A2 media studies coursework evaluation

A2 Media Studies Coursework Evaluation

Julia Cockrill

A2 Media Studies Coursework Evaluation

For our coursework, we had to produce the opening 5 minutes to a documentary. To maintain the conventions of a documentary, I did research into real life documentaries in order to create a professional product at the end. Our documentary was about University Fees and if the higher tuition is worth the experience. It would reach the target audience of young people, mainly 17-18, looking to go University; mixed race, male/female/ channel 4 viewers. Is it to show a range of opinions and social backgrounds to show the topic is affecting everyone.

We used Channel 4 as our research showed it’s most popular for teens to watch and is most aimed at the younger generations, using the same informal style I wanted to portray with the documentary.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge codes and conventions of real media products?

Channel 4 Ident: Channel 4 brings a lot of attention to

recent controversies.

For example, “Too Poor for Posh School” explores a similar topic to our documentary, this one made by Channel 4 showing money worries.

It gives credibility to the company, and we used a male voiceover to give let the audience know it’s not aimed at just females; even though during the course of my research I found more females are planning on going to University than males.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/too-poor-for-posh-school/4od

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/too-poor-for-posh-school/4od

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge codes and conventions of real media products?

Expert Interviews

Still from My Documentary

Still from Real TV

Common conventions used throughout the documentary, for example Medium close ups (MCU) of the expert interviewees. They allow you to see their expressions clearly, if concerned or happy; and both give mise-en-scene that supports the topic. We know they’re important by having a caption of their names, we also did this to make sure it looks professional and clear to the viewer who the person is.

We interviewed the Sixth Form’s Chaplain, Neil Attewell as one of our experts because the works with young adults and so it helps to bring out the truth of the documentary as he knows what he’s talking about.


Student Interviews

For our documentary, it was important to appeal to a young audience since it was about them, so including student interviews was essential. We used both male and female students to show it effects everyone, of all backgrounds.


Vox-PopsVox pops are used to get the public’s opinions and since our topic is in the news right now, using these were relevant and an easy way to find out how lots of people felt.

Although, for our documentary, the mise-en-scene was quite busy and loud and so lowered the quality of them. Also some had closed questions and so they were hard to place within the documentary.


Different ShotsTo keep to the conventions of a documentary, we used a variety of camera skills and angles for professionalism. We tried different types to see what worked best in order to maintain the appeal to the audience.

The montage is made up of extreme close ups give the intensity and fast pace of the documentary which captures the viewers interest. Others included close ups of the computer screen, university course books and leaflets.


Establishing Shots

These are used in all documentaries and TV shows to set the scene and make the location or environment apparent to the audience. It allows them to also connect what the voiceover is saying to the images. They usually have a clear indication of where it is through the name or logo; and we included this to maintain the realistic nature of the documentary.

Establishing Shot from Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story.

One of our shots of the college sign.


Tableau Shots

In the focus group, we used tableau shots showing the students with prospectuses to give an observational feel and as if they’re naturally looking through them before we spoke to them.

Medium Long Shots

Presenter: Using a MLS suggesting we’re inside where the establishing shot took us. I think we should’ve had more of the presenter in our documentary showing more location within the college.

Images from our documentary and the one we analysed in class: Are The Net Police Coming For You?


Voiceover and sound

Voiceovers are commonly used to give information and clarity to the subject.

We had a male voiceover keeping our documentary gender-neutral as the presenter is female. Although, in our feedback, the audience said they would’ve liked the voiceover to be more enthusiastic to keep the audience entertained. We had to used someone else because the presenter and voiceover couldn’t be the same person, else I would’ve done both parts.

By having a student as the voiceover, it helped to show there was no adult authority involved and that it affects teenagers mainly.


Diegetic/Non-Diegetic Sound and Music:

Different non-diegetic sound was used throughout our documentary to give different moods. Our theme music was upbeat and something that would suit the target audience.

