Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

During the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages of my final products, I used many technologies to achieve the overall finish. Firstly, our production group used the internet to find an unsigned artist, and to use their song. The internet proved very useful and was fast at giving us results in what we needed and listed in categories to make our search less stressful. We used the website Unsigned Band Web and this was very helpful also. I agree that we used this site as a last minute option, but the option was the only one available to us. The internet as a new media technology certainly proved itself useful at this point, and at a few other points during the stages. When Chris Cohen realised we had a music video on YouTube using his song, he used the internet and social networking site MySpace to spread the video link.
To film our music video, we used digital video cameras and a tripod. The cameras were very useful in that we could choose the settings for the shots; the contrast, the colour, the distance and the framework. I enjoyed working with the cameras because they were so easy to use, and quite self-explanatory. The post production was probably the most fascinating part. During the editing process we used Premiere Elements and this was incredible. You can use so many tools to improve a certain shot rather than having to re-film it, you can also change the speed of the shot; for example our argument scene at the beginning of our video was slowed right down to create a slow motion memory feeling.
With our digipaks and magazine adverts, we all used Photoshop. This proved entirely useful as well. I took photographs using digital stills cameras and my mobile phone and changed the colour to black and white. I also took stills from our music video on YouTube and put them in my CD cover. When in Photoshop, I could move the images about, change their contrast, add text to them, airbrush them and make them look more professional, and even control how much of an image I wanted, and crop the rest of it. I enjoyed using Photoshop as it really made a difficult job into a very simple design working time. In the beginning I was unsure about the whole idea of it, but I soon became accustomed.
Our whole work is put onto a blog to be assessed. We use the website Blogspot or Blogger. It is again so simple to use, and it’s easy to upload slideshows and PowerPoint’s too. A lot of my work is based around Blogger and its advantages are that it is easily accessible. I don’t need to give my teacher a hard copy of an essay or an evaluation; I can just simply send him a link to my blog. This way, I know that he has got it, rather than losing a paper copy. The disadvantages include the fact that a piece of work can’t be marked in much detail if it is on a blog. A teacher can’t pinpoint a sentence or paragraph or phrase in a blog post, they can only mark the text as a whole without detailed responses.
Media students are now becoming involved in the debate about Web 2.0 and ‘amateur producers’. Because we are producing work that is of a ‘professional’ standard (i.e. we have the technologies available to produce work of a high standard for our educational position), people in the media world with qualified media jobs are hitting out at us. Cheap distribution through sites like YouTube and Blogger is reducing the ‘street cred’ (if you like) of the media world. There are not very many jobs available in the media, and people feel that young and ‘amateur’ producers are exploiting this. In my personal opinion, we are not making films and videos to intentionally get a job within the media, we are doing it either for enjoyment, fulfilment, something to do or just because it’s what we enjoy.