a2 media course work evaluation

8/2/2019 A2 Media Course Work Evaluation

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Lewis Rohloff Louise Walshe

A2 Media Coursework Evaluation

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop orchallenge forms and conventions of real media product?

When we first started our documentary we ensured we followed the common codes andconventions of TV documentaries so it would appear as authentic as possible. We all put ourideas forward and came up with the idea of basing our factual documentary on the topic ofthe recent rise in tuition fees. Our allocated task consisted of a five minute opening extract ofa documentary. To ensure we kept an elementof professionalism we followed the codes andconventions, for e.g. interviews withprofessionals and vox poxs. As a group wedecided to base the documentary on uni fees

as this subject appealed to us as this iseffecting many young people in modernsociety, therefore we found that this subjectcould relate and appeal to us as well. This wasa different but yet interesting idea to base adocumentary on, along with it we got this ideaafter doing relevant research to target thisdocumentary for teenagers and young adults as they are mostly under the medias influenceand pressure to go to university or else be condemned to a low wage job. As a group as wepersonally tried relating this subject to us and thought what would appeal to us, as we are inthe same age group so we found it easier to base and make a documentary that would

appeal and engage us to watch a documentary.

Our main product was the documentary as we spent a lot of time on it, from research toproduction to editing; also this helped us choose the colour theme along with appearanceand the layout of the listings page article. The montage consisted of different sound levels,such as the lowering of music sounds on a particular interview shot where we thought wouldgrab the viewers attention. The music we chose was quite up beat and kept the

scene flowing and in order to keep theaudience tuned in. Also the voiceoverused is clear and easy to understand asit is spoken quite slowly. This works well

with the arrangement of the differentshots as the relevant information isgiven out when necessary. Whenadding the voiceover to the timeline,and any other sounds needed, we hadto insure that all the volume levelswhere altered to ensure the soundremained loud and balanced in order

to fit with the appropriate scenes. These are very important to the overall documentary as ifthe sound levels were un-clear and quiet, or too loud the whole documentary would lack inrealism and come across as amateur, but as our sound levels were adjusted well, this reallyhelped to make it appear to be fairly professional and created a high sense of realism. Thereare possible limitations within the voice over such as a possible lack of enthusiasm from the

CHANNEL 4 IDENT

OUR DOCUMENTARY


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speaker however I feel the relevance of what is being said outweighs that of the arguablylacklustre delivery.

An additional area in which we altered to

convention was the framing and mise en sceneof our interviews. The above picture suggeststhe main shot of how an interview is presentedin a real documentary and how wehave presented this as well. Although there areslight differences in the images above, theyboth still have similarities, for e.g. the mediumshot, Mise en scene and positioning of thecamera and both have taglines, statingwho they are and their career title. Whilst we were filming our footage for our documentarywe included a selection of cutaways and establishing shots. This is a typical feature of

documentaries as it makes our interviews more visually stimulating to watch, and preventsthe viewers from just watching the subject talking which could get tedious and maketheir attention go else where. We have establishing shots such as close ups of computerscreens.

This went well with the documentary because as the statistics were being read out by thevoiceover, the relevant information was showing on the screen. We decided to combine therelevant footage of web pages, interviews from both professionals and average studentsalike. We found that this particular technique would keep the audience focused as it wouldbe more interesting for them to watch and it would allow them to relate to theparticular issues being raised in our documentary. We mainly used medium close ups forthis particular filming to ensure the full image was shown, as it created a sense of realismand an indirect connection with the viewer, Other examples of editing that we used forexample blurring, we did this to add extra effect when our opening montage ended andcoins fell followed by the title screen, the coins connoting the high prices of uni fees.

Moreover, we used different edits to change the scene such as zooms and an edit whichlooked like a page turning this added further effects in order to keep the audience visuallysatisfied and interested. Afterproducing our documentary wedrafted ideas to how we could

present our listings page, in orderto make our page lookprofessional we used codes andconventions and similar featuresin comparison to real lifemagazines, we analysed andlooked at other pages so that wecold use similar qualities andfeatures and we did as shownbelow.

REAL DOCUMENTARY


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Our radio trailer follows and challengescodes and conventions of real life mediaproduct in various ways. Whilst producingthis we also had to bear in mind mediaconventions, in order to help us produce

these tasks we analysed professionalexamples from popular radio stations andthis showed and gave us examples andideas to what we would have to producesas this was to ensure we had a good ideaand framework to make our radio trailerconsist of similar elements. Our radio trailerwas produced from the following: The majority of our radio trailer contains extracts from ourdocumentary, mainly from the montage as these are the main clips voiceover used, from thedocumentary which would interest the audience. Furthermore we got this idea from theprevious radio trailers which we analysed. Similarly to the documentary, we ensured the

voiceover used was clear and included all necessary information was given such asviewing times, also quotes from the documentary were picked out carefully as they wereaimed to be catchy and effective in order to attract the audience and indirectly gain theirattention and make them want to watch it. The script was correctly followed and we alsostudied and followed all the above media conventions in order to produce a radio trailer thatcould be broadcasted on the radio advertising it on channel 4 as we choseour documentary to be shown on the channel 4 the home of many similar documentaries.The radio trailer challenges the convention in such a way as it would catch the audiencesattention as it is short but yet catchy and contains a diversity of shots as well as a range ofdifferent voices

2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillarytext?

