Question 4- How I used media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages

In order to research media productions I used Youtube to watch music videos of artist's whose genre was similar to my own. I was then able to use the suggestion function of Youtube to find even more artists. I built upon my existing knowledge of the genre this way. Had I tried to research music videos 20 years ago this process would be much more difficult as the internet was as effective as it is today.

A screenshot of the results for indie synth album covers. The
Passion Pit, St Lucia and Chvrches album covers can be
seen here; all of which influenced my work in some way.

I was also able to find song choices by using Soundcloud. I began by searching for indie songs and began to find various sub-genres until I came across indie-synth. I then found the song I used in my production. This was the best and fastest way for me to find possible song choices and sped up the process of selecting a song choice.

To research album covers I googled indie synth album covers which is how I discovered the Chvrches' album cover which inspired my own album covers. The covers I found influenced my work greatly and without Google I would not have found the album covers and therefore my productions would have been very different.

A screenshot of Firehore's contact page
on their website.

I also used Firehorse's website to find out how to contact them. This made the process of contacting the band for permission a lot easier as all their details were in one place. I was also able to look at the website and gain an understanding of their style and brand, helping me to incorporate their style into my productions. We then simply contacted her through their Facebook page as we felt that Facebook would be the media that would produce the fastest reply.




Audience Research was fairly important in the planning of our music video as we wanted to appeal to our target audience. I used various stat sites in order to find demographics for similar audiences. This research is what led to our music video being based around young people as the main demographic for indie artists are aged 15-19.

The planning of the music video was made easier by the use of social media as a way of organising shoots. My group have a Messenger group chat where we were able to organise dates and times of the shoot as well as discuss any problems we had concerning the shoots. We were able to help each other without having to physically being present. This group chat also allowed us to discuss possible ideas as well as all contribute as a group. We were able to create lists of what we had to do as a group too.
Also, I used Prezi to plan some of my work. Prezi is an online presentation tool which allows multiple people to contribute to a presentation. We used Prezi to mind map the ideas we had for the music video so we could all add to each other's ideas. The only problem encountered with Prezi was the occasional drop outs as the programme would occasionally crash.
We also used Messenger to organise our actors. We used quite a few actors so we simply created a group of roughly 30 people. We told the group the date and time and those who could make it came. It was an easy method and allowed us to contact and convey the plan easily to those who we asked.

The production of my music video was enhanced by the use of Adobe Premier Pro. This software was very good when it came to editing as it was very easy to use. I used the programme last year on my thriller production and was able to use it the same. Music videos required more work in terms of editing so using Premier Pro was ideal as I already knew how to use it. Also, Premier Pro allows for many different shots to be laid over each other. This was very useful as we were able to overlay effects and shots to have faded shots by lowering the opacity of some shots. Premier also uses a simple drag and drop system so it was easy to place the shots in order. Once the shots were in order it was only a matter of cropping them down using the blade tool which was very simple. Premier Pro also has a range of effects which were very helpful. The additive dissolve effect was very useful for transitions from shots. The only problem with Premier Pro was the amount of storage it required on the hard drive. We had to increase storage capacity to export it. Other than that there were not many problems; it was easy to edit the video.

The water panel which required
a mix of warping and blending tools.

When creating my album covers I used Photoshop for all the editing. Before this year I had never used Photoshop be

The smoke panel which required custom
smoke brushes.

fore and decided to challenge myself by trying difficult effects. For example, the water panel was difficult to create. I downloaded a water dispersion picture from Google and used a picture of myself. I used a soft eraser tool to try and blend the water to myself. I applied a pink gradient to both pictures so that the colours would allow the two to look as though they are one picture. In the smoke dispersion panel I used a custom smoke brush set to create the smoke effects. I then used a warp tool to alter the water photo to fit the photo of myself. Photoshop allowed me to be much more creative than I initially planned. I was able to use effects that I would not have access too had I used other software,

The magazine advert which
used two of the effects from
my panels.

The magazine advert was made using Photoshop in a very similar way to the album covers. The only difference is that used a different composition of photos which was easy as all I did was repeated previous techniques.


The presentation of work on Blogger is the most effective way of presenting my work. I am able to embed videos for reference, photos and external sources such as Youtube and Issuu to create a dynamic presentation of work. It allowed me to be much more creative as I was able to use various mediums to present my work. Blogger can also organise posts by date and by labels allowing for effective organisation to prevent confusion. Doing this is very helpful as I can quickly locate posts and I can see which posts I have uploaded and which I do not; ensuring I know which posts I am missing. Using Blogger to show my progress was beneficial as it allowed me to change any posts very quickly and I could receive feedback from my teacher on my posts. Blogger also allows embedding so I can embed SlideShares, Prezis and Youtube videos onto my blog and any change I make will be shown without having to edit the post.