Introduction to Evaluation and how did you use new technologies in the construction and research and planning and evaluation stage?

For the A2 media coursework we choose to carry out a music video with two ancillary products; of a digipak and a magazine advert. This captured our interest as both my partner and I have a passion for music and interest in learning how music videos are created and exist in the media industry. My partner is also involved in his own band as a vocalist and therefore had an ideal song of his own, which we both enjoyed and got inspiration from.
The genre which we choose and concentrated on was Pop, as through research into other genres we thought this complimented our chosen song and additionally our music interests.
Throughout pre-production, production and post-production, many new technologies were put to use to aid and support the preparation, management, construction and assessment of our products:

Blogger - Web 2.0 
Since the beginning of the coursework we created our blog using the site Blogger to post and keep track of the information and work we collected.   

This new technology was effective as unfinished work could be saved as a draft and published whenever needed. Also we could access the site using our mobile phones and therefore could post ideas and other information whenever and whereever we wanted.

BBM- Blackberry Messenger

Both my partner and I have BlackBerry devices which we used to contact each other through the Internet-based instant messenger application when in need of information for and about our media products/work. This made it very easy and quick to message each other as we both are BlackBerry users and carry our mobile phones on us constantly. Another service we also used to contact and send each other work was: 

Windows Live Hotmail

Celtx

 
During pre-production I used the Celtx technology to produce the storyboard sequence for our main moving-image product. This software was easy to use and as a visual learner it was very useful for the idea development and organisation. Even though it was my first time using Celtx, I found it was simple and quick to get a hang of and therefore defiantly would use it again.


Photoshop Adobe CS3

 During different stages of the production of our ancillary and main products the new technology Photoshop was very useful in editing our images and creating the digipak and magazine advert. As we had use of this software in AS, we were therefore more advanced in skill than last year and more confident of what we could and wanted to achieve. 
Example: 

Dafont.com

When using photoshop to produce the ancillary products, I searched for efficient and appropriate for our artistic style using the site dafont.com. It is a archive of free downloadable fonts. This was very useful as you could search through different categories such as modern, brush and comic. I found one font which was used in the ancillary products within the handwritten theme:

This technology was new to me but was simple to put into use within Photoshop. At first I had to find out how to download the fonts effectively by using the search engine Google to then find a tutourial on Youtube:

Overall this was very successful and I definatly would use it again in future productions.

Youtube - Video sharing website

 

This site was very useful during pre-production and research into real media products. When looking into music genres and their codes and conventions, we used YouTube to watch and analyse existing videos.

Also we used this technology to upload our own moving-image product so we could share and link others easily to our video. 

Final Cut Pro 

We used this as it is a non-linear video editing software where we could transfer our video from the tape and A1 camera onto the Mac hard drive to edit and process. However as it was the first time both my partner and I had access and use of this technology it was at first challenging and slowed down our production process. However after more use and advice from media lectures we got more confidence and skill and managed to produce our product for the advanced portfolio. Although there is much room for improvement, I believe we did the best of our ability at the time. 

Facebook

This social networking service helped us achieve audience feedback as we could create a link to our video on YouTube asking friends on Facebook to give their honest and fair opinions.

Overall the use of new media technologies within our work was very influential to the success and strength in all the areas of production.