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

We used a wide variety of new media technologies in each phase of our project. Without the strength of these technologies during the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages, we would have had great difficulty in creating our three products.

Research & Planning:

• Facebook - Using this platform, we were able to create a group conversation. This was integral to our group's communication as this allowed us to keep in contact and arrange meetings. 

Additionally, Facebook is a technologically converged platform; meaning that we could access our group conversation both at home on our computers or at any time using our mobile phones. This made it very useful for giving quick opinions on different ideas.

• Youtube - This website was very useful for finding music video references as there are several large channels on Youtube which host a wide range of artists. Additionally, Youtube was a useful resource for uploading our own video material such as the steal-o-matic and the test edit.

• Mobile Phones - As our phones are almost always on our person, we could use them to have an instant access to the group's Facebook page and contact eachother whenever necessary. Mobile phones were also useful when organising our shoots as it allowed us to remind our actors of shoot times and any costumes they need to bring.

Two examples of conversations a member of my group
had with our actors.

• Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 - We used Premiere Pro to edit our steal-o-matic as well as our test edit. These videos were very helpful towards to development of our project, making Premiere Pro a vital resource.

  

  Our test shoot edit timeline

Construction - Production:

• Canon 5D Mk II - This was our primary camera for the studio shoot. This camera was incredibly capable at shooting high quality footage, as it is able to shoot in 1080p HD quality. Moreover, the camera allows the user to adjust the white balance and contrast settings on the fly which was helpful if we noticed a discrepancy between shots. One drawback of this camera was that it uses manual focus; whilst this isn't a bad thing, we were not entirely used to it at first. This meant that some of our earlier shots lose focus at times, though this was avoidable for the most part.
  
• Canon 550D - This was the camera we used on the rooftop, as we were unable to take the Canon 5D Mk II out of the studio. Though this camera wasn't at the same standard as the 5D, it still captured video footage to a high quality. However, this camera did not have the same white balancing and contrast controls that the 5D had, which could have been useful during our rooftop shoot.
  
• Lighting Desk - In the studio, we were able to utilise the built-in lighting system. This consisted of several Arri 1000k lights which were all controlled by a Leapfrog Lighting Desk. The lighting desk allowed us to have a great degree of control over our set's lighting and we were also able to save our setups for future use, which made subsequent studio sessions much quicker. Unfortunately, the positioning of each light was not affected by the lighting desk, meaning that any changes to the positioning inbetween shoots would take a while to reconfigure.
  
• Canon Camera Lenses - The lenses we used were actually quite important for our shoot; as well as our all-purpose lens for video shooting, we decided to use another, more specific lens to achieve the best possible bokeh effect. Without this lens, we would have been without one of our major concepts.

Construction - Post Production:

• Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 - This is the video editing software we used to edit our music video. Adobe Premiere Pro is a piece of software which we are all familiar with, and it's multi-track layout allows for a very organised video timeline. Additionally, Premiere Pro offers grading software built into the application, which made it very convenient towards the end of the construction stage.
  
• Cinema 4D - This program was used to create the effect of the shifting paper heights. It would have been possible to create the desired effect within either Adobe Premiere Pro or Adobe After Effects, but using Cinema 4D gave us a great level of quality in the final cut.

• Adobe Photoshop CS5 - Photoshop was essential for editing our promo pictures and constructing our album cover. This program allowed us to remove skin blemishes and generally improve the quality of our pictures using a skin smoothing process created by our technician. On the other hand, the various tools and effects available made it suitable for creating our album cover.

We went through a skin smoothing process on each of
our promotional pictures as well as on our album cover

The picture without skin smoothing
is on the left, the edited picture is
on the right

• Wix Website Development Platform - Wix was the software we used to create and host our website. I have created a handful of websites in my own time using different web development platforms such as Wordpress and Moonfruit. What made Wix very useful was that it was free-form: you could choose to insert and image to the page and freely select where it would appear. Some dev platforms lock you into a theme or use a more complicated layout, but Wix was both easy to use and effective.
  

• Facebook, Twitter and Instagram - These social media pages were useful for promoting our band in co-operation with the website. They allowed us to create a synergistic brand image and gratify our audience's need for surveillance.

Evaluation:

• Blogger - The software used to host this blog has been instrumental to the entire process, but has ultimately been used to provide a summary and evaluation of each stage of the process. Whilst it has been effective and quite easy to use, this comes at the price of formatting: it can sometimes be very difficult to format a blog post and have it look the way it is intended to. Nevertheless, Blogger has been a vital technology.
  
• Survey Monkey - I used Survey Monkey to create a free survey, which was useful for gathering the audience feedback discussed earlier. Though it attracted some less authentic responses due to it's apparent anonymity, it was still useful for evaluating how effectively I had met the needs of my audience.
  
• Prezi & Padlet - I decided to integrate a number of different online web-tools to my evaluation answers in order to display my answers in a more creative and interesting manner. Both Prezi and Padlet were useful technologies which I used in order to achieve this.