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

Lucy Carballo
Candidate Number :- 6046

Through-out the construction, research, planning, and evaluation stages my group members and I used both hardware and software, without both of them we would have not being able to complete out unit. A definition of hardware is “a general term for the physical artifacts of a technology” and a definition of software is “a general term primarily used for digitally stored data such as computer programs and other kinds of information read and written by computers.”


The hardware I used:-

Computer: 

We used a computer through-out the whole unit for a variety of different of different reasons. The hardware, a computer includes a monitor, tower, mouse, and keyboard. It has been particularly useful for e-mailing, editing photos using different software such as “Adobe Photoshop”. We created our album cover and magazine advert on the computer using other software, such as paint. Most importantly we could not have used the internet without a computer.

iMac: 

Through-out the unit, Oliver mostly used the iMac as he owns one at home so has the most knowledge about how to use the software, such as iMovie. He used this to create the music video by placing all the clips we had filmed together and edited them to the way that we all liked as a group. By watching Oliver over the past couple of months I have learnt how to use the iMac. Like the computer this has also been a piece of hard drive that can connect to the internet used to do research, this piece of hardware was very important to us in the making of our music video!
 

Tripod:  

This was used occasionally through the filming of our music video to hold the camera on it so the camera would not move giving the audience a clearer picture without it blurring at all as this would result in the person watching the video to miss out on some parts.


Cameras: 

We used both a Phone camera and a normal camera to take pictures which we used in our music video during the couple of seconds of stoke motion and images used for our album cover and album magazine advert. The phone camera was a cyber shot, HD 5 mega pixel camera and the normal camera was a 14.1 mega pixel ‘Casio’ camera.


Camcorder:  

We used this to film our music video. Harry looked after the camera as he was the camera man knowing the most about important factors such as lighting and sound. Without this piece of hardware we would not have been able to make a music video.


The software I used are: -
 
Internet Explorer: 

We used the software Internet Explorer through-out the whole process of planning my music video, magazine advert, and album cover, and could not have successfully undertaken research without it! It is quick and easy to use, holding all the information I needed to know by just typing into a search engine such as Google what I want to find, which then leads us to many other of thousands of WebPages. However some information may be inaccurate, which was an element my group and I needed to consider when using the internet resulting in double checking the information twice over.

Click above to go to http://www.blogspot.com/

The internet gave us access to web sites that was essential for us, such as blog spot.com which was the website we used to create our online blog, and also Youtube.com, which we used to research into many aspects such as visually showing Goodwin’s 6 rules and examples of our music genre.  

Paint: 

We used paint mainly towards the end of the unit, for our album magazine advert. We used this to help edit our picture of Tom standing in the distance with the guitar. We used paint to tear the picture up – or what is seemed to be torn up! Paint is a very simple and easy programme to use, but is very effective and works very well.

Adobe Photoshop: 

Like the piece of software, “Paint”, Adobe Photoshop, was used at the end of the unit on our album magazine advert and also by Tom and Harry for the actual album cover. When Oliver and I first started to use this piece of software neither of us knew anything about it, but as we played around on it, we got to grasp with it. I now know about the gradients and the many different of effects you can use.

Microsoft PowerPoint: 

We only used PowerPoint once during the Unit, right at the beginning when my group members and I put together our first initial ideas about which band we have gone with, discussing the genre of the song and our first draft of our ideas for our music video. We appointed a slide so each section we brainstormed, such as mise-on-scene.

Microsoft Word: 
We used Word throughout the whole of the unit. We used it to write down all our research neatly to then copy it onto our blogs, write things onto word to print out in a nice neat document, or just to store our work away on the computers hardrive so it won’t get lost or miss placed that it might have done if it were printed off.

Final Cut express: 
This final piece of software was the most important to our group in the making of the music video. As Oliver had the most knowledge about iMacs, he also knew the most about the software on iMacs, including Final Cut Express. We used this software to upload all our movie clips and photos, to place it with our song, "jump". It also allowed us to edit the frames by adding special effects, changing the brightness, and many more. Without this piece of software we would not have been able to place the movie clips and the song together as easily as it has been. As i have been watching oliver on Final Cut Express for the past few months i have picked up a lot, and would be able to make my own, on my own.