Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation question 2 from Pedsldn

Evaluation question 1

Evaluation question 1 from Pedsldn

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 4

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

Final products:

Throughout the production of my main and ancillary texts, new technologies have been essential in their creation. Using a variety of digital technology throughout I was able to make my products look aesthetically pleasing and professional. In the early stages of pre-production, digital technology was my main vehicle to explore, research and plan. Likewise, for the post-production and evaluation stages applications such as social media; Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and so on, and editing software such as Photoshop, MovieCutPro and Fireworks were helpful in editing my products to the highest standard as being similar to real media texts. Alternatively, throughout the construction of these products non-digital technology such as the Canon DSLR camera and Steadicam were vital in producing my works.

When planning, my group and I utilised our research skills to find out more about our genre of music (grime) and our unsigned artist, Isaiah Dreads. Google Chrome was our main source for this research and this allowed us find links onto our artist's social media sites where we could gain a flavour for his style. Moreover, once we had decided on our artist it was a priority for us to gain his permission to use his song. Hence, we contacted him via social media (Facebook) which proved useful. 

Isaiah Dreads YouTube
Isaiah Dreads Instagram

Following this our agenda turned to finding a song to shoot for. We immediately found ourselves on SoundCloud listening to his songs, narrowing it down to "Fire Flow" and "Hype in the Booth". Torn between the two, I advertised our query on my Facebook wall in the hopes of others helping us decide. From this we found "Hype in the Booth" to be our winning song with 31 likes compared to just 12 for "Fire Flow".

Later, using Microsoft Powerpoint, my group and I came up with our own ideas for a music video and pitched them to each other. Shane's idea was then voted the most effective. Now we had decided on our initial plan we took our idea to a focus group of randomly selected students aged 17 to 19 where they helped us to develop our ideas and grow our concept. Using Microsoft Excel, we drafted a day-by-day plan of when and what we were shooting following it to a T.

Deciding on a London setting, Tony and I scouted possible areas for shoots on Google Maps and then narrowed down to our final locations. On the day of the shoots we used Canon DSLR cameras and a Steadicam to film our music video. Moreover, we used a combination of natural and artificial lighting using light attachments for the Canon camera for a more effective aesthetic of our video as it would prove to be difficult to edit lighting in MovieCutPro later. For our still camera shots we rested the camera on a tripod fixed to the ground as this was our most stable structure and did not move in the wind. We also used the camera for taking stills for our magazine poster and digipak. Additionally, in order to make syncing the music to lip movement, we played the song on an iPhone whilst filming as it allowed us to align the music with the words from what we had filmed.

With all the filming now done, MovieCutPro and Photoshop became our main tools for editing. Consuming hours of work a day, we all pitched in to cut and edit the music video and refine the images for our poster and digipak. Again, for this, Fireworks was vital in creating the i-D logo and Google Images and YouTube were useful search engines when finding real texts to base our work on and find images such as barcodes and the Parental Advisory label so often used for grime products. The video below demonstrates how Photoshop was used primarily to edit the magazine poster, using knowledge I had gained from YouTube and Google:

Afterwards, I soon generated surveys, planned interviews and questionnaires to take to selected focus groups for audience feedback. Receiving this was significant in editing and adapting our work to be more prolific as the audience feedback was easily applied to reshape and define our work. Creating 5 drafts for the magazine poster I again gave out questionnaires to a focus group in order to decide which draft was most professional.

Throughout the process of pre-production, production and post-production, Blogger has been a useful asset in communicating with my group and tracking our progress. Similarly, Whatsapp and my mobile phone enabled me to contact my group during the course of the entire project, keeping me on track with meet-ups that we had scheduled and shoots we had planned.

Currently in the evaluation stages of our work, Blogger has been essential in organising and presenting my work. Microsoft Powerpoint has been a primary programme for presenting these ideas, using Slideshare as a website to embed the presentations I made and Prezi as an alternative to present my work.

To conclude, new technology has been a very important contributor to the success of my final products, influencing the ways I researched and planned; obtained audience feedback and real media text on which to base my texts was vital. Likewise, using the DSLR camera, Steadicam and various programmes to create and edit my works has also been essential. Using a range of digital technology and physical equipment throughout the project I have built upon the fundamental skills I acquired in my foundation portfolio and am excited to see what new products I can create given what I have now built upon and learnt during the course of my advanced portfolio projects. Additionally, social media has been useful in communicating with my group and accessing information that has helped to inform my decisions. Overall, I can say that I am thrilled with my end products and would happily hold them close to real media products found in today's technology led music industry.

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Below is a link to the audience feedback I received and how I used it to illuminate my work for the print products:

Audience Feedback and Analysis

Below is a short powerpoint presentation of what I learnt from my audience feednack and how it was applied throughout the construction and editing of all 3 of my products:

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main and ancillary texts?

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The below video demonstrates how my video product (music video for the song "Hype in the Booth" by Isaiah Dreads) conforms and challenges the conventions of music videos and of the grime genre. It is also linked in the presentation above... Enjoy!