evaluation course work q1 pdf

8/2/2019 Evaluation Course Work q1 PDF

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We also stuck to conventions with having vox pops throughout the documentary. Many real

documentaries include these to give an understanding of what everyday people think about a certain

topic. Similarly, our vox pops gave us an insight to students opinions and thoughts on the media

influence as well as highlighting how little is really known about eating disorders and the average UK

women’s size – again reflective of the media’s influence over socie ty. The vox pops used were of students in college – aged 16 to 18. We decided to develop these opinions and speak to a professional

– college counsellor Julie Maitland, who further backed up what the teenagers were saying and

showed the audience the psycho logical side of trying to achieve a ‘perfect body’. Whilst Julie was

speaking, we used visual effects to boost what she was saying – showing alarming pictures of girls

with eating disorders. This helped get our message across and provide a powerful incentive to the

audience to realise that body image isn’t everything. We felt highlighting certain issues in today’s

society was the aim of many documentaries and we wanted to make ours something that would help

change views and opinions on something which is often seen as a taboo subject – similar to another

documentary ‘Embarrassing Bodies’ aiming to change the stigma about things people find

uncomfortable to talk to the doctor about.

As you can see above in our professional interview, we felt we had to keep the whole theme of this

We thought that this part of the documentary was quite formal and so we used a tripod for the

interview and made sure we kept within the typical convention of shot framing with the rule of

thirds – having eye level in the top third and her positioning in the middle not directly looking into

the camera.

We also used an appropriate background, not too busy but what is there relates to what we are

speaking about – for example the black and green poster is askin g about ‘gambling with health’. We

kept with appropriate backgrounds with the vox pops too as we set these up in the canteen where

the background was of ‘The Mix’ a vibrant, colourful setting where it felt more relaxed and youthful,

Small space above head

Relevant mis-en-scene

Medium shot Occupying over half the

frame

Professional Interview



appealing to our target audience too.

We also used conventions of real media products in terms of sound. We debated whether to use

visual narrators or voiceover but went with voiceover as we felt this would make our documentary

look better and have a more professional feel, plus we felt that if we used a visual narrator it could be seen as amateurish and less effective. We also used background music as most documentaries do,

but changed it for the statistics so the overall feel wasn’t too repetitive. Without the music, the

docu mentary seemed a bit bland and not complete but with the music it gave ‘Body Image & Me’ a

more audibly pleasing feel.

Our documentary follows many of Bill Nichols’ (2001) conceptual schemes of documentary modes.

Firstly, our documentary aims to be aesthetically pleasing and so following the Poetic Mode in terms

of photogenie. We also included part of the Soviet Montage Theory in terms of clashes within our

documentary – this was only a small part though when we contrasted the pictures of people with

eating disorders aiming to lose weight and people with over-eating disorders. However, we also included the rhetoric aspect of the Expositional Mode by including statistics designed to shock and

therefore persuade the audience to the idea that eating disorders are a serious disorder and to

highlight the importance of these people getting help. We achieved this through our omnipresent

voiceover and through many of the vox pops, where we saw the effect of the media’s influence over

the teenagers of today and how this needs to be changed. Many ‘real’ documentaries use many

different aspects of the Documentary Modes and we have followed conventions in that this is what

our documentary does too.

We have used actuality in our documentary as the

background to our statistics – people walking in and

out of the canteen and this is in line with the

Observational Mode to give our documentary a sense

of realism and make it more relatable for our audience

– this again links to a ‘real’ documentary: One Born

Every Minute as we see actuality through the

conversations and actions between patients and staff

involved with the documentary, with the camera

being as unobtrusive as possible – in our documentary

it was placed on the floor to record students walking

past. As the subject of our documentary is quite a complex issue dealing with psychology and

nutrition, we decided to simplify this down to make it accessible for our target audience, as many

other documentaries do such as Panorama or other BBC documentaries that explain each stage of

the subject, this is following the Reflexive Mode of the Documentary modes to simplify complex

subjects.

At one part of our documentary, we decided to veer away from typical conventions and have one

student act as a visual narrator and state h is opinions on girl’s body image. We felt this was

humourous but also interesting to get a males perspective on this topic aided with flash cards of

different body shapes. It was delivered in a light hearted, comical way but showed how the media

have an in fluence on boys with what they want to see in a girl from typical ‘glamour’ models, which has also been reflected with girls wanting to be the ideal ‘hourglass’ shape. Although we steered

Actualit in One Born Ever Minute



away from conventions with having this included, it stuck to the theme of highlighting important

issues and so we felt including it in the documentary was essential for our purpose.

Our documentary didn’t fit in with some of the Documentary

Modes as we felt it wasn’t appropriate or accessible for us to do this. For example we did not have a visual narrator as some

documentaries choose to have – for example Panorama, and so

the Performative or Participatory Mode does not appear in our

documentary, however the idea of this was discussed in the

planning stages.

Our media product has a slight downfall compared to real

media products in regard to the sound levels, the music worked well but the voiceover was

sometimes too quiet and re-recording it did not seem to have a major impact on the sound levels, so

in post-production we edited it as much as possible to try to make it work, however there are some parts of the documentary where we felt it was obvious so we turned the music down but we felt

that there was nothing that could be done to help this and so did as much as we could and hoped

that it wasn’t too noticeable after all the editing.

We also had to bear media conventions in mind when creating our ancillary tasks, the radio trailer

and a double page spread. Before even starting, we looked at professional examples of these so we

had a thorough idea of what conventions ours should include.

Following conventions, we included a voiceover that was the same as that in the documentary to

keep continuity. We also included shortened versions of the vox pops and professional interview to

give an idea of what to expect in the documentary. We also used background music to help grab the

listeners’ attention and started with a quick,

upbeat piece of music, reflecting the start of

our documentary. The downside to our trailer

was the sound levels were inconsistent which

we tried to combat by re-recording the

voiceover however this did not seem to

improve the sound quality so we changed the

sound levels in Garageband and this seemed to

improve things slightly. We chose Capital

Radio as our station to broadcast this trailer as

we felt this would be the station most likely to be listened to by our chosen target audience

however, there would be other listeners as well as those we pitched this for and so could help

attract more viewers t o ‘Body Image & Me’.

Panorama resenter

Our Gara eband radio trail



The final version of our magazine contained the following conventions:

Our magazine follows typical conventions of a real article and we have kept the synergetic feel as we

have used the same fonts and colours featured in the documentary although this can give the article

a bland feel and may look like there is too much spare space however we justified this by using

brighter colours too to grab the readers’ attention and make it appealing to ou r target audience by

not having too much text and making the interview understandable and easy to read. Although this

is designed for our target audience, there would be many other people reading the magazine and so could help catch the attention of people outside our target audience and lead to a bigger final

audience ship for our documentary.

Rule of thirds

Headline and byline

Details about the

documentary

Different text

for the

questions and

answers

Smaller images

relating to the

article

Pull quote

Page number and magazine name

Caption

Picture credit

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