evaluation question 4 draft

A2 media evaluation: question 4 draft

In my blog posts, I conveyed the contents through a variety of technologies in order to help illustrate my research, planning and production. For some of the more straight forward shorter blog posts, I used blogger itself. This is because the shorter posts mainly consisted of time management posts or quick ideas that I wanted to quickly note down. Working directly on Blogger proved to be quick but I currently had issues with the positioning of texts and images, which therefore made it simpler in the end to use other technologies such as Prezi or PowerPoint.

PowerPoint and Prezi were the 2 main presentation programmes I used. Unlike many others such as Powtoon, Prezi and PowerPoint feature a user-friendly interface, allowing for research and planning posts easy to create. However Prezi was predominantly used more than PowerPoint due to its more appealing estetics and broader range of ways to present posts. It could also be embedded staright onto blogger, Unlike PowerPoint which required the use of slide share to embed it onto blogger. Prezi was accessed via the internet, which was available to me at most times due to technological advancement in fast wireless internet. PowerPoint on the other hand could inly be accessed on a computer that ran the programme. Only a limited number of computers at collage and my own laptop were capable of using.

Used web 2.0 sites in numerous ways during the audience feedback and production stages.

Facebook was used to gather audience feedback for the promotional package. This was done by setting up a group that I could place my work and the questions onto. From there, people were added to the group and the group page was also promoted on the Facebook newsfeed to allow others to give comments on the products. Once this was all set up, receiving feedback became easy due to the sheer passivity of a large sample of people leaving a comment on the group page without myself having to actively ask them for it. Facebook proved useful for audience feedback, as it allowed communication with a large frequency of people that would simply not be available to me outside the web.

Youtube was a useful commodity in both research and production. After producing the music video, our group needed to export it into blogger. You tube was the perfect format for this because of the synergy between Google, You tube and blogger. This allowed us to render the music video and publish it onto you tube, then to seamlessly embed it onto blogger with any problems. As for research, YouTube gave access to a surplus of real world examples of music video and promotional print work that became useful in studying generic conventions of such products and also to influence my own inspiration for creating a unique brand identity.

During the production process for the entire promotional package, used both creative software and hardware.

Our group had used a video camera and tripod to film the footage for the music video. The video camera itself was simple to operate, as it only required one button to start or stop recording. The SD card’s last memory meant that we were able to obtain many different renditions of each clip to make sure we would have enough footage to work with. The use of the tripod allowed for the ability to film from some unique perspective such as steady tracking close up of the stars. However, The expensive equipment belonged to the college and therefore was only available at certain times. Our group had to use web 2.0 sites such as Facebook for communication to organise a shooting schedule. The filming equipment was also heavy to carry, which meant that it hindered movement effects in filming and that it was difficult to walk large distances with it.

For photography involving the digital and print advert, I had used my own personal Canon EOS 1200D to capture images appropriate for the sub genre. Apart from a poor battery life, the camera performed well. The high-resolution images made the product look more professional and closer to real world examples of print products with a much higher budget and the digital technology used to capture images meant that exporting them onto other devices such as my laptop was quick and simple.

Adobe Premier Pro editing software was chosen as the programme to edit the music video footage on because of its positive professional reputation in the real world. Premier pro features a diverse range of tools that helped us to alter our footage to cohere to the female pop sub-genre. One such example of this is the time dilation tool, which increased the speed at which the intro to the video played. This was done to create the effect of a time lapse of the sun rising. Unfortunately the rendering of certain clips became time consuming due to the levels of effects and changes made to alter their quality. Plenty of time had to be left in the course to focus on the editing with this software due to this limitation.

The images for the print products were imported into adobe Photoshop. The programme was used to successfully create the layout of both print products, enhance and to add effects to the imagery and to integrate common conventions of real life print products into my own. Numerous effects aided in creating a unique brand identity, such as the posterize tool, which gave the print advert an artificial poster look that was appropriate for its area in the media world. The advanced tool made it easy to make precise actions such as deciding what the dimensions of the canvas would be or moving an object into a specific position. Photoshop proved to be the most difficult to work with during the production stage. This is because the programme would commonly crash due to too much happening at one time and cropping images required much trial and error to succeed.

Thorstein Veblen’s theory of ‘Technological determinism’ states that society’s technology drives the development of social structure and cultural values. This is true in the instance of web 2.0 websites such as Facebook and You tube, as like all media, it influences the way in which people perceive the world, including how we interact in society and how our cultural values have change due to all these influences. Technological convergence through devices such as the smart phones that were used to capture images of behind scenes, has influenced the products by making it easier to transfer documents and images across formats and therefore giving more time to focusing into creating an authentic product.