How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
By creating media, its a vital component to take advantage of all the media technologies that you can use. By creating my print production i used a sony carl zeiss 8.1mp camera, a higher range camera yet not as advanced as some of the other cameras that are out there. Yet costs and availability played a key role in limiting the technical equipment that was at hand. For example the video was shot using a hand held Panasonic SDR-S26 HD camera. Having to use a basic tripod to cover most of my shots. The camera produced good quality, but didnt grasp the crisp lighting and that limited the attractivenedd of my shots. During the production stage the available software without paying substantial money was Apple Mac's iMoive. Although basic it was highly effective and allowed me to produce a video within a realistic time span in order to complete the task with time to spare. The advantages of iMovie was the use of pre-conducted transitions from each shot, by using cross-dissolve and fade to black being the foundation transitions allowed for my video production to have a more proffessional look towards it. I was also able to change the lighting contrasts slightly and therefore produced the story plot within black and white texture to seperate it from the artist singing the song. iMovie was very effective and it also allowed me to edit and cut the lengths of the clips down to tenths of a second to gather the syncing of the song along with the lip movements of the artists, a vital concept to creating a proffesional and crisp outlook.
The print production stage was the most chalenging concept as not being used to Photoshop produced limitations within what was available for me and how far i could take my CD cover. By using Photoshop CS3 it allowed for me to view many features that i didnt deem possible within imagery. I especially took advantage of the magnetic lassoo tool and was able to cut images and transfer the requirements onto other pieces, therefore i could build up a background image then transfer a seperate picture to produce ontop. By using the edges tool and creating blur edges it allows to make the image softer by sharpening the noise around the edges making it stand out as a seperate image.
Other gadgets that were used was the flip video camera, a handheld devise that allows for quick videoing and easy uploading through its internal USB device. I used this within the evaluation stages as i conducted interviews to video audience feedback upon my productions. Another tool used was an Olympus voice recorder that i used to gather additional audience feedback gathered during the initial productin stages and i played them back over and over again whilst creating print products to gather information about what they think works well and doesnt work well.