Evaluation Question 4

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

Hardware

The hardware that i had used to complete my work was a Canaon FS200 Camcorder. The colour i believe did let us down. When we transferred onto the computer the quality of the filming was not great and i was disappointed with this. However as i did not use the camera, as Sophie was the camera girl, she did say that she found it easy to work. Sophie believed that the camera was simple to understand to use. We also used a tripod for most of the filming, this was because the first filming session most of the filming was extemely shaky. If i was to do this again i would choose a higher quality camera, defiantly have a tripod. Regarding the Digital Camera that we used, Lumix, I found this a high quality camera, most of the pictures if not all came out well, which is what we expected. I would defianlty use this camera again.

Internet

I used the Internet mainly at the start of my project, with the research. I found it useful to find out information on artists, music videos, and posters. I used a popular site 'www.youtube.com'. I used the search bar on the site typing in the video i would like to research. This made researching music videos very simple and easy to do. It meant that it would only take a short time and there was such a wide choice of music videos it made our research. If it was not available to use it would mean using the TV then writing down our results, this could have been very time consuming. To help make my blog look more professional and technological i used a site called 'www.tutorials-for-new-blogger.blogspot.com'. I was able to find HTML codes for my blog, to add scroll boxes etc.

Software That I Have Used To Complete My Coursework

Adobe Photoshop

I used Photoshop to create all of my ancillary tasks. The tools that were used on Photoshop were:

• Filter Tool






• Gradient Tool






• Rectangle Marquee Tool






• Horizontal Type Tool






• Paint Bucket Tool






• Magnetic Lasso Tool






• Hue and Saturation






• Levels






• Curves
  
  

Filter Tool


The filter I used for the entire ancillary tasks was 'Notebook'. It gave it a grey and white effect. I used this tool to create my Digipak, as well as Sophie using it create the poster.















I was able to choice between a variety of filters.

















I then could change the image balance, graininess and relief.


Gradient Tool

I used the gradient tool, on the Digipak front cover. I used it once a filter had been used. It is very faint but just to add detail. Below is an example of how it works:







This is the gradient tool bar, where you can select the appropriate settings.

Here is the gradient i have made. I just dragged the mouse across the screen and you can see the change in light.



Rectangle Marquee Tool


I found this tool most useful, it is basically a select tool. As you can see on the image, there is a variety of 'marquee tools' . You can select pictures in different shapes.

You can see i have selected the image of only me. I could then use other tools, copying it onto anotehr layer, for example a filter.








Horizontal Type Tool


I used this to tool to add text. You can add it vertically or horizontally onto an image.





Here i selcted the fonts i wanted, size and the style (bold etc).



Here is the text. You can apply the effects you have seen above onto text as well.









Paint Bucket Tool



The paint bucket tool, is just to fill in the colour.






You can see that i have just clicked onto the image and began to fill it in. You could use this for a snow effect. I have used it for my digipak.

Magnetic Lasso Tool

The magnetic lasso tool, is a way to select part of an iamge. I found this extremely useful, when creating the disc for my digipak.

As you can i have started to select myself in the image, i then can use effects onto it.

Hue and Saturation

The Hue/Saturation control allows us to change colors (hue), enrich or dull colors (saturation), lighten or darken colors (lightness) and even use it to create a colour cast in an image. It can also be used to adjust tone. I used hue and saturation to change the lighting effects. I was able to alter the darkness or brightness and how much colour was in the image.

Levels

Levels is a tool which can move and stretch the brightness levels of an image histogram. It has the power to adjust brightness and contrast levels. A proper understanding of how to adjust the levels of an image histogram will help you better represent tones in the final image. I have used levels again on the front cover of the digipak just to add brightness.

Curves

Similar to Photoshop levels, the curves tool can take input tones and selectively stretch or compress them. Unlike levels however, which only has black, white and midpoint control, a tonal curve is controlled using any number of anchor points. I used curves on the inside cover of my digipak again to add brightness.

Adobe Premiere Elements

I used Adobe Premiere Elements to create the music video.

The main transition that i used was the cross disvolve, this would fade in two clips together.

However there was a wide choice of other transitions to use.

This is an example of a cross dissolve which, we used on one of our scenes.

To Conclude...

Looking back at the entire project, from the planning to the final project, a range of technologies has been avaible to us. Having the resources that i have been able to use have developed my work dramtically. I am really pleased my finla work and the skills i have got and developed from the process.