Sound Bridge: This joins shots together instead of having long clips which gets boring. Although for ours, we seemed short of footage and so it was difficult to find smaller clips that linked to what the interviewee was saying.


Transitions:

We used a variety of these to experiment and see what’s more interesting. We used some straight cuts where we felt necessary to the realism. Although, as our feedback suggested, some transitions fade to black; so if we had more time, they could’ve been fixed to be made neater. The grey boxes between clips are transitions.


How things went: Over the course of production, I found things would’ve

gone a lot more smoothly if the whole group was there all the time, and therefore could’ve managed time better but we worked with what we had and hopefully that showed. I feel like I held the group together but we did our best through the circumstances.


Listings Page

Title

Subheading

Page numbers

Article

Pull Quote

Main Image

CaptionScreen caps from the documentary

Documentary’s date and time

Before making our own, we looked at real life listing pages for inspiration and conventions. Our analysis can be found on our blog here.

Drop caps

Rule of Thirds

Overall we got a 7/10 for our listings

page after the feedback. The

layout and colour is important for the

target audience to take interest.

http://c05documentary11.blogspot.com/


I found our listings page to be too plain for our target audience, but they liked the layout.

The title, information on date and time and the drop caps are professional looking.

Rule of thirds is used for all magazine articles.

Conventions: Red is for usual conventions, Yellow are the challenged conventions.

The main image spreads across both pages, This could’ve been done better with more

time.

Drop shadow on photos are not aligned to give more attention to the smaller images.

Photos have captions to provide more information to the reader.

Photos are screen shots of the documentary.


Quotations to stand out written in italics. We also added lines to took it away from the rest of the text to move attention away from the article.

We did face difficulties with the listings page as I had to make a new one at the last minute. Therefore the final product was made within 2 and a half hours.

We challenged the conventions of images using drop shadow as well as a white text box around it at a slant to draw attention to them and give a more informal style.


Radio Trailer: The radio trailer was created to offer a

45 second preview of what would be in the documentary.

If you click on the button on the left, you can listen to our radio trailer.

Overall from our feedback, we achieved a 8/10 for our radio trailer.

What I’d do differently:

Use more opinions from different interviews, and made it more lively so people want to watch it. We also should’ve mentioned the title of the documentary at the start of the trailer as well so the listener straight away knows what it’s for. It’s also very quiet.

Conventions:Music: Ambient background music attracts the listener. Presenter: Similar to the voiceover, the presenter introduces the radio trailer and what it’s advertising.Voice clips from doc.: This gives a taster of what to expect in the documentary. I think we should’ve used another little clips rather than a long winded one.Title Mentioned: Gives the brand identity.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

As a combination, the main task and ancillary tasks had to work well together and create a Brand Identity. This is when there are links made between all of your products. Our main link was the overall question of ‘Are the higher university fees worth the overall experience?’ (In short: Is it worth it?) This was to give the audience a familiarity throughout all of the products so they know that after reading the article or listening to the radio trailer, they’d know exactly what will be in the documentary. Our brand identity linked with money and education.

Timings: So the audience know when they can watch the documentary, timings are extremely important to inform them. Unfortunately the radio trailer says the documentary is showing on Sunday instead of Thursday.

Titles: The general titles of the documentary and listings page need to link, and though they’re different, they still fit around the theme of money and rising fees. The real listings pages I looked at showed this is what they do.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

Images: For the listings page, I took screen captures from the actual documentary in order to show they two are linked.

Quotations: We used different quotes for the listings page and the radio trailer. The radio trailer focused on what the Principal had to say, whereas the listings page concentrated on Neil Attewell.

All products nowadays need to promote themselves through many different social networks and popular sites; and now magazine articles and radio trailers don’t get through to the target audience we want as they used to, before so much technology. Therefore, advertising online would be the next step, in reality, as that’s where you’ll find most teenagers. Showing a preview of the documentary on a site like ‘Facebook’ would been attractive because not only is it on their social website, it would be in the form of a video clip, and interactive media is now very popular.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From the audience feedback, I learned that the students really liked the topic that we covered, as it was relevant to their lives right now. Also the ‘expert’ interviews were interesting, and the title sequence was well done. Some improvements were to have a better voiceover, some clips needed better lighting, and sound in some places needed levelling.

