For our coursework, we were required to use Blogger in order to keep track and record of all of our developments pre, during and post production.
Benefits
Blogger enabled us to neatly organise our work into a way where it followed the checklist correctly and, if we made any changes to one of our posts, we only needed to hit the update button. This allowed for instantaneous sharing with our teachers as they could follow our blogs and then give us recommendations on how to improve our work through the comments system as it is a web 2.0 service.
Difficulties
Some videos we uploaded such as the focus group and the final music video didn’t fit in the blog post guidelines, which made the blog look unattractive.
Prezzi
We used Prezzi to create an alternative way of posting on Blogger, so that the posts would not be just essay style posts.
Benefits
Prezzis were a unique way of posting; they offered something different which made the posts and the blog itself more appealing.
Difficulties
Difficulties encountered include the graphic user interface being complicated and, at times, inaccessible. There was also no spelling check with in the program meaning that you had to proofread it yourself. This meant that human error could sometime play a role in words being spelled wrong.
Apple Macs
Apple Macs were the foundations for everything we did during our project. These contained all the software we needed to carry out our tasks.
Benefits
The Apple Macs had all the software we needed, to produce our professional media products. Websites weren’t restricted when we needed to use the websites for our blogs and our media products, which were a great help to us.
Difficulties
Difficulties encountered whilst using the Apple Macs, include the inability to bring up the context menu without pressing two buttons, the keyboards which are uncomfortable to use, the inability to truly maximise a window, the inability for Safari to properly render HTML, the desktop that was cluttered throughout the project, the inefficient cooling mechanism that made the Mac extremely hot while rendering our project, the locking of certain applications by technical support, the lack of a word processor that matches the windows version.
Digital Cameras
These were high quality cameras that enabled us to create professional looking shots.
Benefits
The benefits of using the digital cameras, included their high quality image, they’re lightweight and their ease of use.
Difficulties
The cameras had quite a short battery life, and took a long time to transfer the shots onto Final Cut Pro.
Final Cut Pro
This piece of software enabled us to use professional effects and editing techniques, in order to create a music video that was of professional standards.
Benefits
It had all the required tools we needed to create a professional standard of music video. It offered a wide range of different effects and filters to insert over our video. This included color correction techniques such as saturation, adding graininess and reducing the brightness.
Difficulties
The difficulties faced whilst using Final Cut Pro were those such as the software was quite complex to use.
Photoshop
Photoshop helped us create our digipak and digipak advert; this piece of software came in very handy when it came to creating these media products.
Benefits
The benefits of Photoshop, we feel were the fact that it was easy to use, it produced professional looking media products for our work, and showed professionalism throughout.
Difficulties
One of the major difficulties with Photoshop is that it can be very hard to use without prior experience or tutorials. Because of this, Photoshop was much harder to pick up and use compared to other products but when we got the hang of it, the program was easy to use.
Digital Audio Recorders
We used this piece of hardware to record our voices to be used with in a directors’ commentary.
Benefits
Benefits included with the digital audio recorders, were that they were easy and simple to use, and helped us create a clear sounding directors commentary.
YouTube
We used this video-sharing site to share our focus groups and our music video, and to analyse and research existing music videos.
Benefits
YouTube was an extremely useful website for us. It allowed us easy access to our own videos when it came to sharing them between the group for our own individual uploads. This was also useful for researching already existing music videos.
Difficulties
YouTube was blocked on certain Apple Macs and therefore was not always the most reliable website to use. It often required an admin to unblock it occasionally, which was inconvenient.
