When beginning Media this year I was introduced to many pieces of technology some of which I had never heard of, let alone had any knowledge of using. Although this was a daunting experience being expected to use all these programs with no prior knowledge, I decided to throw myself in to the deep end and start learning. I took advantage of our preliminary exercise attempting all roles from camera angles with the video camera to editing the piece on Imovie with the 'Mac'. I learnt many things from this and although the video camera was fairly easy to grasp my step change in learning came from the Macs. Throughout this movie making process I have learnt that apple macs can work wonders and fulfil your every wish as long as you learn to treat it well and push the right buttons! After our preliminary task I began to feel more confident as although I was no editing genius, I felt I had sufficient knowledge to successfully make an opening for a movie.
Blogger is a key tool needed by every media student. Although I had never had a blog or ever used blogger before Media A level I felt that we got off to a good start from the beginning compared to other members of my class. I believe my ease of use came down to my perseverance in my first blog post as although I struggled I was eventually able to publish to my blog, where as other members gave up. This helped me as when it came to posting important information (such as these evaluation questions) I was able to do this with ease. I have thoroughly enjoyed using blogger and the many talents it has in producing appealing articles with fancy fonts and colourful backgrounds, It has made my media coursework a lot easier and considerably more presentable then if I was to have written it by hand. My blogging experience has been so successful I would even go as fart as to say I may even contemplate starting my own blog (after this ones finished of course!) It is very easy to see as you scroll through the articles I have posted over the last 4 months that my understanding of what should and shouldn't be in a blog has vastly improved. My articles are now much more appealing to read with the pictures and fonts I have used!
As with any work containing technology there were bound to be some trouble shooting issues, however I am proud to say we overcame every difficulty (even if it did take a few days). One trouble shooting problem we faced came about when we were stuck one weekend planning to film but with no camera. We had been used to filming with the school cameras and uploading to the Macs through fire wires, however due to a misunderstanding no one had taken the camera on the Friday afternoon. We were running short of time to finish our filming and because of this we were left with no choice but to use my own camera which although was a slightly newer model we had no fire wire for. Over the weekend I had managed to upload the footage to my pc through an sd card and transfer this to a memory stick. When we attempted to upload this on to Imovie we found that the footage was in the wrong file format. We did not know what format this needed to be in or even how to change it. I took it upon myself to work this out as I knew how important this footage was. I spent the best part of 3 hours of my Monday evening 'googling' "how to's" in order to find the right format. Eventually I found out that the format we needed was 'quicktime-mov'. I then spent a few minutes looking on the Internet for a software to download which would convert these files. I used movavi video converter which easily transferred these files and placed it back on my memory stick to use on Tuesday. This gave me a chance to really put my trouble shooting abilities and perseverance to the test as I could have quite easily given up and spent time which we did not have to film the shots again. I also used technology which no one else in the class used when having to work with movavi video converter.
I have used other small amounts of technology through our group blog, through websites such as 'glogster' and 'teacher time line'. These were suggested by my teachers in order for me to use lots of different types of technology. I developed a strategy when approaching these new forms of technology where instead of attempting my work straight away, I would spend my time reading instructions or tutorials to make sure I used the full capability of these technologies in order to produce the best work possible.With reference to the question, you can see from above that I have learnt a lot about new technologies. However if there is one important rule I have taken from constructing this product, it is that it is sometimes better to take a step back from what you are doing and to make sure you fully understand it, whether it be a new technology for editing your movie or making the most of the presentation features on blogger. This is a lesson that can be applied to all aspects of life and not just new technologies. It is not always optimal to rush into things! This is a lesson I will keep with and apply throughout my life.
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