Q4) How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

To get a song without copyright we went through www.unsigned.com as they featured unsigned artists who would be willing to let you use their songs. Also as they were unsigned it meant we could overcome copyright issues which would occur if we used a signed artist. After finding their email on their Facebook page we emailed them about using their song for our video to which they agreed. We listened to their song on

www.unsigned.com as well as YouTube and found other promos done with this song which gave us inspiration.

YouTube has helped as a research method as we could search for different examples of music promos and other promos to the same song. It also helped to find Indie/Alternative videos which helped us in understanding our genre and get some ideas from the conventions used. Some examples of videos we watched for inspiration are: 

• Bastille - Bad Blood
• Bjork – Human Behaviour
• Arctic Monkeys – Do I Wanna Know?

They are of our genre and have inspired our final promo. YouTube also helped us to exhibit our promo as we uploaded it to there and people would watch it on there; due to the sharing options they could share it on social networking sites e.g. Facebook.

We have used Facebook as a way of researching for our promo. Also using this technology helped in finding and contacting the band as they have a Facebook page. This gave us background information about the band and their songs.

I’ve also learned how to film more effective footage and that if you film at least 3 times of the same shot to guarantee you get good footage. i-Movie was another technology we used to edit our promo in which we added clips together, adding transitions and speeding up clips. Once uploading our footage to iMovie we added the song to it and then added all filler footage from the day on, and started to make our promo by putting clips together. After that we added the singing footage and synced it up by editing the clips to match the pace. Although we didn’t want to cut to the beat too much as it’s not conventional and wouldn’t suit the genre. Also to do the stop-motion we had to upload the images to i-Movie and add them in one at a time. Although time consuming it made images look like stop-motion and helped in developing my skills with i-Movie.

We used Photoshop when editing our photos for our ancillaries; digipak and magazine advert. To create the products I scanned in the painting I did to the computer and then moved it on to Photoshop and edited in on there. We chose as a group what painting we wanted to use and colour scheme, as well as help from our audience. To create the sections we used PowerPoint and then saved it as a jpeg so it would open on Photoshop. Then to create the digipak we used a template on it to fit the sections and adjusted them. For the CD in the center we placed the picture behind a layer of circles done on PowerPoint and used the rubber tool to get rid of the white parts. This allowed me to broaden my knowledge of Photoshop. I did the same for the magazine advert but added the text with PowerPoint too.

This task has allowed me to learn and expand my skills in shooting and planning, as well as editing for the promo. I’ve also learned how to research around our genre and find the conventions. By using Photoshop I have learnt how to use the programme and used many different functions on it. This promo has also helped me in my filming and learning to film lots of different shots and a wide range to create an effective promo. I’ve learnt how editing can show emotion - in our promo we edited the beginning really fast so it would match but also to create like chaos. Compared to our preliminary my skills have improved, as we have got more varied shots types and also learnt how to make a digipak and magazine advert.

Google provided a way of searching for things such as information, pictures and other technologies. I used it to find pictures for location ideas, costumes ideas and other elements for our promo. I also used it to find fonts for the digipak/magazine advert. We also used a YouTube song convertor so we could download the song and listen to it whenever we needed in filming.

Blogger was our way of recording and showing our planning, research and production. It also was a place to put our ideas and any changes we made. As we made tabs on the blog as well it made it easy to find things for filming e.g. Planning > Storyboard. Blogger also put our promo etc. to a wider audience as its used everywhere in the world. 

By putting our promo on YouTube and exhibiting it on there we have put it out to a worldwide audience, as well as our target audience. As our target audience ages are 15-23 it means they use the internet a lot and watch it on there. Also YouTube is a free publicity page so it won’t cost to upload the song but will still gain views. It was also effective as it will give the band more exposure and more people will watch it; therefore giving the band more recognition.