Evaluation 1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media

products At the start of our A2 course, we were given a brief for our coursework to create the opening 5 minutes of a documentary aswell as a double page spread for a listings magazine and a radio trail as ancillary tasks. We decided to do our opening 5 minutes for a documentary According to Bill Nicholls Documentary Modes (2001) theory, there are generally 6 types of documentaries, participatory, poetic, expositional, performative, reflexive and observational. One of the main documentaries we looked at in class was Supersize Me in which Morgan Spurlock appears in through most of the documentary. This brings in the participatory mode in as the film maker himself appears in the documentary. However we did not use this in ours, we used a voiceover throughout the 5 minutes. This puts our documentary in the expositional mode which is the main mode that our documentary fits into. We provided a lot of information directly to the viewers and wanted to make the subject of our documentary come across. The observational mode doesnt apply to our documentary in this mode a voiceover isnt used and we made full use of a voiceover throughout. This type of mode however applies to many other documentaries like the ITV documentaries that follow celebrities such as Katie Price, The Saturdays and Peter Andre. Our documentary is very much based on a certain subject so the poetic mode would be suitable for it. After watching different documentaries, we noticed a lot of different conventions that they all had in common. Hence we tried to make sure that we included these. One of the main conventions of documentaries is interviews. We noticed that way the camera had been placed so that the interviewee was at least a third into frame, the rule of thirds.

The convention we used the most was the voiceover. We felt this was the essential convention to our documentary as it was the main source of information for the viewer. The voiceover allowed us to provide the information, explanations and opinions to the viewers.

We tried to include a range of shots:

Extreme Close Up

Medium Close Up

Pan Shot

We used tripod for all of our shots as we need them to look professional and steady. The tripod made it easier to take these shots especially the pan shots and cutaways. Another convention we used was text and some images. We added in captions for our expert interviews with a maroon block as this is the general colour theme of our tasks. Actuality is used throughout our documentary as we didnt use any actors or any scripted recordings other than the voiceover. All of the footage including the secondary footage we used is of real life events. This gives the documentary a sense of reality and realism.

We chose to do our article in TV Choice magazine, so we tried to include as many conventions as we could.

To the left is the DPS that we created and an article that as published in a TV Choice magazine. Similarities include having the stills from the programme its advertising. Another would be the drop cap which makes the start of the article stand out. There is a main image that dominates the page and both of these images are what the articles mainly about (name of the documentary and character of story.) TV Choice doesnt use very long article so we decided to keep our short and simple too. However there is also a lot of difference including that we didnt make it as colourful and also we did include the border that is used in all TV Choice articles. This was one of the main weaknesses of our DPS.

In the radio trails that we listened to, majority if not all included clips from the documentary. So we included snippets of the professional interviews as well as the montage. We included a rhetorical question that would attract the listeners attention and make them want to watch it. These snippets give the listener an idea of what will be in the documentary. We used the same backing track in the trail from documentary to give it the same tone that we had set for it. We included a voiceover aswell to give the listener details of the date, time and channel that the documentary would be broadcast on. Majority of the radio trailer were between 30-40 seconds however ours was 26 seconds. I felt that our trailer, though short, was able to give the listeners enough information to possibly make them want to watch the documentary.

We tried to stick to as many conventions as we could for all of our tasks and feel that we didnt do too bad however a lot could be improved on it, especially

2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? We wanted to make sure that the ancillary tasks would be appropriate for the target audience as well as be able to sell the documentary and make the target audience want to watch it. Our target audience is aimed at both male and females aged 15-25 years, specifically those who consume alcohol of know of those who do. There are no particular races or religions that it is aimed at as there isnt a specific one that drinks. However it is very unlikely those who follow the religion of Islam would watch this as it is against their religion. We did try to include an opinion of a Muslim though to expand the audience. When creating the radio trail, we decided that the best radio station would be BBC Radio 1 seeing as we chose our broadcast channel as BBC Three who tend to advertise their programs on this radio station. We looked further and found the radio station would be perfect as according to their website:

Its target audience and the fact that they provide advertisement for documentaries for young adults makes it perfect. BBC Radio 1 is a national radio station so our documentary would be advertised all over the nation, spreading the word more. We used the same backing track in the radio trail as the documentary which I think links the two tasks well as it gives the listener a feel of the tone of the documentary. We used sound clips from the documentary in the trail as well to give the listener an idea of what kind of things will be in the documentary. Our magazine article was supposed to be designed to look like it would be published in TV Choice, however from our feedback we found that that the people we asked thought it looked good but it didnt look like it belong to a specific listings magazine. TV Choice is published by H Bauer, one of the biggest publishers for British magazines.

