Evaluation Question How did media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Firstly, when researching the digipacks and websites I used google to see view similar media products so that I could analyse them. When analysing the media products I used two different presentation platforms, the first being Prezi and the other Powerpoint. Prezi was more visually appealing and gave made more options where templates were concerned. When analysing a video I used Prezi more than Powerpoint as once the video link was put in, it converted it to video format immediately. Not only this but it allowed me to input images with ease. The videos I analysed were Aerosmiths 'cryin' and The Strokes 'Someday' and both of these were helpful in finding out what conventions we could apply to our own video. Before this though we filmed a focus group using a Canon 1300D as the camera quality was better than the video cameras offered at college. Along side this we used a HN1 which is a sound recorder and this helped deal with audio inadequacies with the camera. I then took the footage into Adobe premier cutting elements of silence within the footage so that the interview seemed more natural. From this we found out what our audience expected from our video. This lead me onto my analysis of digipacks were I used Powerpoint as this format was better for organising information. This is because each slide gave me more space to write up my analysis than Prezi did. I analysed The Strokes 'Is This It'  album and NBT 'Broken Machine' album where their simplistic colour schemes and imagery influenced my own digipack skeleton layouts, with both conveying the themes of the album withing the art. This conformed to the conventions of the romance genre as they have simple themes that are easy to understand for all audiences.

Next, for my website, I again used Google again to research different website layouts such as ED Sheeran's official website and Sony Musics website.I preferred ED Sheeran's website due to conventions of the Indie genre being used such as a simplistic uncluttered design which include included a legible bold font, clips from the music videos as imagery for the backdrop. This met the conventions of folk music (a sub genre of indie) as the website told you what you needed to know with no hidden messages, similar to how folk music videos lyrics match with video, telling the story how it was. Also, ED's costumes fit within the indie genre as he has a very conservative, casual style which drew me to the website more. 

Finally during the research I used Survey Monkey to collect and analyse the results from our focuse group. The website was really easy to use, giving the user question templates and question types. For example multiple choice and a rating system. After collecting the results in it then drew them up into pie charts so that the responses were easier to analyse. This was really useful moving forward into the planning and construction phases as it sped up the process of seeing what my audience wanted, instead of filtering through individual responses. 

Moving onto the planning stage I used a new piece of technology called Wix, which is a website creator. This was very useful in drawing up both the skeleton layouts and final design for my website as you were able to switch between two website designs simultaneously without having to finish one to begin the other. It also allowed you to promote social media pages within your website. The social media pages were also pieces of technology we used to keep our audience interested in the activities of our production company. The apps we used were Instagram and Facebook, we posted on both frequently allowing our audience to comment on the content we posted so we could gain feedback on what they thought of the post production stages. During the planning stage of my Digipack I used photoshop to create my skeleton layouts. Photoshop was again user friendly and easy to use as the tool bar was self explanatory and with plenty of youtube tutorials on how to develop our photoshops skills editing the photos for my digipack became second nature. Where the colour treatment was concerned, we went back into premier pro and became affiliated with the three way colour corrector, which allowed us create the unsaturated tones we knew were a convention of the indie genre. 

The media technologies that I used for constructing my digipak were Photoshop and InDesign. Photoshop was used initially edit my images, so that they fit within in the indie genre. I did this by layering my images and blending them together and adding the colour scheme through the luma-curve, colour wheel and photo filter tools. InDesign was used to piece the rest of  the layout for my digipak together by including the images I had edited in Photoshop. Using the Command D dunction I was able to upload my images and fit them proportionally to the CD frame. Once this was done I could apply a HD quality to the image to make it look more professional. InDesign also allowed me to create a inside tray card as well as the reverse cover to the digipack so I had an all round professional looking CD case. 

The technology used for creating our final music video was Premiere Pro. This enabled us to crop shots and remove any unnecessary filler shots and extended seconds on particular shots so that they were more polished. Having used premier during the test shoot the colour treatment was easier to apply, simply applying the steps we had previously used. Something new we learnt to was apply transitions such as fades and gradients to help the narrative flow. For exampled we used a fade to white to illustrate we were moving to a flashback as it created  dream like feel. This also made our video look seamless and professional for when they watched the video on Youtube. The editing was also used to help connote characters emotions and relationships. For example, a black and white tint and the sepia tone created using a three-way-colour wheel gave the flashback scenes a warm and happy feeling , which connoted the relationship was in a good state. This links to Barthes symbolic code as it allows the audience to understand the state of the relationship. Also, using the puma-curve enabled us to make older Will's look eerie by darkening the shot around the edges, this would then allow the audience to sympathise with him more. This links to Barthes symbolic code similarly to the last one. 

In conclusion, the different technologies I used helped me develop my skills, as well as convey the messages we set out to establish.  Also, the use of Photoshop and InDesign has enabled me to learn how using a variety of different media sources can make my tasks easier. For example editing my images in photoshop then made my job of piecing the digipack together in InDesign simpler and sos my outcome was more effective. These skill will also help me for future reference if I'm every required to use a software like InDesign again as I will know how it works. Overall, all the processes took a long time but upon reflection they all overlapped nicely. For example , Survey Monkey allowed me to reach out to my target audience whether in reference to planning or research.