Throughout the whole of our project I have found that the documentary was the mostsuccessful piece of production that we have created audience feedback hasalso proven this, as this is was our main product along with the two ancillary texts wehave produced, I personally think these three product combined together theymake an effective project. All three sources of media combine effectively with eachother this is showed in various ways for example through its textual colour and font choice, inthe documentary the main heading Fees Soar High this is in a block white colour, in order to

show and keep a consistency in relation between the products we have shownpreviously, for example our documentary relates to it as the problem itstackling is a standard black and white question Is It Worth It.

As you can see above our documentary title screen has a black background with a once

again white title which states the documentaries name, this is similar to ourmagazine article as it had similar uses of colour. Our radio trailer was also


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a great success as it is an appealingand effective promotion to ensurethis by showing our fastpaced editing skills along withrelevant quotes and facts and figures

from the documentary, almost a minipreview which dares the listeners towatch the documentary. It is alsogiving an interesting description ofthe documentary which engages thelisteners interest, this also showssuccess as its appealing and yet a goodsource of promotion of the main product. Itmeets its target audience and appealsto them. Through the radio trailer we use the same voice of the narrator in thedocumentary, as both the radio trailer and the documentary feature the same

voice over, this is effective as it is allowing it to become more recognised andmemorable to the listener if they were to here both see these product andwould easily link them together, this is an effective way as it shows that they bothrelate and go well together and follow the same theme.

As for our radio trailer, it would be aired on Capital FM, according to ourresearch into Radio Stations, fits in with our target audience. Furthermore,the background music created would appeal to the type of audience wholistens to Capital FM, thereby appealing to our intended target audience aswell. However, these are mostly unsubstantiated claims so I could nothonestly say that our radio trailer appeals effectively to our target audiencebased solely upon this. Personally, I think that the up-beat tempo of thebacking track would appeal to a similar age group as that of our audience andthe voice-over informal manner of speaking might attract an audience ofsimilar social class as ours, but the over-saturation of male voices would mostlikely appeal more to a male audience. So inconclusion I would say that our products target thesame audience fairly effectively, though notcompletely successfully.

Firstly, the radio trailer compliments the documentary as we used certainextracts from the documentary and incorporated them into the radio trailer.The extracts taken from the documentary and used in the radio trailer webelieved offered enough to grasp the audiences attention and make themwant to learn more about the documentary yet at the same time not give too

much away about the documentaries content. I strongly feel that the listingspage sells the documentary to not just the target audience but a wider


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audience in general as it is eye-catching, owns a gripping headline and givesa preview into the mind of the documentary. In addition, the colour schemeused and the content within the page were both well received in feedback andby the group itself. What lets it all down? The documentary, in my opinion wasthe biggest success of the trio as it has a variety of opinions, questions and

answers. Similarly, the listing page was a success however, what could bequestioned is whether the article really suited our target audience or whetherit was too heavy-reading? Perhaps with hindsight we may have consideredproducing the article with less heavy reading in order to sustain theaudiences attention. On the other hand, the article itself reads well anddoes promote the documentary very well in my opinion and is clear to thereader, when and where the documentary will be shown. Overall, I believethat the radio trailer was the media product which didnt compliment orpromote the documentary well enough. This is because; it doesnt potentiallyoffer enough throughout the trailer to persuade listeners to watch thedocumentary it promotes. Looking back, if we had another chance at creating

the documentary, radio trailer and page I would have planned out how longwe would spend on each task as I feel we didnt leave enough time for thecompletion of the listings page, therefore it could have been planned betterand most likely the final product would have been executed better, althoughwe could then question would our article and documentary be at the samestandard?

Main picture takes up a lot of

room

The title in block, white capitals matches our

documentarys title which had the same

characteristics


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Overall after having a close look at all three media product that we as a grouphave produced I personally feel that all these products together form a strong,

appealing, and informative but yet interesting form of media. They followcodes and convention and are reasonably realistic and effective.

3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We were provided with audience feedback, as we wanted to know what our targetaudience thought of the opening sequence of our documentary along with the radio trailerand double page spread magazine. So as a group we examined the responses andconverted them into graphical data.According to our predictions and resultswe are glad to say our documentary wasgreat success along with the radio trailerand the magazine,

- No one gave the answers of eitherok or poor with everyone in the classrating the documentary excellent,very good or good with half sayingvery good

The colour scheme isnt particularly eye catching and

makes the page appear a bit bland


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- Mostly the audience thought thefilming/shooting material was goodtherefore supporting the fact that thedocumentary had a good basis ofgood quality shots

- Once again a mostly good ratingfrom the audience when askedwhether the documentary seemedprofessional compared to other realdocumentaries

- A positive rating on how thedocumentaries editing was viewedmeans that the transitions dont takeanything away from the product andonly emphasise its positives


