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Overall, my use of a wide range of media technologies has allowed for all aspects of my A2 media studies coursework to reach its full potential. It has allowed for my coursework to be in depth and thus has determined that my final products are as successful as they can be in looking professional, following conventions of music videos in general as well as specific conventions from my artist and genre and appealing to my target audience. Media technologies essentially allow for product to be made and for it to  be done at the best quality. As trends develop within media texts, the technologies themselves develop at a fast pace which means that there are always new methods for presenting work and creating media products. For example, I found that an editing software such as serif Movie plus was not capable of creating a product that includes most of the techniques used in modern media products, particularly music videos. Trends and conventions in music videos, magazine adverts and digipaks develop as the. Some artists, such as Chance the Rapper, do not even create magazine adverts or digipaks anymore due to the booming online community as they chose to stream their music rather than create any form of physical copy. Since media technologies have developed since my last piece of media studies coursework I have adapted and used new methods of creating my products and presenting my research, planning and evaluations which has allowed me to develop my skills in the use of media technologies by overcoming the challenges I have faced.

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For all four of my evaluation questions I chose to present them in a variety of ways to show how my knowledge and use of media technologies has developed significantly throughout my coursework. I decided to use soundcloud to upload a digital recording, Padlet, E-maze and Prezi. I thought these were the best media technologies to use as they are the ones I have most experience in using and therefore my final evaluations will be presented in the best and clearest way possible.

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For the filming of my music video I used a HD digital camera which I have used several times before throughout my studies which meant that I was experienced with the camera and had no difficulty using it when it came to filming, furthermore it is easy and simple to transfer the footage to my compute and editing software. However, although the quality of the footage was good it could have been much better if I had used a higher quality camera as it would have made the shots clearer and made the overall appearance of my final music video look more professional. However, I had no access to a higher quality camera without dealing with issues surrounding borrowing one at difficulty times. When it came to editing my music video I used Sony Vegas Pro 11, which I downloaded onto my laptop so I could use it whenever I needed to, which worked better than using software available in school. I chose to use this software as it is a much more professional and complex editing software compared with previously used Serif Movie Plus. It allowed me to include a wider range of techniques in my music video such as colour correcting, filters and certain visual effects. I used my iPhone to take the images for both my digipak and magazine advert as it ensured that: I could transfer the images over to my computer or editing software with ease, that it would be available to me whenever I needed it (rather than worrying about borrowing at inconvenient times) and it is also a very high quality image and allowed me to take photographs that looked professional. It could have been better to use a proper DSLR camera but I did not have one available to me, yet I found that the iPhone worked perfectly. After I had captured all the necessary images, I used Photoshop to enhance the colour, crop and generally edit the images so they could then be used in my drafts and final products. I found that this media technology was incredibly useful during the construction process as it allowed me to create images that looked smooth and professional. It also allowed me to play around with my own creativity and experiment with certain editing techniques on the images. Despite the fact that Photoshop was not a new software for me I did have some difficulty when attempting certain techniques, but a fellow student who had more experience with the software guided me and helped me develop my skills. I then used Paint to edit these images into first basic drafts and Photoshop to create the final products. Throughout the creation process of the digipak and magazine advert I also used the online font website DaFont which allowed me to download the font of my choice which meant that my product came across as much more conventional and professional than if I had used the basic, default fonts.

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During my planning, I used the office software Publisher in order to create several mood boards. This was something that I had used previously but not for this reason and I found that it was easy to use and the result was clear and the presentation was good as it allowed me to overlay numerous images and text. This gave me a general idea of the overall themes and aesthetics seen within the products of my chosen music genre and artist. Something I think would have made this more successful would be being able to embed example music videos, which is not possible with Publisher. I also experienced this issue with SlideShare. I used SlideShare to embed my PowerPoint Presentations into blogger rather than simply taking screenshots of the PowerPoint, but like Publisher, I could not embed videos. Despite this, I found SlideShare, a technology I have used previously, to be very useful in the presentation of my planning (such as my Font Trials). Furthermore, I also found this media technology useful when creating my target audience profile as it allowed me to easily refer back to it throughout my coursework. When creating my target audience profile I also used Channel 4’s website as they ran a sociological study on Urban Tribes, this online media technology helped me narrow down my own personal target audience and discover traits about them I would not have found out without this. Another way I presented aspects of my planning was through E-maze, which was a much more sleek way of presenting my work and worked well as it allowed me to embed videos, which some previous methods have not.

