QUESTION FOUR – HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA

TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION,

RESEARCH PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGE?

BY OLIVIA CONCHIE
 THE CONSTRUCTION STAGE

In the construction stage of our media project

we used many different technologies to help
create our music video and ancillary tasks. The
Macs were vital for everything that we did as
they provided us with the software needed for
many elements of the work.
We used cameras to capture all of our footage
which we then uploaded onto our mac.
THE CONSTRUCTION STAGE
The software that we used was final cut express. This enabled us to
experiment with lots of different tools and to create the video to a
high standard. We used the ‘Razor’ too to cut up the different clips
and shots to make the construction easier. As we had our artist in
front of a green screen playing the guitar drums and singing we used
the ‘Chroma Key’ tool to erase all of the green in the background
which was the ‘Particle Noise’.
In addition to this the most technical part of the music video was
having the artist on the same video 3 times, one singing, one playing
the guitar and one playing the drums. The way we did this was by
getting each individual clip and stacking them on top of each other
on final cut express. Then we applied the ‘’Chroma key’’ tool to
each clip. After we had done this we needed to re-size and
reposition. This provided difficulty and challenges for us as we
needed the artist to be even in size and ensure the three fit into the
frame properly. After much trial and error we managed to complete
it so it worked effectively and look realistic.
 THE CONSTRUCTION STAGE
Although the ‘’Chroma key’’ enabled us to do some interesting things with out video
it also had some downfalls.
-It prevented us from using some of the shots we wanted to as they didn’t fit properly.
- It sometimes erased things.
This made it extremely hard for us at times but after hard we managed to make it work
and get it to look effective.
Another problem we had to over come throughout the construction stage was when we
accidentally filmed some of our video in ‘wide screen’ instead of the standard shot.
The way we overcame this was by cropping down the clip so it was the same as a
standard shot. Over all this made the shots smaller but it ended up improving some of
the shots as the main point of the clip became clearer.
PHOTOS OF THE VIDEO
 THE PLANNING STAGE

Throughout the planning stages of our project we only really used

the internet and computers. The computer was used for everything
from scanning on hand written work, images, storyboards to
uploading all our work on the blogs.
The internet was very useful for organising the group and keeping
everybody updated with what was being done and what needed to
be done.
 THE ANCILLARY STAGE
We used many different technologies throughout the production of
our coursework. The main technologies that we used were Photoshop
and InDesign. The technologies were used for many different areas
of the work but mainly for the ancillaries.
 THE ANCILLARY STAGE

InDesign and Photoshop were used for many different things, they
were used for things as small as editing photos to creating the
whole ancillary task. We created three different things for our
coursework as a group, we created the music video itself, a digipak
design for what our artist would have their album in and also a
poster to promote our artist, all of these had different things in that
had been created in InDesign and Photoshop.
THE ANCILLARY STAGE

DIGI PAK
MAGAZINE POSTER
 THE ANCILLARY STAGE
In Photoshop I had to edit the images that were
being used within the ancillaries in order to make
them look professional and good quality. For our
advert we had to cut Ryan out of a existing photo
using the cropping tool, we also adjusted the photos
within the ancillaries using the brightness and
contrast tools, this particularly worked really well in
one of the photos used on the digipak where we
made the guitar colour blue really bright, it looked
very good and stood out on the digipak. All of our
images were edited in a similar way to this. Most of
the tools on Photoshop I found quite simple to use,
the only tool I found could be quite tricky at times
was the cropping tool, as it often went a different
shape around the object then what I was intended.
To overcome this problem we just practised it until
we could do it well.
 THE ANCILLARY STAGE

InDesign was just used to create the ancillaries on, this was very
simple to use as all we did was add writing and photos onto it that
we had done in Photoshop. We did not have to do as many
complicated things as we did on Photoshop, the editing of the
photos was one of the key things to ensure that we had an effective
and professional looking ancillary task
 OVERALL

Over all I believe that we worked effectively as a group with the different
technologies used to create three good pieces of work as an outcome, I
do believe that more could have been done to them to ensure that they
were better but this will therefore be noted for next time.