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

Technology use and development is vastly increasing each day, and we are discovering new and better ways to use it all the time. We live in a society that relies on technology, mainly because of convergence. Convergence has combined multiple media products together in order to cater for everybody's needs and wants. It has had huge impact and is the explanation as to why people are addicted to using technology, because these devices are capable of so much. These technologies have facilitated the construction, research, planning and evaluation of all my products.


Firstly, in order to present my construction, research, planning and evaluation in a way different to the pre-Internet era, I needed a platform to showcase it on, and one that was easy to access. That led me to Blogger, a site which allows users to create their own blogs for their own purposes. The media course requires us to create a blog to showcase our products on because the course encourages technological development. On Blogger, I have been able to present the development processes of my products, along with anything theoretical I have learnt during the course. 

A significant part of my blog was research; it was the first thing I had to do before I could make any of the products from the cohesive package. Without research, my products may have not been as successful as they are now. I was first tasked with creating a presentation of my idea using a media technology to present it with. Because of my AS experience, I was familiar with what presentation technologies existed, and therefore I had many options to choose from. Ultimately, I chose multiple presentation tools throughout the blog, as I wanted to show variety and take advantage of the different ways these particular tools present information. 
I used tools such as Prezi and PowerPoint because they function as a slideshow which can easily present text and images, with their own variations. These technologies are user friendly and are extensive with designs and themes, so that they can appeal to whatever type of presentation you wish to make. In addition, the convergence compatibility was extremely beneficial because it demonstrated portability, which I took advantage of by editing Prezis and PowerPoints using my smartphone in situations where I was unable to use a computer. Because these technologies are so easy to use, it translates information to the audience in a way where they can understand it easily as well. 
The most interesting parts of Prezi are that it is an animated slideshow, with multiple themes, and I therefore found it the most fun to work with. Although PowerPoint does the same, Prezi is an updated construction and I foresee a rising increase in the use of Prezi over PowerPoint. The advantages of PowerPoint is that it does encourage convergence, with support from SlideShare, where users can upload their PowerPoints to the Internet and then share them with friends, on websites and social media, and unlike Prezi, it can present a lot more information on one page.
The ability to share things on the Internet has also been a huge part of the construction, research, planning and evaluation of my products. In order to showcase these technologies on Blogger, I have to 'embed' technological codes onto an HTML document, which translates to text/images/links/videos/presentations etc. Embedding shows how easy it is to share products with anybody in any format.

I used these tools to present my music video idea to my classmates, to present details of my research on Blogger, for example, music video conventions, music video analysis, album cover analysis, Hip-Hop music video conventions, and to display any questions that needed to be answered, i.e. evaluation questions. These tools ultimately contributed to the researching, documenting and understanding of how my product would eventually look.

Another tool that was used extensively throughout my blog is YouTube. It is the most effective tool for uploading videos to the Internet and for sharing them to people. YouTube is a service where artists will upload their music videos because it's the most popular website for such activity, so because of this I knew I was going to upload my video to YouTube. As well as uploading videos on YouTube for the blog, it also provides as an educative service, which taught me things I needed to know about during the development of my products. For example, YouTube has taught me to use a vast amount of features on Adobe Premiere Pro, the Canon XL H1A, Photoshop and much more. It also helped with the parody I was creating, because I needed to constantly watch We Dem Boyz in order to base my video on his, during the time of construction. When I completed my video, I uploaded it to YouTube on 9th January 2015 at 18:22. Just like Prezi, YouTube videos can be embedded onto websites (such as Blogger) for people to share. In additon, I shared the video multiple times on social media, and I encouraged friends, family and even teachers to share my video, so that the views could accumulate. As of 20/04/2015, We're Jewish Boyz has 1,934 views, 12 likes and 12 dislikes. This once again shows the power and strength of media sharing, because without it, this amount of people would not have seen my video. The advantages of YouTube are that it is a FREE SERVICE, meaning that it didn't cost me to upload the video, and that when videos are uploaded, they are globally visible, so that therefore explains the viewers from different locations. I used YouTube to upload my audience feedback (both pre & post production), to upload the music video, and to upload videos relevant to certain evaluation questions. When filming these videos (except the music video), most of them were filmed using a smartphone, and with the app YouTube Capture, I was able to upload them straight from my phone, once again demonstrating the power of convergence. 

