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

During our planning and research stages we used various media technologies to enable us to carry out and complete tasks in a quick and efficient manner.

YouTube was the first media technology we called upon which allowed us to research a number of videos to get an idea of certain shots, lighting and costumes that we may choose to use in our own video.

In this stage I found the video ‘All she wrote’ by Ross Copperman to be useful in terms of certain shots and lighting used in the performance side to the video. YouTube allowed me to not only look at this video but many others of a similar style and genre and search and develop ideas to use in our own work.

We then used Blogger to post this information and then comment on each others posts, allowing us to discuss ideas as a group and show each other our findings. This was an extremely useful technology all the way through the project in terms of combining and developing all of our ideas and posting any tiny amount of information in seconds somewhere all of our group could see it.

When it came to the main research stage of collecting ideas other than our own and getting useful feedback which could influence our decisions when creating our video, we used Survey Monkey.

This site allowed us to construct a number of questions and post them on the site in a survey format, enabling us to send the link to whoever we wanted to answer them. These sorts of question included ‘ do you think our video would stand up to repeatability?’ and ‘what location would you prefer to see in our performance?’.

The feedback we got from this was extremely beneficial and allowed us to make important decisions that we may not have thought of making without these responses.

We also used Facebook to paste the survey monkey link in the hope that a number of young adults and teens may choose to answer our questions, which was of course our target audience.


This proved successful as the majority of people who answered our questions accessed the site via Facebook and answered them with a similar opinion which is exactly what we wanted.

We then used Powerpoint to create a pitch using different slides to present different planned aspects of our video. This was useful as it was used as another form of feedback from another group of people. This was then transferred to Slideboom, which allowed our presentation to be viewed with ease and efficiency.

Pitch For Drops of Jupiter by Boyce Avenue 3

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During the construction process media technologies were also used. We used the programme Premier 8.0 to construct our video. This was used to upload footage we had previously shot on HD cameras which were extremely efficient in capturing the shots we needed.

Once the shots had been captured we could upload them to premier where not only did we cut and edit all the footage together but we also used a number of technological techniques to enhance our work.

• I used certain tools on Premier to improve the overall look of our work and this included adding filters to both the narrative and performance side of the video. I added a blue wash filter to the narrative side to convey a feeling of coldness and isolation which seemed to work well. The filter I added to the performance side was more of an orange/red wash which connoted a feeling of warmth which again was effective.

This is an example of filters off:



This is an example of the filters we used on:



• Other effects we used involved adjusting the speed of shot settings which meant we sped up a long shot of Edd standing still which meant all the traffic and people around him would move and change extremely quickly. This effect connoted a feeling of alienation and loneliness showing Edd to stand out from the crowd and not being able to function properly with every day life.

• The opposite effect to this was when we included shots of Edd walking in slow motion, but the most effective of these was the shot of him on London Bridge walking through a crowd of people. The slow motion allowed us to pay attention to detail to the non verbal language which really signified depression. This shot was an idea we got from a video called ‘Gotta Be a Way’ by Bluey Robinson and proved to be an effective shot in both videos.



We used the programme Photoshop to create our print work which included two adverts and a digipack. For my advert I produced a picture of Edd in a suit holding a rose with surrounding text of the name of the band and album. For my advert i used various tools on Photoshop to create an effective final design.

• Firstly I had to take the picture of Edd in a suit holding the rose, both of which we felt were obvious visual signifiers of a funeral, but more importantly death.

• Once I had opened the picture on to Photoshop I turned the picture of Edd in to black and white, leaving the rose he was holding as bright red to stand out.

• I then cut out the outside of the background, leaving only what was behind Edd in the picture which happened to be church doors. After this I replaced the removed background with a black layer.

• I then used the gradient tool to blend together the new black layer and the remaining background which left a dark shadowing effect.

• I then decided to crop Edd’s head out the image to create a sense of mystery to the design which we all agreed looked better.

• Finally all that was left was to add the text of both the name of the band and album and additional album information. For the two larger texts I used a font from the site ‘DAFONT.COM’ which I decided had a look of authenticity and style which I thought suited the overall band image.

• This font was placed at the top of the page and followed down to the image, with attention to the rose and finally to the smaller text of the album information, making use of the rule of thirds. This is shown by the image on the right.

During the Evaluation stages I used similar tools as in the planning stages to complete the project. Blogger was again used to post our video and print work and receive feedback, as was YouTube.

We again used Survey Monkey to create another survey and again as another method of receiving feedback for our work. This link was again posted on Facebook to gain responses from our large demographic target audience of teenagers and young adults.