Monday, 14 December 2009

Evaluation

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

Below are the ways in which our documentary used forms and conventions of real media products.

Title Sequence

The Last Of The Hitlers - BBC


Our Documentary


Cutaways

Speech Debelle, Album Speech Therapy: Channel 4 Documentary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qChFlX7y2a0


Our Documentary


Interviews
ITV Documentary - Micheal Schumacher Part 3


Parallel Universes - BBC documentary - Part 1


Living Doll My Fake Baby Channel 4

Baby Beauty Queens - BBC Three
Our Documentary


Graphics

Freddie's Loves - Channel 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsJyk3nH0jQ

Our Documentary



Vox Pops

Hungry Beast, Ep 6: Vox Pops, Body Image

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV8NaxJyI08


Our Documentary



Video Transitions
Fade to black From Russia with Hate

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLUxuq-E9yA

Our Documentary

These three screen grabs show the end of the clip eventually fading to black.

The Day I Died. NDE + Consciousness Documentary Pt1 of 6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I9-XxBAEsQ



Our Documentary





Archive Material



Music





2. How efective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? The voice over in our documentary uses standard English however, the accent is not daunting and has a very relaxed and informal tone to help appeal to the audience.

The target audience which we decided to aim our documentary at is 16-25 and personally, i myself do not know anyone who reads broadsheet newspapers. Therefore we are aiming to advertise our documentary in tabloid newspapers such as: 'The Daily Telegraph', 'News of the World', 'Daily Mail', 'The Sun', 'Daily Mirror', 'Sunday Mirror' and the 'Metro'.

The picture below demonstrated how I printed out the advert in different sizes and glued them into newspapers to get an idea of what it would look like.



Because our documentary is to be broadcast on Channel 4, we are unable to advertise it on BBC radio stations. We have therefore chosen national commercial radio stations such as 'Absolute Radio' and 'Heart FM' as well as popular local radio stations across the country.

North: TFM East: Radio Norwich South: Radio-Now West: Radio City The picture below shows the scheduling for Absolute Radio. The Arrow is pointing to 5 o clock, this is known as 'Drive Time' and is when our radio trailer will be played the most.


3. What have you learnt from audience feedback?

Our group asked a focus group of 20 to watch our documentary and then give us feedback at the end. Along with the short video I have created, the following answers and statistics were given.



1. How do you think the camerawork and editing compares to a professional documentary? Why?


Nicola Howley, 18, Student

"The editing looks professional because it flows and can tell it has been ‘thought through’ also the way the interviewee has been positioned makes the documentary look professional. Like if they positioned to either the right or left of the screen"
60% agreed that it was the editing that made it look professional
40% agreed that it was to do with the camerawork

2. Do the first 5 minutes make you want to watch the rest of the documentary? Why?

Hannah Heffernan, 17, Student


"definately. The interviews looked really genuine, especially Manda's reaction to when she was asked to take her make up off, if that wasn't scripted (which it doesn't look like it was) it's a really interesting thing to put in"

80% said yes, that the first five minutes does make them want to watch the rest of the documentary

20% said no because they said they are not really interested in make up but they said they would be interested in the other episodes in the series.

3. If you saw our print advert and listened to our radio trailer would it make you interested in watching the series? Why?

Matthew Vaughan, 23, Unemployed

"I think the main image in the print advert is really striking and it really grabbed my attention. I would want to watch the documentary yes, because I'm interested in which sin i am most likely to be!" 60% of the focus group said that it was the radio trailer that really made them interested in the documentary

40% said that it was the print advert

4. Do you think this documentary is appropriate for channel 4 and the chosen target audience of 16-25? Why?


Christiana Eaton, 20, Art Graduate
"Yes, because I think we're the generation most likely to wear make up and also we must be the first generation for men to actually care so much about their appearance."
70% agreed that it was appropriate as the actual series addresses many of the teenage topics around today.
30% said that the documentary was a bit too old for 16 year olds

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



A: For editing we used Adobe Premier Pro. We used this for both our documentary by capturing the footage and editing it by cutting/slicing/speeding up/slowing down we were also able to edit the sounds either by turning up or turning down the volume.

