Evaluation 4:

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

HD Camera (Panasonic HDC SD500):
I used a HD camera when planning for my video in order to see what was achievable with this equipment, and also to get a good practice at using it before shooting my video which took several attempts before eventually getting all the scenes I needed. So other than having to re-shoot a few times I had no issues using the camera.

Adobe Premier Pro:
To store our clips and edit them I used Adobe Premier Pro, I had previously used it before at the start of the course when learning to lip sync which was useful as the editing process would have taken a lot longer as it can be quite difficult to use at times when you're looking for specific effects. I rendered my work throughout the editing process as it saved time at the end and also allowed me to fine tune parts that didn't look as good as I would have liked.

When using Premier Pro I used a lot of the effects within the software especially when editing my video, due to my genre being heavily synaesthetic I thought that utilising the software and finding each and every effect of which I did some of my own personal research in order to do more advanced effects which paid off, the only downside of this was having to be very precise with every clip and having the exact timings right, unfortunately for Premier Pro I couldn't find a way to apply the same settings to a multiple number of clips which could have saved a lot of time.

Pentax K-r DSLR:
I used my own DSLR camera instead of the one provided by college purely because I knew how it worked for the specific photo's I wanted during the construction side of my digipack and advert, I went to town and spent a long time photographing the birds down by the river, it was slightly overcast that day so the light wasn't great, however I was happy with my result and then took the photo's on my SD card and began to edit them in Adobe Photoshop.

Adope Photoshop:
I used Photoshop to edit my photo's for my digipack and advert, I find using Photoshop a very tedious and time consuming task, as the layout of things and just plain awkwardness of the software made it difficult for me to be as effective as I would have liked, the effects I applied to my photo's were not as I would have liked and the resizing of the photo's in order to fit them into the correct size became really annoying as it kept changing when I put the photo into the set of four. On the other hand, it allowed me to do certain things such as use tools to take colour out so as to make the barcode and other label's on the back of the digipack look more authentic. My advert was easy to make, a simplistic design and it didn't take long to produce, I didn't use Photoshop for any other process'.

Media 2.0:
Youtube;
Youtube was very useful in all the stages as I was able to watch other videos in the same genre in my research and of course be able to look at ways to edit clips and effects created in Premier Pro were easily accessible, Youtube was where I found Walker Palcher, a director from the Netherlands who was the main source of inspiration for my video.

Facebook;
Facebook was a great and efficient way to gather audience feedback and also host my video and digipack and advert on. So the advantage of using Facebook was that in the Evaluation stages I simply posted on all of my work asking people in my focus group of which I chose the most sensible of my friends and also ones studying Media too, and requested that they comment their thoughts on my work, good or bad, as long as I got feedback. I also posted little clips and photo's of my video and digipack when in the construction process so that they could comment their thoughts, that way it would be easier for me to improve my work whilst saving time as well.