Images from when students watched our documentary.

This is a copy of the questionnaire the students filled out whilst watching our documentary and we used it to find out what was successful and what needed improving.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

About 75% thought overall, our documentary was ‘good’, another 20% thought it was ‘very good’, and 5% thought it was ‘OK’. (approx.)

50% of the audience felt the choice of topic was ‘very good’, 40% ‘good’ and 10% ‘excellent’ .

These are the results of the questionnaires:


Majority thought the material was ‘good’ or ‘very good’, linking to the topic.

Editing was also 70% ‘good’ in order for the viewer to understand what the documentary is about.


Mostly thought the sound was ‘good’ but more people only thought it was ‘OK’ because after getting feedback, the audience found the sound could be improved.

60% thought the transitions and effects were ‘good’, 20% ‘very good’ and 20% ‘OK’. This was due to fading blackouts, but the captions were fine.


The audience found the documentary very good for our target audience due to the fast pace montages and the people we included in it.

Majority of the feedback found the professionalism ‘good’ but could’ve been made better through time management and working together.


Likes Dislikes

Range of footage Transitions through interviews

The topic The lighting in some shots

Good interviews with students/’experts’

Sound levels need to be better

Title graphics The voiceover should some more enthusiastic about the topic

The relevance of today


Conclusion of Feedback

For the documentary, I think the interview with the principal was rushed and so we couldn’t fix the lighting to a better standard as it was already previously recorded but when coming to put it on the Apple Macs, the sound wasn’t working. This slowed us down on filming time and made us rush to get another interview with him. But overall it looked quite professional and even with some sound and lighting errors, it came out effectively tackling the controversy.

The listings page was ok but a lot needed improving with the main image being slightly too big; the colour scheme needed to appeal to the target audience better. Although, the layout was good, the article worked well and the software was effectively used.

The radio trailer was very relaxed and engaging, and sounded professional, though was a bit quiet.

I have learnt you have to be patient with both your group members and your equipment, especially when some problems occur, and that if you don’t work as a team then not everything gets done on time. I have learned I make a good leader and can get things done under a lot of pressure when no one else in the group was there to help.

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

During the research and planning stage, it was essential having the internet to find out the most up-to-date information on the topic and know what we were talking about so the internet played a big role in the early stages. To see how it’s effecting the media, we used search engines like Google to find news items. This helped us to make our decision and get hold of the right statistics and figures.Some web pages we found:

Higher feesFewer applicants

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7946912.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/oct/24/university-applicants-drop-tuition-fees

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

YouTube and 4ODLooking at already existing documentaries online helped us get a feel for how ours should look with the correct conventions. As our documentary would go on Channel 4, we looked at theirs in particular and what makes them appeal to a younger audience. Although similar topics to our documentary had not been made recently by them, getting the overall idea from others helped us see what goes into them. The inspiration was

incorporated through the ident voiceover by using their style whereby they mention the programme on later on, and then giving some contents to what the audience are about to watch. Examples of idents:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CVdllN67OQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CVdllN67OQ


The BlogThe blog, throughout the coursework, has been very important to update and helped to keep up with deadlines with work. Everyone in the group had set tasks and work that should’ve been put on the blog to show the skills developed over time. I managed to put all my necessary pieces of work up on time and it’s easy to be able to see what others have done. We were able to post work from college and from home so it’s been a useful way to log progress and/or struggles during the coursework process.

Our group put work in the folder named CO5, and with this you can see how many posts you added, when the most recent was added, and if you want you add another/edit.


This is the page where you can look at old posts for editing. You can also select individual group member’s work by clicking on their name which I’ve circled.

