Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Q 4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the process of my media project I used a variety of new media technologies that helped me create, develop and research my ideas.
For my research I found the internet highly useful when exploring the music industry and theorists such as Goodwin and Dyer to ensure I had enough understanding on the music video industry as a whole, before planning my own project. Websites such as Wikipedia and Google enabled me the correct information and allowed me to research artists, find images of certain bands and also YouTube for official music videos of existing artists/bands.
What’s more, in the process of filming my media video I used a Samsung video camera with a tripod, this, although was successful in creating a low budget “gritty” video- a typical conventional of indie rock videos, could however have been improved if I could of used a HD camera.
The most significant was of course Google Blogger, this enabled me to plan record and develop all of my ideas, research and plans throughout my project.
IMovie on the Apple Macs was simple to use (from previous experience last year) therefore editing process was not time consuming, what’s more this year, through the help centre on the apple website I was able to discover new techniques on IMovie such as fast paced editing and using various transitions, this enabled a quirky individual music video that reflected the Indie rock genre successfully.
I also used my own SLR camera for the band photo shoot as this created professional photographs that I later edited for my ancillary texts which were a magazine advertisement and digipak.
I further developed these texts in Picasa editor a soft ware in which enabled me to edit the photographs by changing the contrast, adding effects and also different text fonts to create my final product.
For my final music video I was able to use imovie to create useful transitions such as cross blur to show passage of time, what's more I used many other transitions such as fade to black etc to create an interesting video, keeping to the conventions of a typical Indie Rock musi video. Furthermore, I used a black and white effect on the band performance shots of the video, this challenging typical conventions of a indie video, what's more creating a gritty band persona, alongside shots that link to the lyrics in a film grain effect representing authenticy and memories.