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For the planning part of my research, I continued to use a wide variety of media technologies. When creating my film schedule I used Microsoft Word to create a table that made the schedule easier to use during the filming. I subsequently followed the table precisely which I believe benefited me a lot during the process of filming. Regarding my film schedule, I also uploaded it onto Padlet in order for my presentation to be much clearer and, because I had used both of these methods before I felt much more confident using both Word and Padlet during my planning. Like in my research, I used Serif to create an animatic storyboard, which helped me significantly later during the editing of my final main task. Due to the simplicity of Serif I could not experiment with certain techniques that I planned to use in my final music video, however, it did help me set up a basic guideline of how I wanted to edit my music video based on my storyboard and script.

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During my research, I decided to experiment with the process of creating a music video by recreating a music video from ‘Rizzle Kicks’ in which I used Serif Movie Plus to edit the video. This helped me really get a grasp of as despite the fact that I have used this software before to edit, music video editing calls for a different method of editing so it was good to experiment using this. However, because the software was so basic I decided that I would need something that allowed for much more complex techniques, not just jump cuts and straight cuts, for my final product. When I had finished editing the video I decided to upload it to Vimeo which is what I had used previously for my AS media studies final product as it is easy and simple. Nevertheless, I realised by doing this that Vimeo did not naturally allow for a large audience to view the product, despite using tags and sharing the video. Therefore, as a result of this realisation I decided that I would upload my final product to YouTube in order for it to reach a wider audience and also YouTube allows for feedback to be given more easily through the comment section and ‘like and dislike’ feature. Furthermore, I used Soundcloud for my specific artist research on Beyoncé as well as for my focus group. I found this media technology incredibly useful as it was an easy method of uploading and embedding my audio files into Blogger. A key aspect of my research was audience feedback and a key way in which I gained this was through Survey Monkey, a website I have used many times previously and have a lot of knowledge in how to work. The website allowed me to gain a lot of useful information that inspired my planning process. A key feature of the website is that it accumulates all of your obtained data into graphs and charts which makes the analysis of research so much easier.

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For the research section of my coursework, I used many methods of carrying out extensive research that would help me during the planning stage of my coursework as well as using a wide variety of media technologies to present my findings. I found that the video uploading website Youtube was extremely useful to me throughout my research. This is because it allowed me to access many example music videos, which thus improved the quality of my research. YouTube is something I have used before during media coursework and have a lot of knowledge in using, however, I used it much more extensively during my coursework this year, which was very beneficial to me.  A downside of YouTube however is that, on occasion, some videos are restricted in a certain country or restricted by the school’s intranet, which meant that accessing certain music video examples was difficult. I also decided to use Prezi for uploading my work, which I was very familiar with. Prezi allowed me to present my research in a sophisticated and clear manner that I was able to refer back to with ease throughout the rest of my coursework. One issue I did encounter whilst using this platform was that of overuse. I found that if I overused Prezi as a method of presenting my findings my work would become boring. To combat this I also used a method of presentation that was completely new to me, which was Padlet. This was a sleeker way of presenting essays and the structure of them makes it easy to read and reference later on. Nevertheless, I encountered a major problem with this technology, as often I would embed it into blogger yet the text within the Padlet would not appear, however, this was simply an issue with the school internet. Another method of presenting my work I chose to use was PowToon. This was a completely new media technology to me that allowed me to animate what would have otherwise been a standard presentation. Despite the fact that it was an interesting way of presenting my research and knowledge, I found it overly difficult and time consuming to use.

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Throughout my A2 media coursework, I used a wide variety of media technologies in order to present and create my work. For all aspects of my coursework I decided to use the blogging platform ‘blogger’ as this was a website I was familiar with using as I had used it for my AS media studies coursework. The benefits of this platform are plentiful in that it allows me to upload texts, images and embed presentations and videos. Overall, this allowed for a more professional presentation of my work. However, I did find that the uploading structure of this website did make organisation, particularly reorganisation of posts, unnecessarily difficult. Despite this, I believe Blogger has allowed for the presentation of my coursework to be clear and simplistic.