According to their audience profile, they target those who fall into the C1 C2 group of a young age which is similar to the target audience of our documentary. The price of the magazine is only 45p which is affordable for our audience. We used stills of our interviewees and added them into the DPS so that the reader knows what kind of people will be included and if it they would be of interest to them.

3) What have you learned from your audience feedback? After completing all of the tasks, we did a pilot survey of 20 people and asked them to give us feedback on them and any improvements that could be made. Below is the data we got back from the questionnaires we handed out.

Overall, all 20 people thought that the 3 tasks were done well however there were a points that they picked up on. The main thing that there was a problem with was the sound levels. 25% of the group didnt think that they were consistent throughout. Also 20% didnt think that the documentary ran smoothly. All agreed one many points such as the a good range of camera angles, secondary footage used well, appropriate interviews and that it would appeal to our target audience. When asked what could be improved, majority said the sound and others said the editing. The group found the radio trailer easy to understand and thought that it was appropriate. Improvements suggested the sound, editing, content which I completely agree with. We could have adjusted the sound levels more, used more appropriate snippets and included more things and made it at least 10 seconds longer. We showed them the DPS and they thought the images were used well however they could be improved. Overall they said it was good, though looking back at it I thought that we should have included the border to make it look like it would actually be published in TV Choice. 4) How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? We used many different technologies for these stages; one of the main ones we used was Blogger.com. Blogger.com allowed us to put all of our research as a group into one area that we could all access and edit when needed. As part of our research for the topic, we used the internet the most to find any useful information. Newspapers that have their own websites were a huge help for research into the actual topic for getting stories to include aswell as statistics. The Mail Online had a lot of statistics aswell as The Telegraph. Another website that was a big help was Drink Aware as the website is solely about alcohol. When deciding what channel to put our documentary on, again we looked at the sites for different channels, BBC Three, Channel 4 and E4 as these were the channels that came up the most in our questionnaire. We looked through the different documentaries that had come on these channel as saw that BBC Three had the most that would relate to our target audience, 15-25 year olds of both genders. During our AS course we only used a digital camera to take still however for A2 we used a Canon HG20 HD camera to record the footage. Along with the camera we used a tripod and a directional microphone and headphones. The tripod was useful when we recorded our interviews and also the vox pops around the college. It allowed is to get a steady shot and make sure

the shot was straight. Also when we took pan shots, we were able to take a smooth shot which made them look professional The headphones made sure that the sound was being picked up and was clear to hear. The directional microphone was better to use than the built in microphone in the camera as it wouldnt pick up as much background noise. For the editing of our footage we used a program called Final Cut Express (FCE) which was installed onto Apple iMac. We transferred our footage onto a Mac and the used the Log and Transfer option on FCE. This allowed us to check what footage was useable before transferring it in to edit. It was easy to edit our footage using tools such as the Razor tool to cut the clips to what we need and also change the sound levels is they are too high/ low. Also there are lots of different effects such as video transitions and text transitions which give it more of a professional look. For the cutaways, we wanted to slow the clips down so we were about to change the speed of the clips. On some of the cutaways, we wanted to add text aswell as the voiceover, we used the Typewriter effect for it, and this could be a visual aid for the viewer. Another program we used was Garageband for the backing track for the documentary and to create the radio trail. We used the sounds that are already on the program to create the backing track. We wanted something that sets as the right tone to suit the viewer aswell as the documentary. So we kept it upbeat throughout majority of it but not too upbeat so that the attention wasnt diverted off the documentary. Garageband was good to use because we had make sure that the music was non copyrighted aswell To stick to the house style, we decided to use the same backing track as the documentary for the radio. We took extracts from the documentary and imported them in. Garageband was good to use as I could adjust the sound levels of the backing track when we had the voiceover for the radio. For the double page spread, we used a program called Adobe InDesign to piece it all together. We first typed up the article on Microsoft Word so that we could proof read and make sure it made sense. We took stills from our documentary of out interviewees and used the Place option to put them into the DPS. We stuck to the general colour scheme and used black, maroon and white. It was easy to make the DPS on InDesign as the program is specifically designed to make the document look professional. It allowed us to change the settings for it to actually come up as a spread rather than 2 separate documents when we exported it.