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- Similar results to previous questionsin that the audience saw that thecaptions were used appropriately andwere in keeping with the documentary

- 3 students rated theappropriateness for the target

audience as excellent which is a verypositive piece of feedback as it showsthe documentary is suitable for thataudience

- Another average rating on thesound and music use which shows noone thought the music took anythingaway from the documentary as awhole


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Overall people viewed the documentary as good by a 75% majority; thisfurther supports the evidence that the documentary would be well accepted bythe target audience. Although we only took results from a small group ofpeople they are still representative of the possible larger scale audience asthey are all of similar ages, ethnicities, social class and are an even ratio ofgender. Therefore interviewing a small but appropriately varied group is moreeffective than interviewing a larger but unrelated group of people.

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

In the stages of production we used various media technologies inorder to produce the final pieces (documentary, radio trailer and musicmagazine). We used some familiar and unfamiliar technologies which

were hard to use at the start but soon we learnt how to operate thenew technologies and became familiar with the programs with thehelp of manuals.

First and foremost, the only two computer systems I haveutilized during the production process are my personallaptop and the Apple Mac, my computer of choice while at college. While the

laptop carries out instructions at a much slower rate than theApple Mac it proved very useful in the development of the titlesequence animation, though altogether I found the Apple Macto be much smoother than of the laptop and not as clunky orrigid. Since the very beginning of the process I have used theInternet Explorer (when using the laptop) and Safari (when


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using the Apple Mac computer) browser software programsto procure information, conduct research and regularlyupdate our blog. Once again, the Mac-based tool wasmuch more user-friendly mainly because of its fluidity. Forexample, it enabled for simple

transference of text from a document just by highlighting the desired textand using the drag-and-drop method.Whereas Internet Explorer did notallow for this simple methodof transferring information because ofthe Windows Vista OS (operatingsystem) being far more rigid. Due tothis, I also experienced problems withformatting posts on the bog whenusing the Laptop, such as it not

responding to the addition of gapsbetween lines of text, automaticallyadding spaces at the beginning of a post and even refusingto embed videos in the post. Additionally, I also usedthe command-shift-3/4function of the Apple Mac to captureall the print screens that I used in this evaluation, yetanother area in which the Mac outdoes the laptop becausethe cmd-shift-4 function allows for the capture of adesignated area of the screen. Therefore,I would say that I used the Apple Macdesktop computer to its full extent and itdefinitely was more useful than the laptopin the production process, especially asmost of the software programs I utilizedwere only accessible on the Mac.

We used a wide range of technologies bothinside the classroom and outside, for exampletelevisions, windows PCs, and Apple Maccomputer for purposes such as editing the documentary and radiotrailer in final cut express. Computers were mainly used for internet

research purposes and also to upload all research and planning ideason to blogger.com. This is a site where our group posted work so thatour teacher could see and assess our work, also using scribe itenabled us to put up graphs from audience feedback when we weregaining audience feedback. To produce the documentary we used a

modern camcorder provided by the college, along with the camcorder in order to do theshots we wanted to we used a tripod in order to make a steady and realistic documentary.Some shots however appeared to still be quite shaky therefore via final cut express weedited it as much as we could to get a reasonable scene. This was a downturn in our projectbut we overcame the struggle and managed to overcome this.


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Some of the cameras components were slightly difficult to usemeaning we had to repeat some shots on many occasionsdue lack of focus on the camera. However the camera wasvery convenient as it was easily placed on a tripod howeverwe did find some difficulty at first. The tripod helped ensure

shots were at a correct level and still. The camera alsoconsisted of ports to place microphones and headphones

into, this was very economical as we could easily listen to the recordingand repeat any voice recording along with this, as we could connect themicrophone into the camera at ease. Whilst recording we used adirectional mic, which meant that we were able to focus on a certainsound reducing any background sounds that arent relevant. Also themicrophone was time efficient and reasonably simple and easy to set up and use whichsaved a lot of valuable recording time although we found a problem which was that thesound levels came out slightly louder than other scenes around it which could have madethe documentary flow less and have that particular scene stand out as a weakness. To put

and edit our documentary together we used the Apple Mac computers in order to edit ourand put our documentary together in final cut express this software was slightly challengingto get familiar with but eventually we became to use final cut express to its full potential andput all the documentary together, we found that final cut express was very useful as wecould panel, fade, blur, add text, music to the shots, fasten or slow clips and connect themtogether.

We used a scanner frequently in order to put our work up ontothe blog, for example when we were logging clips andstoryboards, this was very efficient and easy as it formatted andcopied our work on paper and transferred it onto the computerand then we uploaded the scanned work on to the blogs, thiswas very useful to us. Finally we used many differenttechnologies throughout making this product and in using themand developing our skills I feel I have become a better student ofmedia with a greater knowledge of what goes into making asuccessful product.

My Blog - http://c05documentary11.blogspot.com/

Documentary -
http://c05documentary11.blogspot.com/http://c05documentary11.blogspot.com/


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Radio Trailer-

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