The blog has an easy way of putting photos or videos up. It also helps the group to get work off each other instead of being emailed or finding it in various folders. All the work we need is on one system.

You show what pieces of work are yours by adding your name in the thin box at the bottom to give credit where needed. It also saves automatically throughout your time on the one post so no work is lost by accident. You can also ‘preview’ the work before finally posting it.


Equipment:

Apple Macs: For the past few months, the Apple Mac computers have been a necessity for the production of all aspects of the coursework. They were used for the research and planning of creating storyboards in Comic Life (an example here.), Final Cut Express for the construction, and Print Screens for the evaluation.

Kodak Easy Share Digital Camera: This was important take stills for the initial storyboard planning; rough ideas for footage, and audience feedback. We also used photos found from the internet for this too.

HD Canon Camera: A part of the equipment needed to construct the documentary, the camera allowed us to frame different shots and zoom in/out. We could then watch the footage back instantly after shooting. We uploaded footage the same day it was shot in order for it to be safe on our computer so we could log and transfer specific clips onto Final Cut Express.


Tripod: These were good for keeping the camera steady and makes for good panning shots. Although it was hard at times finding a flat surface, it made it easier for long clips so the camera holder wouldn’t become shaky.

Microphone: Used for recording interviewee's voices and voiceovers. It enable sound to be clearer than just using the video camera’s microphone.

Recorder: We were able to set the sound levels of any clip we recorded to the same level using this, although we had trouble with the levels sometimes, and also had a problem that we thought we were recording when we weren’t really.

Headphones: Kept the sound clear and helped us know if the right sound was being picked up, or whether we needed to re-locate or re-record.


Software:Adobe InDesign and Photoshop: I was able to use this software on the Apple Macs to create the listings page. I created the initial layout of the page and then worked from there. I used Photoshop to look at different effects and fonts, but with shortened time to make this, I stuck to basics.

Tools for moving, creating boxes for images and text, and colour picking.

Drop caps and other text features.

Colour, swatches, effects and gradients.


Final Cut Express: We put together our whole documentary using this software from the Apple Macs.

We put all our cut down clips into minutes and their own ‘bins’.

Viewing screen for play back or print screens for storyboards etc (by using shift, command, 4).

These are the layers of sound and clips which are placed onto a timeline. The main stream would usually go on the middle line, and the ident or captions would go on other layers.

We also created sound bridges for clips and sound to flow by using the pen button. You can also move individual or all clips by locking them together which makes for easier motion.


We were able to increase or decrease sound levels using the pink lines to make sure no clips were too loud or too quiet. Or we could fade sound in and out, like the background music, for example to bring in the next scene.


Adding Text:

With Final Cut we were able to add other conventions like captions and a title. You can change font, colour, size and alignment for however you want it to look using different controls. We added a drop shadow to captions to make it more informal.


Comic life

Number of pages and adding more.

Auto shapes for annotations.

Font and colour change.

Different page layouts.

To import files/images from different folders.

This software allowed us to create comic strip type arrangements to display our storyboards, montages and the nine frames to show our documentary.

This is a link to see an example of me using Comic Life for the 1st minute montage storyboard. Here and here which will open in another window.


Garageband

For the radio trailer, we used a mix of sound clips from the Canon camera and our own recorded with just the recorder and microphone. We separately recorded a voice over and added clips from the interview with the principal. You are able do the same as Final Cut by fading sound in and out so that the voiceover can be louder the theme music.

We used layers on Garageband as well and created an upbeat sound to appeal to the core audience.


Burning

I choice to present my evaluation on Microsoft PowerPoint to be added to Slide Share where I could include images and hyperlinks to other sites or videos to be as interactive as possible.

After all of our product were complete and we met the deadline, we had to burn the documentary and radio trailer onto CD-R discs. For the documentary, we exported the file to ‘mov’ and used iDVD to give it a formal content menu screen making it more professional.

Evaluation

A2 media studies coursework evaluation

Education

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