In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

What we had to do.For our A2 media course work we were asked to produce 3 different media pieces. We had to create the opening 5 minutes of a TV documentary, a radio trailer and also a double page spread to promote our documentary. Given a few months to do this we created our documentary first, we researched into similar products to make our documentary look realistic and as though it is going to be aired on TV. After researching different types of documentaries and similar topics we started to plan filming. Filming had started and we got as much footage as we could even though we weren't going to use it all, we then used Final Cut Express which was new to me to create the documentary and log all the footage and start piecing together the 5 minutes. The radio trailer didn't take much time in doing as we used live footage from our documentary, we had to create out radio trailer to gain an interest and draw an audience in to watch our documentary. The double page spread was also a smaller task compared to the documentary as we had to write an article based on cyber bullying and based on the footage we had got. We then included pictures from the documentary and published it in a popular TV listings magazine so that the type of audience that read it will be interested in watching a relevant documentary.

Why we chose cyber bullyingWe chose the topic of cyber bullying because the purpose of a documentary is to inform people and make people engaged into the programme, we targeted our documentary at teens which with the high use of social networking and smart phones cyber bullying is very common within that, therefore if we targeted it at this audience and screened it at a suitable time it meant the message of how cyber bullying can be prevented or even stopped can get around and people can understand the causes and implications of cyber bullying.

Documentaries

There are many different types of documentary features and the one that we chose to base our

documentary on was ‘Cinema Vertie’ this involves a hand held camera and expresses views and

opinions there are also interviews included, this uses and develops forms of real life

documentaries. Our documentary is also going to

be a single strand mode, this is where there is one plot/story

throughout the whole documentary. This is common for documentaries because they are

usually shown for a purpose and to get a message across so want to

base it on one topic.

Our documentary is also going to be expository, this is where we address the viewers directly to

advance an argument.

We are also going to use a hidden narrator whose voice

is supported by images.

This type of documentary is also polemical.

Channel

We chose to air our documentary on BBC 3, this is because it has a young target audience and our research shows through out questionnaire that people watch more TV and documentaries on this channel, it is also well known for documentaries and is on appropriate time and days for the target audience.

Our documentary Vs other documentaries.

We presented our documentary name with teens holding the letters and in the college which

relates to teens and cyber bullying, as you can see this

real life documentary is about tattoos and they have

presented their title as a tattoo, both of these titles are relevant to the topic

and you know by looking at them what the

documentary is going to be about.

In the professional documentary they chose to say facts and figures

whilst showing footage of the main topic where as

we challenged this convention and wrote the facts out and had music and the narrator reading the facts out. I think this

worked better for our target audience because they are teens and they will sit and be engaged

and read them in themselves rather than be

distracted and watching the footage rather than listening to the narrator.

These screen shots are both vox pop interviews, where

they are completely spontaneous and you just approach someone to get

an answer of them, they are both medium close up shots

which is a convention of media products and again we haven't challenged any conventions yet, they are

both shot with a hand held camera and they answer with comments and facts towards the topic of the

documentary.

This was our expert interview with nick warring, we showed this by using a lower third, this

lets the audience know who he is as well as the narrator

saying it, how ever this doesn't happen in the

professional documentary as the narrator just says who it is and what he does and how he

is involved with the programme. We haven't challenged a convention

because this is how some documentary choose to

display who is talking there for we have use a convention of a

real media product.

We again challenged another convention of

documentaries, we used fades and

dissolves between each clip whereas this

professional documentary used straight cuts, using

straight cuts makes the documentary move

quicker and fits more into the opening 5

minutes, our documentary was at a

slower pace which I still think worked well

because it was more of a sensitive topic.

We used common conventions like a range of different camera shots throughout the documentary this just gives it a different look throughout, we also used another common convention of music in the back ground,

this makes the documentary seem more up beat and so there is no silence in the documentary. We made sure that we did a lot of research into cyber bullying to make sure we had enough to talk about in the documentary so

that it wasn’t boring. We made sure that we were asking people in the target audience what they thought cyber bullying was so that they could be involved into the documentary so when it was shown on the TV the

audience could relate to those of similar ages involved. Overall I think we used and developed conventions rather than challenge them, we

challenged a few but we thought doing it this way made our documentary more appealing based on the sensitive subject. By using and developing

the main conventions this made our documentary look more professional and more like a real one.

Double page spread Bottom left is my annotated double page spread and how it looks next to my own double page spread as part of the project, I used images that were from the documentary and also quotes that are going to be shown in there too. The professional double page spread takes up one whole of the page in text and I have challenged this form by spreading my across both pages, they have also used one main image where as on my double page spread all the images are vital and make the double page spread layout complete. The colour schemes are the same and I think that having a white background works well because the colours that you do use then stand out. I also think that the columns work well and make the page look more interesting and not just like a book, I think that maybe my article was a bit too long but then again it fills the page and only gives vital information about the documentary. The use of drop caps and tag lines and also captions on the images use and develop the conventions of real media products.