My smartphone, an iPhone 5 to be specific, was an essential to the construction and planning parts of my products. Without my phone, I would not have been able to upload videos or edit presentations portably, or take pictures for all purposes, communicate with cast members effectively, and do additional construction, research or planning when a computer wasn't available. 
Using iMessage to communicate with my cast members was essential to the video shooting days. All my cast members happened to have iPhones, therefore communication was much easier because iMessage exists only between iPhone users, and it is a fast service (faster than SMS). This strong communication between myself and the cast enabled commitment to the project on both sides, as well as where and when to be where I needed them. As a result, we successfully filmed the video (after 4 shooting days) with efficiency. 

The Internet as a whole is a tool that I used both directly and indirectly. All the tools that I've already mentioned are indirect examples of Internet. Direct examples of Internet use are search engines such as Google. I used Google to search for any of the tools used above, because the function of a search engine is to find things on the Internet. I also used it to do research such as looking for artists similar to mine and their media products, conventions of my genre and the video I was basing mine on, We Dem Boyz. This involved a lot of extra research on elements such as Star Image and Target Audience (for a parody/Hip-Hop artist). Because of the Internet's easy access, I was able to find this information quickly and easily, and it allowed me to add extra detail onto my cohesive package.

The Internet is also a place where with enough searching, you can find important information that is mandatory to make a product such as a music video. The law is a very important factor in the creation or re-creation of media products. The law of Ownership of Copyright Works comes into play because the creator/first owner (Wiz Khalifa, Taylor Gang Records, Rostrum Records, Atlantic Records) is the first owner in the copyright of their product (We Dem Boyz). Therefore, I had to email INGrooves (a company who provide services for independent record labels, who's current parent is UMG) to gain permission to parody We Dem Boyz, as opposed to permission for borrowing the song. Due to the Fair Dealings exception for students and educational/academic work, I was allowed to parody the song, because I wasn't planning to make profit from it. This therefore reiterates the power of communication on the Internet, because without emails, it would have been difficult to contact them and I may have been left to create a product that I had no permission for a third of, which would have later led to a removal of my product from the Internet because of lack of permission. 

  
Just like PowerPoint, I used other pieces of offline software such as Word, where I could create documents for certain parts of research, planning and evaluation. An example of this use was for my audience questionnaire when I had my song and video ready to listen to and watch. I was able to use Word to type up the questionnaire which I would then distribute amongst my opportunist sample. It was useful because it had a template for how a questionnaire could look, so I used that to create mine. It was clearly organised so the audience members answering it didn't suffer any difficulty filling it in. 

To film the video, I needed a video camera otherwise it would not have been possible to film. My school provided me with a Canon XL H1A, a video tape HDV camera. We used these cameras for AS as well, and because of my experience from last year, I believe I used the camera with a more advanced approach this year. Because I was on my own, I had to film every single piece of the film without assistance which I found to be quite simple because I had the ideas and concepts of how I wanted the video to be already in my mind. Once I had filmed the video, I needed to capture it in order to turn it from analog to digital. We were given a cable connecting to the camera and a capture device connected to the computer. 

Once the footage had been uploaded to the computer, I started using Adobe Premiere Pro to edit and 'create' the video. Like the camera, I had experience using an older version of Premiere Pro last year. This year however, we received the latest version of Premiere Pro (CS6) and I developed better skills using it over time, with contribution from instructional YouTube videos and self-discovery. Being able to use Premiere Pro to its full potential enabled me to make my video as precise as it needed to be, and because of this experience, it took me less time to create this music video (after 4 shooting days) than it did to edit my AS thriller (after 1 shooting day). Editing a music video is very different from editing a thriller because the thriller is a film, which requires continuity editing to tell a narrative, whereas the music video doesn't require this (although it still can), rather a discontinuity edit will still be able to tell a narrative. Discontinuity editing proved much harder because before I sat down to plan where I wanted all these shots to go, I had no original idea. In addition, I had to swap places of shots if I wasn't happy with where I put them because I needed to make sure that they were in some type of order. Because the lyrics of the song were telling the narrative, I filmed shots based on lyrics, so it wasn't as hard as a non-parody video, but it was still challenging and required a lot of effort. The editing took 2 weeks to complete (in between shooting days, as I was uploading and editing footage from previous shooting days each time).

