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

To overcome copyright issues, we chose a song produced by an unsigned artist. Websites such as www.unsigned.com were useful in this search as they allow the artist to provide some background information about themselves, along with at least one sample track. After we decided upon our artist and song — The Amazons, Junk Food Forever - , we used social networking sites (including Facebook) to do some further research before contacting the band via email to gain their permission for the use of their song. The band were happy for us to create a promo for their song, providing we sent them the video before it was listed on YouTube and gave them the necessary credit in the description.

When we began our research, YouTube was a very useful media technology as it allowed us to explore many different examples of existing promos for inspiration and gave us a better grasp on the conventions of music videos in general and of our specific genre.

In order to construct our product, Final Cut Pro X was used to edit our promo, and Adobe Photoshop CC for the ancillary tasks. As iMovie was used to edit our preliminary task, we felt that in order to enhance our editing capabilities and improve the quality of our promo, a step up in software was required.

When shooting for our promo, the main issues we had to overcome were lighting and not getting enough footage. Said issues were easily resolved, however, as we just re-filmed the shots that were too dark and grainy during the day, and also spent some time getting additional footage for both the narrative and performance sections of the promo.

Many different technologies were used to present the research and planning that took place before undergoing the main task. The main platform for this was Blogger, where every task was posted. This technology was chosen as it allowed all of our work to be presented in an organised fashion, with separate tabs for each section of the process (i.e. Preliminary, Research, Planning, etc.). It also enabled us to embed separate technologies within a post, thus making the tasks more interesting that standard text and images. These technologies include the following:

• Prezi — A very dynamic and engaging presentation software used for tasks including the Pitch and Production Roles.
• Scribd. — Effective for embedding Microsoft Word and PowerPoint files.
• Moovly — Used for presenting the mise-en-scene that is included in our promo.
• Padlet — Used to show pre-production roles of each group member.
• Poll Everywhere — very useful for gathering audience feedback, and then presenting it clearly.

Planning Script:

The very first step of our planning was to get permission for the use of the song we selected. To do this, we emailed the representatives of The Amazons and they were happy for us to create a promo for their song, providing we sent them the video before it was listed on YouTube and gave them the necessary credit in the description. The next step was to assign production roles and create a pre-production schedule, so each group knew clearly which tasks they were responsible for. These tasks were presented using Prezi and Padlet respectively. We then deconstructed the lyrics in order to see what themes were contained within the song, which in turn enabled us to come up with some initial ideas that were presented in the format of a PowerPoint presentation to a group of people, who then gave us feedback. After our idea was settled upon, work on the shot list and storyboard could begin. When they were complete, they were uploaded simply as images. We also pitched our final idea using Prezi to gain further feedback, and give us a clearer picture of what we needed to film. An analysis of the mise-en-scene we wished to include in our promo was also completed using Moovly and, along with this, so was the location scouting. To get the images of our locations, we used Google Maps. We then did a risk assessment of these locations to ensure they were safe to film in. This was completed in Word. Before we went out to film, a filming schedule was produced in order to maximise our efficiency and ensure no time was wasted. As with all the other sections, all of the planning was uploaded and presented on Blogger.