Possibly the most important aspect of the new media that has been vital to us is the internet. The internet was a huge part of our ability to research and gain understanding in the early stages of the process with it's infinite capacity of knowledge available to us through sites like Wikipedia where we would search rock music artists and learn every detail needed in an instant. We were also available to search real media products like music videos on YouTube and then analyse and evaluate these videos for our own personal understanding - having access to such a number of videos
in an instant gave us quick and easy knowledge to build on and start our process
of film making.
Through the internet and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter we were able to gain a direct audience response immediately by setting up pages where we would regularly post to seek feedback and opinions from our target audience. This was hugely beneficial as it made sure we got our response quickly and could alter and improve our ideas to create a video that would appeal to our target audience in the correct way.
As well as all of this the most important sire the internet provided us was of course Blogger. it provided us with the perfect platform to display our progress and our final pieces of work. It was a perfect way of keeping our project on track and making sure we had a clear coherent plan. For our blog it was vital we kept things neat and well balanced - we had to make sure it didn't become over reliant on long paragraphs so the use of the software 'Microsoft Power Point' to generate aesthetic engaging documents that would be then uploaded through the 'Scribd' - a programme that allows such documents to be posted online.
The key media technology we had to use of course was the filming equipment and editing software. For our project we had to use handheld videotape cameras. We used these as they were small light and easy to upload footage onto a PC from, having used these in our AS project it we were able to use these cameras correctly with ease. However the editing process proved hugely difficult for us as both Sam and I were using Adobe Premiere Pro - a software that was completely new to us both as we had used the basic Macintosh programme 'Imovie' in our AS project. It took us a long while to really grasp the software as it was so complex and hugely professional but once we started to understand it we found that it was a huge advantage in the production of music videos. With its non linear editing we were able to overlap the performance shots with the narrative. We were also able to place the music in order to sync it correctly throughout the whole video very simply. One thing that was vital to us was the ability to crop the shots, this was needed when we discovered that something we didn't want to be seen became visible in one of the scenes - we were able to crop it out which meant we did not have to re film anything. The most important tool however was the use of black and white, something that was vital to us for our final piece.
For our ancillary tasks we had to use Digital SLR Cameras. This was new to Sam and I as neither of us had used them for reasons other than taking simple photos with friends. Thankfully because we knew someone who has one we understood the basics of using a SLR and our media studies background helped us use the correct lighting. For the photo editing process we used the software Adobe Photoshop, which was completely new to us and we found to be hugely challenging throughout the process. We worked with our teachers and fellow classmates that had previous experience with the software to gain the basic knowledge needed. Thankfully for us we didn't plan to over edit our photos simply reverting the colours to black and white and altering the contrast to erase the shadow that was originally in the picture. We then simply added text to the photos to finish our digipak.
The ability to use all these software's, programmes and social networking sites with such pace and being able to receive feedback from our progress as well as reviewing our own progress on things like Photoshop is a huge advantage of new media technology and the current phase of Web 2.0.
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