A2 coursework evaluation final

A2 COURSEWORK EVALUATION

By Emma Reeve

For our A2 coursework we were asked to create a 5 minute opening for a documentary on our chosen topic. We were also told to produce two ancillary tasks; a radio trail and double page article to go with the documentary.Documentaries aim to inform viewers; to convey opinions and to create public interest. Documentaries hold certain common conventions such as interviews, voice overs, archival footage, exposition and actuality. Bill Nicholls (documentary theorist) developed a scheme called documentary modes. Nicholls identifies six different ‘modes’ in which a documentary will fall under. These six modes are poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflex and performative. The documentary that my group and I created falls under the expository mode as it addresses the viewer directly and emphasizes a well supported argument on whether the police should be armed or unarmed. Our documentary also could be seen as a little poetic as it symbolises the police and whether they should be armed or unarmed with the use of images police cars and guns.

QUESTION 1: IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

DocumentaryAs part of our research and planning we viewed many different documentaries to help us see what kind of documentary we wanted to create and see the kind of conventions used in documentaries. One of the documentaries that we watched was Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize me, he challenged himself to only eat McDonald's food for 30 days. Even though this documentary is very different from our documentary it does include many of the codes and conventions a documentary should require.


Camera – In our documentary we used a range of shots, including: long shot, medium shot, medium-close up and close up. We used this range of shots to show off the different locations (long shot) and expressions (close up) shown in the 5 minute documentary opening.In our documentary we used a tripod when filming important interviews to give a serious feel to the audience and location shots. Supersize me also used a tripod when filming important interviews, it was used to emphasis the formality and seriousness of the person being interviewed. We also used a hand held camera when filming vox pops so that the audience felt like they were there and can relate to the ordinary person being interviewed.

Sound- In our documentary we used a range of sounds including background music (non-diegetic), voice over and presenter. We found many documentaries used a presenter, they are used to engage with the audience and give some knowledge on what the audience can expect to find out from watching the documentary. We also had voice over which was used to keep the audience informed with facts and figures throughout the documentary. We used background music as it is a common feature of documentaries, used in supersize me and others that we had watched. We used the background music to break up the talking bits so that the audience wouldn’t lose interest.


Image of presenting from our documentary

Mise–en–scene- In the documentary supersize me, the mise-en-scene was appropriate to the people shown in the documentary. E.g The interview with his doctor, the doctor was wearing a lab coat which symbolises doctors and health. In our documentary the interview with PC Chris Brown, he was wearing his police uniform.

Editing- During the editing process we used some special effects such as blurring out scenes so that text could be read above it and using dissolves instead of straight cuts to new scenes. The use of dissolves would be seen as developing forms of conventions as most documentaries only use straight cuts however more and more are starting to venture away from straight cuts. For example in supersize me dissolves are used to show passing of time.


Mise-en-scene: PC Chris brown wearing his police uniform

Editing: Blurred imaging to show off text more easily


Our double page spread

Double page article (similarities)

Example double page spread

Large eye catching image to draw attention to the article

Large masthead also to draw attention to article

Drop cap used to emphasis start of text.

Use of pull quotes to keep reader interested

Both articles also use smaller images to break up text, page numbers, use text to anchor images and use serif fonts which shows that the articles are formal.


Double page article (Differences)

The differences between the two articles are that my article has more than one small image to break up the text and the example article uses a standfirst but mine does not. However, both articles above break conventions in that they are leaving a lot of white space around the edges.


Radio Trail

From listening to other radio trials, we decided to include snippets of sounds from our documentary. We used some of PC Chris Brown’s interview to give a taster of what the audience can expect from the documentary and we also used some of the music from the documentary in the radio trail. This then will help the reader to identify the documentary if they were flicking through the channels and heard the melody they may recognise it and decide to watch it. However we did challenge conventions by using a speaker quote from the double page article, which is not in the documentary. We felt by doing that, it gave a better link between the article and radio trail. In the radio trail we also specified what channel the documentary will be on and what time. Giving this kind of information to the listener makes it more likely for them to watch it.

QUESTION 2: HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?

In our documentary we created a magazine article and radio trailer. These products work well with the documentary as they would be used to market/ the documentary to the audience to convince them to watch the documentary. Our target audience is young adults, aged 17 and above. The documentary is supposed to appeal to any gender and any young adults who are interested in the topic of whether the police should be armed or unarmed or just generally interested in finding out more about the police.

