Q4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

I used media technologies quite well in the research and planning stage. I was able to use presentations methods such as making graphs on excel and taking screenshots of the videos that I was studying. I also created my own style by using a particular font and a black and white theme on my blog. I also chose an iconic rap group – N.W.A for the background – rap came of age with them and they were very controversial. I also chose to use a prezi layout for my next steps analysis to use other media technologies. 

Production: 
During production we used industry standard equipment, including lighting, a professional camera and a tripod. We had to book the equipment, charge it and learn to put it up correctly including with the plates for the tripod. We were able to use the settings and the focus more effectively this year to achieve a high quality picture and also to create the faded parts of the video so it mimics the idea of the main star’s life going out of focus and creates the ideology that drinking is not a coping mechanism. 

This was really effective as we also created lots of point of view shots to show things from his perspective and also of him to show the effects of drinking to excess. We also had to control the movements of the camera, which was fine when we were doing the drunken shots because the hand held shaky camera worked really well for this. When we used the tripod it was ok to create a professional still shot, but it was more challenging to do the smooth movements without a dolly to run the camera along. We had to improvise with office chairs and skateboards, and it meant we didn’t achieve very many good tracking shots. We noticed that we needed to secure the camera very well to avoid having any sudden movements to make it have a professional feel. 

 






Post-production: 
In the construction stage I used a lot more technology to present the work, including imovie and photoshop. These were the best possible methods to present the work professionally. Most of the edits we used were straight cuts because these were conventional. We also used colour filter tools to make the video in black and white and give it an urban feel. We also use the crop tool to cut out any scenery was not useful or appropriate. We also used slow motion when the main star jumps off the wall to show he is intoxicated. We also used speeding up when the jolty handheld camera movements were used to show a feeling of chaos and drunkenness in a way that was not glamourised.