In What ways does your Media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of

real media products?

The Brief

At the start of or course, we were told that we needed to produce the opening 5 minutes of a documentary as a film clip. Alongside this were to ancillary tasks; to produce a 30 second radio trailer to advertise the documentary and to produce a double page magazine article to advertise the documentary.

To start our coursework, we began by looking into existing documentaries; researching the codes and

conventions used, and gathering data to help us create a professional and realistic documentary.

One of the first things we did was look at previous documentaries made by A level students in the media centre of our intranet. This was to help us get a better understanding of what we were going to produce, what content and layout we should be using and what kind of interviews were relevant.

We made notes on the documentaries that we saw, noting down about the content, style, layout, voiceover etc. This was for us to look back on later when we were designing our own documentary.

We researched the codes and conventions of documentaries. We looked into how to create good foundations for documentaries and the aspects that make the documentary work. All of these notes helped us take the right codes and conventions for our choice of documentary and make it work.

We also looked into existing TV documentaries on TV. Notes were made on the documentaries that were watched, including general notes, notes on content,

notes on conventions etc. Some of the documentaries that we looked at included: ‘Sixteen and Pregnant’ and ‘Turn it loose: The real street dance’. These were selected specifically because they were aimed at our target audience and

related to the type of documentary we were looking at.

We looked at Bill Nichols Documentary modes to learn about the different types of documentaries.

Expository Mode Addresses viewer directly to advance on argument or recount history. Characterised by hidden narrator whose voice is supported by images.Subjective and often polemical (one point of view)

Observational Mode Events observed and recorded ‘objectively’ with no authorial intrusion.Observes how life itself is.‘Fly on the wall’

Participatory Mode Filmmakers appear in their own work, interviewing and expressing views to camera.PolemicalMicheal Moore

Reflexive Mode The documentary often reflects on its own certification, drawing attention to this.

Performative Mode Personal approach, individual filmmaker telling their own storyOften political stories told by minority groups.

Our Documentary

• We chose to use the expository mode for our documentary.

• This is because we were using a voiceover instead of an onscreen narrator,

• We were also addressing the viewer directly.

Use of CameraA lot of the research done on conventions included the use of camera, so we had plenty of research to use when deciding what camera shots and techniques to use.

We used many different camera shots in our documentary; most of which were done specifically to fit the type of documentary we wanted. Below are some shots from our interviews. As you can see, we have taken into account the conventions, in this case from ‘SuperSize Me’ and used them to influence our shots. As you can see, both documentaries shots are mid close-ups and contain professional establishing footage in each.

Our documentary SuperSize Me

After a few shots of each documentary, mid close-ups appear, shown below. As you can see, we have taken the camera use from ‘SuperSize Me’ and incorporated it into our documentary. Obviously, we have used this kind of shot for a different purpose to suite our choice of documentary, but the technique is still the same.

Our documentary

SuperSize Me

SuperSize Me

Our documentary

We found that background footage was an important part of our footage, so it was important that we had professional footage. You can see here how we have looked at ‘SuperSize Me’ and used the knowledge we took from it to get suitable background footage for our documentary. It consists of capturing footage that is very relative to the subject, so that the viewer is constantly reminded of the documentaries purpose and subject.

SuperSize MeOur documentary

Once again, here you can see how we have taken our research of codes and conventions and used it to impact our footage. We have added in titles for our interviewees so that people know who they are. This is done in most of the documentaries that we looked at, so it was a clear decision to use them in our own work.

We decided to make ours a bit different to the others that we had looked at because we didn’t want to come across as too similar to other documentaries. Hence, it looks a bit different to the one shown above.

Here you can see how we have taken the ‘Rule of Thirds’ into account when filming our interviews. We have aligned Mike’s heads to cut at the crossing of thirds, much like it is done in ‘SuperSize Me’.

SoundSound is an important factor for a good documentary. We listened to how the sound was used in other documentaries and used what we found when producing the sound for our documentary. After listening to things like ‘Turn it loose; The real street dance’, where sound is very important, we gathered that we would have sound running all the way through the documentary to keep it flowing.

Here you can see that the sound level on the background has been dropped to a quiet level, for when the interviewees are talking. This is done in other documentaries, like ‘Big Fat Gypsy wedding’ and ‘SuperSize Me’. The music is still heard, but it makes it easy to hear the interviewee speaking too.

Radio We started off by listening to existing radio trailers, making notes about length, tacks, style etc. We found from our research that most radio trailers had the main information at the end, including times, dates, channels etc.Therefore, we chose to put the information at the end of our radio trailer as well. Nikita did the voiceover for the information because we found that it was a different voice that said the information on most of the radio trailers that we listened too.

Because we were aiming at a young target audience, we wanted it to appeal to young people. Other Radio trailers that we heard had used voices of people who fit in to the target audience; so we used voices of young people who fit into our target audience.

We broke our radio trailer up into several tracks. On average, the trailers we looked at had about 6 tracks each. We only used two tracks; myself and Nikita. This was to keep it simple.

Magazine

ComparisonsThe main images both take the top left corners of the articles.

Both images go over onto both pages. Our image takes the full width of the two pages whereas the Doctor Who image takes only two thirds of the width.

The article text covers the bottom third of both pages.

The background for the Doctor Who article has been left plain white, whereas we chose to have a coloured background to make the page stand out more.

Both article have an image breaking up the text in the bottom left corner of the right hand page.

Both Articles have symmetrical page numbers with the magazine name next to them. The only difference is that ours are on the outer side of the page and the Doctor Who ones are on the inner side of the page.

Both articles have pictures on the right side of the articles. Ours have been slanted with drop shadow, whereas the Doctor Who ones are straight and flat onto the page.

Both articles start with a drops cap. This is to make the article more visually appealing.

Both pages have main headings on the left page, above the article text. Ours is related to our topic choice so it stands out more that ‘New Who!’

Conclusion

In conclusion to question 1, I think that we have used and developed lots of media codes and conventions. We have researched them well and used them to influence our documentary. As you have seen, our work has followed many codes and conventions. I also think we have challenged some of them, for example; our radio trailer is quite different to what we researched because we needed it to fit with the audience and topic. I think we have challenged them appropriately and effectively. We have used, developed and challenged codes and conventions, but mainly used and developed.