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

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

Throughout the project we used a large variety of new media technologies, As i have quoted before "New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the later part of the 20th century to encompass the amalgamation of traditional media such as film, images, music, spoken and written word, with the interactive power of computer and communications technology, computer-enabled consumer devices and most importantly the Internet."
They have become commonplace within today's post modern society and with that we have taken advantage of them in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages of the project.

 Research & Planning

In the research & planning stage we used a few key new media's, the largest being Blogger, We used blogger to document our progress through the project, its is a online portfolio of all our work, from text to pictures to videos and a range of other multimedia. This form of presenting work has been a success because it has enabled me to work from anywhere with a internet connection and not have to worry about carrying all my work with me, its the perfect example of a new media which has enabled ease of use.
      The Internet is another huge part of the research and planning stage, I used it extensively to find out information on codes and conventions, on different technologies i was going to use, on locations and on pretty much everything. Using search engines such as Google i could find out anything i wanted. It has been brilliant in helping with in the project and once again this is a ideal example of new media technologies and ease of use. Pretty much instantly i can check news headlines, update the world on my doings, listening to music and buy a product, its a endless form of resources.
       Within the internet we used a forum (www.joydiv.org) to gain feedback (which is helpful in research, planning and the construction plus the evaluation stage). Using a email account we had created for our record label we created a account and use it to gain feedback on our ideas and our rough cuts.
       Lastly we used YouTube, Twitter and Facebook to look into Joy Divisions online communities as well as create our own accounts for showing our work and creating our own online communities. This enabled us to create a record label profile which is similar to those in the real world, most company's these days use the internet and the huge range of online social networking sites to advertise and this is what we were thinking when we created our own groups.

   
List of all New Media's used in R&P
  Blogger, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Megavideo, Amazon, Play.com, IMDB, Google,  The Guardian,  NME, Q, Mojo, Wikipedia, Scribd, Divvshare, External harddrive, Email, DV Video cameras, iMovie 06/08, 'Money For Nothing' book


Construction

Within the construction of our products we used a few new media technologies.
     For filming the majority of our music video we used a HD Camera, the quality of these cameras are a hundred times better then the quality of the standard DV tape cameras we used last year, Instead of the grainy shots we had last year we had footage that looked professional, something we were very happy with, we even filmed a identical film with both cameras to compare the difference. Both cameras had a variety of manual settings but the HD camera has a few more such as change shutter speed, all of which come in useful when trying to change the outcome of the filming, We experimented a lot before going into post production and we used many of the options to change outcome of the footage, for instance when filming the chroma key shot we changed the settings to allow maximum focus on the cigarette.
              As well as uses a SD card for saving the footage over using DV tapes, which saves a lot of hassle when it came to having a dv tape and looking after the tape. Now the SD card and a SD card reader go straight into the computer and upload though the uploading took a little bit longer then it did with tapes.



 We used Final Cut express this year for the video editing, this out shone the software we used last year which was IMovie, Final Cut is more advanced software, allowing greater control over the editing, many options for transitions and effects and layering. The Coen brothers' latest Oscar nominated film True Grit was edited on a version of Final Cut which shows how good the software is. The jump from iMovie to Final Cut seemed tricky at first but once we got the hang of it they weren't many problems.We ended up using a large variety of effects and tools on Final cut such as the following.

• Grey scale
• Layering
• Chroma Key
• Opacity

A lot of editing such as the split screen layering that we used towards to the end of the video which i believe is one of the better shots could not be possible to create using the old software so the jump to final cut was well worth the effort.

We had many problems with using final cut express, mainly because it was the first time we had used the program and we had to teach ourselves to use it. Some of these problems were trivial things such as some of the effects not working but through trail and error and a handy notebook to write everything we learnt down we slowly progressed toward creating our cuts. We also had huge problems exporting it at the end and we had to use a lot of trail and error.

Sony Vegas is another professional non-linear editing system, this program was used by all 3 members of the group for simple video editing at home, i downloaded the trail because its a very expensive program and it served its purpose, it is very much the final cut of windows.
It enabled us to do work at home such as video editing for the vodcasts and other smaller videos.

Lastly we used a IPhone 3, the IPhone is a modern smart phone, it comes with a built in camera and the option to download apps, this proved to be great once we found a 8mm app which we used for a couple of the shots in the music video, The quality of the shots were a lot higher than expected and therefore we had no hesitation in including them in our music video. This was an unexpected bonus of the project, this helped us to use a variety of tools and techniques in producing the video. The standard camera on the iPhone was also used for creating our Production Diary.

For the Digipak and the Adverts we used a SLR camera, these high quality professional cameras are great for photography, it uses a SD card to store the images and is 12 mega pixels. We took one to two of our shoots and took one out one day to take the front cover of the Digipak.

Adobe Photoshop is a graphic image editor. we used it for the Digipak images and for the net, and for the adverts. Both me and Johnny were no strangers to the program so we had no issues in using it and in fact we quite enjoyed it. The program gave us many different options when it came to the editing for example using text, filters. 



We even went as far as downloading and adding our own text font (Joy Division font). As well as Photoshop for other parts of the digipak and adverts we used other new medias. An example of new media used was the QR Code generator. QR Codes links to websites/offers which are linked when scanned using a piece of software often found on smart phones. We used a QR Code generator online to create a code which links you to the New Transmission Records blog. 


 
 When making our digipak we were given a template from the people at WeWow. We then added our own images and front cover/back cover. For the inside of the digipak, we also used my drawing tablet , which allowed us to draw on the tablet which went onto the screen so we could design  as if we were drawing it, this was helpful was Johnny who was our resident artist. We also used a A4 and A3 printer to print the adverts and the digipack. Scanners were also used at various times through the project.
4 Panel Paperfoam With Booklet Space

List of all New Media's used in Construction

DV cameras, high definition (HD) cameras, iMovie 06/08, Final Cut Express 4, Quicktime (media player), VLC Media Player, iTunes, digital SLR camera, Adobe Photoshop, Photocard, A3 printer. IPhone with 8mm App.


Evaluation

For the evaluation we used a few new medias, most of these are interlinked with blogger which we mentioned before, we used hyperlinks on the evaluation for example this hyperlink which goes to the wikipedia page for hyperlinks. Sites such as Scribd, Slideshare, Divshare, and Picasa were used for uploading different types of files. Scribd was used for MS Word documents, Slideshare for Powerpoint Presentations, Divshare for podcasts and Picasa for creating slideshows. This was mainly done so we could embed all of these type of files on our Blogger to evidence planning and research.

A lot of the above are mentioned in this video,



All of these new media tools have furthered the interactions on our blog and evaluation and make it much more user friendly and interesting.

List of all New Media's used in Evaluation

Video cameras, hyperlinks and pictures (to make a attractive blog), Youtube, Scribd, screen captures and other previously mentioned new medias.

Summary
New media technologies are a huge part of post modern life, within our group we were able to use them to create a company complete with its own style that is near identical to industry standard company's. New media also helped us actually exhibit our work to a world through websites such as Youtube, facebook. New medias have opened us to a greater degree of professionalism and quality in our work.