Evaluation Question 4

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

From start to finish, all stages of our work were dependent on various technologies, without which our end result would have been impossible.

The first stage of our work was to create a Blog on the website Blogger.com, but before we could do this we each had to create a Google Email address. Once we had created an email address, we gave our blogs titles and customized their layouts. This blog would provide the canvas upon which all stages our work would be displayed. We used blogger as a means of creating, organizing, and displaying our work. From our research, to the final cut and right up to the evaluation I am writing now, everything was to be displayed on Blogger.


Blogger was also used to communicate with our teacher, as another Blog created by her would offer the class important information such as help or deadlines, and this made organization easier.

Once the blogs were up and running, we had to begin our research. The primary browsing software I used was Mozilla Firefox, which enabled me to easily navigate through the internet and to websites that would provide me with the information I needed in my research.



I made use of many different websites in my work, and there are far to many to list. However some of the main and most important sites other than Blogger were:

- This was essential in our research stages, as it allowed us to view other media works, and learn the conventions we would have to meet when we did our own work.

- The social networking site provided vital communications between the group, and was important when it came to organizing activities such as filming, or simply sending each other ideas or images of the work.

- This website was used to post our work, which could then be embedded on our blogs. Without it we would not be able to share our work, which would have damaged our ability to get feedback.

UK Tribes - This was very important for researching the different social groups and played a large role in giving us the knowledge we needed about our target audience.

Those are some of the important websites we used when we were creating our work. All of our work was done on an Apple IMac. This is a fast and reliable computer, without which we would have had to work much slower on a home PC. The mac was used as our main work station, and it provided a very useful and convenient role


The mac was not the only hardware we used, once our research was done we were ready to film our project. This required a Sony OCR HC62 camera supplied by school to capture all the footage and a mini DV tape to record it all on.

Once we had recorded all of our footage it needed to be edited. We used Apple Final Cut to edit our video. We used the tools on this program to bring our idea to life, without it many things such a colour correction would have been impossible and many of the more complex areas of editing such as getting the timing of the audio and video right would have been made far more difficult if we had to use an inferior program.

Before our song was ready to enter Final Cut however, it had to be cut down and altered slightly. To do this we used software called Garage Band.

To see how we used Garage Band and Final Cut, click here

Once our video had been fully edited and finished, we moved onto the ancillary task. The ancillary task was created entirely on Adobe Photoshop. Without Photoshop's extensive and complex features such as blending modes, layers and filters many of the effects on out images would not have been possible. Photoshop was used to the full extent of my knowledge and without it out ancillary task would have been inferior to the one we have now.

To see an example of how we used Photoshop, click here

We used one image in our ancillary task, and it was taken on an Apple Iphone 4. Not only did we use the Iphone to take many pictures. It was also used to film a video of our audience feedback, and an application installed on it called 'Itorch 4' was used to create the strobe lighting on our videos into.

Our ancillary task also needed a good font, and we used a website called dafont.com to search for a good font that was fitting to our genre.

Imovie was also used in stages of our work. It was more fitting to use Imovie when creating a video of audience feedback, as it is designed to have a simple interface for creating short films. Without Imove, I would have had to go through the longer process of using final cut, which although superior to Imovie is many aspects, would have slowed me down.

Finally, and probably most importantly, most of this would not be possible without the internet. We used to internet to research, plan, communicate, post and evaluate our work. Without it research would have been nearly impossible, and sharing the work would have been very difficult. The internet has allowed us to function better and quicker, and provided us with a platform upon which other technologies can be used.

So overall, we were highly dependent of technologies in all stages of our work, and used many of them to their full extent to create a project of professional standard.