B: B shows the programme Adobe Photoshop. This was very important when we were creating our print advert (see codes and conventions of a print advert)

C: The digital camera was integral when making our documentary. First of all we needed to actually prove it was us who was creating the documentary and so we used the digital camera to take pictures of us filming interviews and cutaways. The camera was also very important for our print advert.

D: This is a voice recorder. I used this to record interviews and also when creating my evaluation I wanted to add a variety of media and so I recorded myself evaluating myself.

E: Without the digital camera the whole documentary would not have been at all possible. We used this to film the documentaries and cutaways. We used the zoom in and zoom out to record pictures. We used the tripod to keep the camera steady, the adjustable legs came in handy as the interviews were filmed on different levels.


  • I also used my own personal camera, a Sony Cybershot.

  • The internet was a useful source in terms of research and taking clips and pictures from websites such as Google Images and YouTube.

  • I used Window's Movie Maker for my coursework. For example, when I asked my audience for feedback I recorded their answers and then placed them into Windows Movie Maker and added the audience's photo's as well as their details.

To add to my evaluation, I recently found out that on the History Channel there was a documentary based on the Seven Deadly Sins with the idea similar to ours - that each sin will be viewed on a different episode each week. However, the target audience was evidently different to ours as the information was more based on the history and religous side of the sins.

Tuesday, 8 December 2009

Editing

To edit our documentary we used Adobe Photoshop.


We created a series of voxpops by asking numerous people who were in Liscard shopping centre to answer a couple of questions. We cut them so the answers were only a couple of seconds long.


We cut out the questions in the interview and edited it so that the viewer is only able to see just the interviewee talking.


So that we were able to avoid 'jump cuts' inbetween questions, we created cutaways. The image above, is an example of a cutaway which we sped up by right clicking the tab, clicking on speed/duration and increased the speed number.


For the background music, we chose Robbie Williams - Bodies, Scissor Sister - Filthy/Gorgeous and Blink 182 - Down. Throughout the documentary audio is played, however in some parts it is too loud and so the viewer is unable to hear the interviewees answer. Therefore we included keyframes to increase/decrease the volume.
Here is an example of the voiceover we used before we edited it.


Monday, 7 December 2009

Codes and Conventios of a Print Advert

Because our documentary is to be broadcasted on Channel 4, this website is were I used my research for my poster.








Looking at these images, I can see that the Channel 4 logo is placed in the centre on the far right. There is one main image and the writing is in a box which also makes it look like it is highlighted. These posters display a tagline for example "The Man Who Saw it All", the title, date and time.


Making the Print Advert


This was the rough initial plan in which we based our print advert on.





To create 'poison-like' drops we had to mix golden syrup with red food dye.


We used a teaspoon to raise the end to give the syrup a 'drop' look.


I then printed out a piece of paper with the number 7 on with three x's over it. To give it an old look, I scrunched it up, patted it with a teabag, put it under a blowdryer and ripped some of the sides.


This sign was to go over the green bottle which i would edit to make it look like that is were the drops are coming from.



I then photoshopped around the 'drop' and bottle using Photoshop. I did this by using the magic wand tool and 'Lasoo' tool.


I then copied the 'drop' and edited them to look like different types. As well as this, by using the 'eyedropper' tool I was able to copy the exact colour from the drops and use this for the outline for the Channel 4 logo. To do this, all the images had to be placed on a transparent background and then the layers were 'merged visible' so that they could all be copied onto a 'white' background so that I was then able to change the colour of the background.

I played around with the background for a while seeing if different colours looked better. I decided red was the best option, but thought it looked slightly plain. I therefore used the gradient tool to make the black background on the left fade into red horizontally.