On the subject of the shooting days, I was slightly unlucky because I had a lot of cast cancel on me last-minute on the first shooting day. Because I got a lot done on the first day, I decided not to include any of the other cast even if they were available in the future, because it would affect the footage I already took. I was therefore unfortunate in this case because I needed somebody to do a behind the scenes photo shoot, which would have been useful to showcase. I do fortunately have select images of a photo shoot I took on the first day, however it doesn't encompass the entire cast, or other locations. I had borrowed the Sony A99 digital interchangeable lens camera with a Sony M60F external flash from a friend in order to take the photos. Fortunately, I do have behind the scenes photos from the second and third shooting day:

The next product I made was my Digi-Pak, which I enjoyed making just as much as the video. To create it, I needed to use Adobe Photoshop (CS6) which I had been familiar with using. I used all types of techniques on Photoshop that weren't taught in class, as I had learnt them once again from YouTube. For example, in order to make the tattoos on ABOUDY's face look realistic as opposed to obviously drawn on, I used the feathering tool, which reduces the boldness of an image and therefore helps it look as if it were real. Without this technology my Digi-Pak would not have been at the great level of quality that it is at the moment, and I may have been left to use a lower quality photoshopping application that may not have had as many advanced features as Adobe has. 

Some of the photos from the photo shoot on the first shooting day were used on the Digi-Pak, whereas the cover was a photo taken in a studio. Because I was able to take the cover in a studio, I was able to use additional lighting to bring out the best features of his face in the photo in order to match the image I had for the album. I had to edit a lot of the photo shoot pictures into grey scale so that they would also match the image of how I wanted the Digi-Pak to look, which was simple to do on Photoshop. The photo shoot provided clear quality photos that didn't come up pixelated at a preferred size, therefore they were easy to edit without any issues. Photoshop also helped me to create a unique logo for ABOUDY, because I wanted to brand him in a certain way which turned out to be unique for any parody artist, something that hadn't been done before. The idea came from experimenting with shape drawing, and I eventually thought that if my artist were to have alter-egos depending on the album theme, then the logo should have themes as well:

The regular logo (as shown on the website)

The 'Jewish Theme' logo (as shown on the Digi-Pak)

I decided to make my Digi-Pak a parody of Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III and IV, as a continuous parody of the Hip-Hop genre. I had to draw tattoos onto ABOUDY's face, but instead of them being the same as Lil Wayne's, I decided to relate them to Judaism, to maintain the pastiche of Jewish culture: 

Google once again helped me because I needed to search for certain images. These images in particular were a barcode, copyright statements and the Capitol Records and UMG label to make it look more professional. 

The final product to create from the cohesive package was the website. The most well known FREE website designing software that also didn't need downloading is Wix. Just like Prezi, it is extremely user friendly and also provides templates to help you create a product in the image you wish. I used a template to create the type of website I was looking to create, a slight copy of Wiz Khalifa's, mixed with elements of "Weird Al" Yankovic's. The reason for it being these artists is that they are the primary artists I have based my artist's image on. 

The layout is similar to that of Wiz Khalifa's, but most elements are shared between his and Al's websites, because I wanted to incorporate the conventions of Hip-Hop and Parody genre websites, which had a lot to do with colour. The background has remained black with a white ash garnish, whereas the text has always remained white. The page is straight in the centre and in order to find more information you have to scroll down. 

I was still able to include new media technologies even on the website. The most prominent examples of this were links to social media through social bars, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. I was also able to create hyperlinks to websites where people could buy tour tickets, find out information about the record label etc. Just like on the blog, I embedded the music video onto the website, and I did it just like Wiz on his homepage by making it a window that plays automatically. This once again demonstrates how important convergence is in new media technology because now my website gives the target audience all the information they need to know about the artist all on one place. 

A key feature of the website that not all artists have directly on their websites is a merch store, because most have it on an external website. I put t-shirts on the website to sell, which I personalised using Photoshop once again. Without this new technology, I would not have been able to place this on the Internet. 

Below is the director's commentary of the video, which also answers this evaluation question in another way:



In conclusion, I believe I have sufficiently used new media technology through a process of construction, research, planning and evaluation of my cohesive package of products for my artist. We live in an era where it is extremely easy to become a prosumer, someone who can create media products to share with a specific audience as large as on a global scale.