of the usual computers which causes slight confusion for me.

In addition to the technologies that I had to become familiar with new media technologies. For example, I had never recorded any footage on a video camera before. I also had to learn how to edit the videos into one that I shot using Adobe Premiere Pro. I found this was time consuming as I wasn't aware of how to edit the clips and put them into one, cutting sound out and adding the soundtrack in also. Also applying transitions was also found difficult as I couldn't work out how to apply them to my video but after getting my head round it, it seemed to be fine.