Psychographics are the attributes that describe the personality, attitudes, beliefs, values, emotions, and opinions of customers, and prospective customers. Demographics describe "who" people are, Psychographics explain "why" they buy (and how to win their attention and motivate them to watch). By creating Psychographic Profiles, marketers are able to understand the motivational and non-conscious drives of a target audience. The psychographic profile for our target audience is wide ranging from young adults who may aspire to be part of the police or strugglers who are normally involved in crime. This documentary is aimed at any young person.


We chose channel BBC 1 to show our documentary as we found that BBC 1 is firstly the most watched channel on TV and is the update current affairs channel. We thought this would be appropriate for our documentary as it is a hot topic in today’s society.


We chose BBC radio 2 to play our radio trailer as it has the highest listening share percentage. We chose radio 2 over radio 1 as radio 1 is more of a music station compared to radio 2 being more of a talkative station meaning playing a radio trail for a police documentary will fit in better being played in between talk shows instead of being played between music were people normally change channels to avoid adverts.


We chose radio times to hold our double page article because the latest circulation figure (July–December 2009) for the Radio Times is 1,000,648. It also has been running since 1923 making it one of the oldest TV listings magazine. This makes it more reliable and more of the traditional approach in advertising the documentary.

QUESTION 3: WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

From our audience feedback we have learned that our documentary needs to have better background music that fits with the topic, to avoid this we needed to listen to more police related noises to really get a feel for the kind of music we should have been looking for. I also believe that we need have filmed more gun related police shots to really fit in with the documentary.

From our audience feedback we have learned that our magazine needs more appropriate font to fit in with contents of the article. To improve this the article could still have serif font to look formal but should use a times new roman as that is a common article font style. We also found out that that there was too much white, this can be avoided with more pictures and/or a coloured background.

From our audience feedback we learned that our radio trail needs to improve the sound levels as they have been said to be too loud and distracting. To do this we need to ensure we listen to the radio trail on speakers instead of just headphones so that we can hear the radio trail properly and be able to hear the loudness of the music.

QUESTION 3: WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

QUESTION 4: HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

Research and planningWe did a lot of our research on the internet using the bbc and telegraph news websites. Once we knew what our documentary was going to be on, we looked up articles related to our topic to find out information and facts for our documentary, double page article and radio trail.

As part of our research we also watched many YouTube clips and news clips on the police and gun related crimes.

DocumentaryFilmingTo film the documentary we used a canon camcorder, tripod, headphones and microphone kit. The camera was used to film location shots, interviews and vox pops. For the professional interviews and location shots we used the tripod to keep the camera steady and looking professional. If we were to use hand held camera during these shots it would have made our documentary look less professional and would have made it harder for the audience to concentrate on the documentary if it was constantly shaking.



Editing

After filming for our documentary we then had to edit the film on apple macs with the final cut express software which allowed us to cut down footage to be appropriate for the documentary . Firstly we had to log and transfer clips that we thought would work well in our documentary doing this gets the clips you logged and transferred into an easy access box to the side of the screen allowing us to easily drag clips down on to the time line.

QUESTION 4: HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?Secondly, the clips dragged on to the timeline where then cut by using the cutting tool down to the appropriate length we wanted them.

After we had cut down our clips and placed them in the right order we are then ready to add special effects which could be put on top of the film as we have done below where we added blurring to the image. We also used special effects in between scenes, such as dissolving into the next scene. We did this to make the documentary look more interesting and take a break from the usual straight cuts.

We also used special effects in between scenes, such as dissolving into the next scene. We did this to make the documentary look more interesting and take a break from the usual straight cuts.


Once all the clips were in place we were finally ready to make our backing music for our documentary and radio trailer. This was done by using the software garageband, which allowed us to create original music with simple beats and chords.

The music was then exported as an mp3 and opened up onto final cut express and placed in the documentary when and where music was needed.

Radio TrailerFor our radio trailer we used the software garageband. We used music from our documentary to go in our radio trailer so that the two were better linked. GarageBand includes a large selection of realistic, sampled instruments and software modelled synthesizers allowing us to create easy beats into a melody.


Magazine article

For our magazine article we used Microsoft word to create the article for the double page spread and then adobe indesign was used to create the layout of the article. Two of the images used in the article were taking from the documentary. This was done by creating a freeze frame in the documentary then exporting that freeze frame into a jpeg. The image of the fake gun is an original image.



Blogger.com

Everything we have done in our coursework must be uploaded to blogger.com. Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Blogger is very easy to access from any technological device. It also lets you create, edit and delete posts very easily.

A2 coursework evaluation final

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