Evaluation Question 4 - Digital Technologies

My A2 media studies project consisted of the creation of a digipak, website and music video which each, in turn, required large amounts of research and planning. My blog in itself is a direct portrayal of how media technologies has provided me with the ability to create an interesting and enjoyable display of the work I have done over the year. 

The most crucial digital technology that we used was the internet; we spent months researching online what audiences liked in their artists and understanding style and image. We used sites such as Wikipedia to get a formal statistical understanding of what the average person liked about their artist but we used social media as our main case for understanding what the major fans liked and disliked. We used Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to see what people were saying about famous performers. We searched the comment section on YouTube of music videos that had been uploaded, and typed in celebrities names on Twitter and Facebook to see what people were writing about them. We also looked at articles that had been posted online about the singers and checked what people were commenting on websites such as www.dailymail.com. All of these websites also aided us in understanding what the fashion was at the moment, what styles were in, what artists were wearing and most importantly what the public thought of those outfits. 

Without the internet we wouldn’t have been able to search artists’ websites or made our own. We used a website called www.wix.com, this is yet another example of an online Media Technology. WIX is a programme that allows you to create and distribute your own online website. I was able to add elemtents such as images, videos and links onto the websites and social media. It is an easy to use website that allowed us to make a website from scratch for our artist in a professional manor. To create our website we looked into websites for people such as Bruno Mars, Olly Murs, Ed Sheeran and many others. From their websites we were able to understand what we appreciated the most and what we didn’t like very much. Through this analysis we understood that we shouldn’t complicate our website too much and make it user-friendly.

 The internet also managed to help us when it came to location, we used Google maps to plan our a route for our filming day. We wanted to create a structure of how the day would pan out and Google maps made that a lot easier, we were able to pin-point where we would film and when.

 Another important piece of digital technology was our mobile phones. We used our phones to video the interviews we conducted with member of people representing our target audience. We were able to film, edit and upload our content from our phones which shows how important they were. From the interviews we managed to gain an insight into our target audience and understand what they looked for in an artist. 

Our phones were also very helpful when it came to filming our animatic. We drew a picture of each scene and then took a picture of each drawing, then we were able to edit the images together and place them with the audio of the song so we could see when there would be a cut to the beat and when the narrative and performance bits would be. This is a lot more advanced than AS because during AS we just took a couple picture of a drawn out storyboard, this required little effort and thought and didn’t aid the overall product.

 During AS we used an older and less advanced camera than in A2, for our music video we used a GoPro and a DSLR camera to make sure we got as many shots as possible and crisp, good quality shots. This made it a lot easier to compile shots and choose our favourites too. In AS our filming skills were a lot worse and the fact that the camera wasn’t great quality didn’t help that so it made editing a lot more complicated.

 For AS we used imovie which is a much simpler and less advanced editing software whereas for our music video we used Adobe Premiere Pro which is a great software that aided the production of our music video a lot. We used the colour corrector tool to enhance the colours of each shot. We used the cut and separate tool the most to make sure each scene was cut to a beat and the lip-syncing all matched up.

 For our digipak we used Coral Photopaint/Draw/photoshop to edit pictures we had taken during a photoshoot and during our filming days. These enabled us to create a professional album cover for our artist.

All these technologies were useful for me because I am a prosumer. They were all free to use which was good for us because it made our pre-production and post-production much easier. I create things and share them through the internet whilst I also consume things that other people have made. All of these things that I have talked about have encouraged and helped me construct and research my music video, digipak and website. 

By using digital media technologies I have used technological convergence to ensure that I have produced three products as part of a successful campaign. My use of YouTube, Wix and Blogger has enabled me to become a prosumer, a creator of media products to a near professional standard. Digital technology has given me opportunities to upload, share and distribute my products. It is also interactive as my audience have been able to feedback, like and comment on my products using features such as, Survey Monkey, YouTube and Facebook comments, this is important as it gives an understanding of media in the online age which overall helped the creation of my media products.