Evaluation Question 1

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

Bradley Homans

At the start of the A2 course we were given a specific brief of the coursework task. It was to create a five minute introduction to a documentary based on our own chosen topic.

As well as the documentary opening was two ancillary tasks, a radio trailer assisting the documentary as well as an informative TV listings article for a magazine.

In order to make sure that our documentary was up to the highest standard we could make it as well as ensuring that it was professional, informative and effective we did a large amount of research into a documentary genre . We looked at specific documentaries, radio trailers, magazine articles and target audience feedback to assist us in our creating of our

products.

When first researching into the documentary genre we watched other examples of documentaries in preparation for creating our own one.

By analysing documentaries such as ‘Supersize Me’, ‘The Anti-Social Network’ and ‘Airline’ it allowed us to get an insight into the variety of different conventions used in the creation of documentaries.

This gave us a deep insight into conventions of the genre like interviews, voiceover, exposition, actuality, interviews with experts, archival footage and reconstruction.

As well it gave us a view of what many of the camera conventions within a documentary.

These included shot type like Close Ups, Medium close ups, Establishing Shots/Long Shots and Extreme Close ups. These are all examples of things we have to include or try to in order to make our documentary effective and to achieve its purpose.

Throughout the filming period we used a tripod just like ones that are used in the documentary ‘The Anti-Social Network’, this aided us in the production as not only did it keep shots steady they also aided in the framing of the shots allows things to be positioned just where we want it to be.

It mainly aided us in interviews as it allowed us to position them in the perfect mid- shot as well as sticking to the rule of thirds rule just like in ‘Supersize Me’ and ‘The Anti- Social Network’.

The Documentary Modes which was a theory created by Bill Nicholls’ is something that we also began looking into.

We looked at all of the different types/styles of documentaries that there are; poetic, participatory, reflexive, performative, observational and expositional.

The participatory and performative modes are very similar styles; this is where the film maker is part of the documentary that is being shown.

The documentary ‘Supersize Me’ that we looked into is a good example of this, as Morgan Spurlock appears in his own documentary, allowing the documentary to be more personal and allows the audience to see more about the film makers intentions.

The Observational mode follows the subject around, and has a very ‘fly-on-the-wall’ style to it. However, ours was very different to this, as these types of documentaries don’t normally use a voiceover.

The Expositional mode was definitely most similar to our documentary style in much aspect; it has a narrative and a voiceover throughout, which is what our opening five minutes had to guide the viewers through, It is very factual type of documentary like ours.

The Reflexive mode draws intention to the nature of the documentary, whilst including the film maker also within the documentary also.

Sound is another important part of television documentaries, this included Background Music, Voiceover, Presenter, Diagetic and Non- Diagetic sound.

With Supersize Me and Airline a voiceover was used to carry across information as well as a guide for the documentary, this worked very effectively and makes the documentary feel much more personal with the audience and allowed the documentary to be more informative so this was something that we decided to implement into our documentary.

Use of music, voice over and interview sound

Background music was something that was used in the documentaries that we studied and what we implemented into our own documentary.

We came to the conclusion from looking at the music in the other documentaries that the music we choose must be music that does not over power both the clips that we are using as well as the voiceover also.

We started to create songs on Garage Band but soon realised that the music will be rather repetitive so we decided to get our music from a non-copyright music from a website called Vimeo.

 

Diagetic and Non –Diagetic sound are also conventions that were included in our documentary.

Non diagetic sounds that was something that was hard to avoid during vox pops and interviews, as it reinforced the insightful element of our documentary.

Diagetic sound such as noise in the background of interviews and talking in the shot of panning shots, these were able to be managed well and still allowed the music and voiceover is the most powering sound.

Music we used in our Documentary

The voice over was a part of our documentary which we took a lot of time looking at and studying others, we looked at the conventions, the typical conventions of a narration are that it relates to the topic, it includes facts and figures incorporated in it also.

This was something that we including in our narration and what we carried across from the voiceover in both ‘Supersize Me’ and ‘The Anti - Social Network’, from looked at the voiceover in ‘Supersize Me’ in more detail we also noticed that the enthusiasm of the voiceover had a large effect on the audience, appearing more genuine and drawing in the viewer more towards the documentary.

Accompanied with this we have also kept the narration linking in with the visual clips and not only did it link in well and work well with the clips it made the documentary flow with the voice over working well and linking in with the clips.

The different sound levels and clips up in the audio of the documentary

The research into the topic is part of a documentary that is very important, it is important as it works as a way to inform the audience.

From looking at ‘Supersize Me’ and ‘The Anti Social- Network’ as well as smaller documentaries on Youtube we realised the importance of research and statistics as they are both informative as well as supporting the information that is said by the voiceover.

From looking at this being included in the Anti Social- Network documentary and looking at how effectively it worked, we decided that it was something that we should use some of our research and statistics into our documentary, and did so mainly in the opening but also in placed throughout also.

The Magazine Article that we produced was for the magazine ‘Radio Times’, from looking at previous magazine articles that were in the Radio Times it allowed us to pick out conventions and methods that are undertaken by the magazine and meant that we were able to implement these into our own.

Just like the majority of the double page spreads that we looked at in the Radio Times we used a large picture within the article and a simple layout allowing it to be easy for the reader to understand and read as well as it being up to a professional standard.

 

Within a magazine the Masthead is located at the top of the page in articles and is used to grab the attention of the reader and is linked to what the article is about, usually informative as it is what the reader first sees when they look at the double spread.

The Main image within our magazine was important as it took up a large amount of the page and something that was the main focal point and aspect of our article. From looking at other magazines that we looked at not just Radio Times, but TV Guide and even some articles from Music Magazines like NME, we realised the importance of a strong main image. We carried this through onto our own magazine, as it draws in the reader and gives them an idea of what the article in itself is about.

 

Also located within double page spread articles are Pull Quotes it is normally a quote from what is included in the documentary or TV show, this is something that we found located on the magazines that we looked at and gave the reader a real insight into what the Documentary is really about. They are used by most magazines, as well as ours, to grab the attention of the reader.

The use of Columns, is again something that was widely used when we looked at other radio times double page spreads, we also used this in our article, to make it look more professional and reinforce that it is a radio time’s double page spread.

 

The use of Date and Time and Page Numbers, was something that was added to our double page spread as it is a convention that is used within any TV listing magazine as well as assisting the reader.

When we were creating our Radio Trailer we listened to a large amount of radio trailers to understand the conventions used and to see how we can implement these into our own. The trailers that we watched were ‘Italian Grand Prix’ and ‘Stephen Fry’s Endangered Animals’. It gave us an idea of conventions we must use in our own.

One was that it was around 30-45 seconds long; this was something that we implemented into our own, and making owns around 42 seconds as it gave us enough time to get information across to the view about the documentary without it dragging on for too long and the radio trailer losing its effectiveness.

We also implemented the convention of saying the channel, time of show and date airing, this was important as it told the viewer when they will be able to view the documentary and was important to be included within the radio trailer.

As well as this we saw the importance on included extracts that were relevant from the documentary that would work effectively within the documentary, such as the number of users that social networking has and the growth of the sites over the last 5 years. This was an important aspect and a convention that we listen to in the other radio trailers and something we strongly implemented into our own. We also included snippets from interviews, vox pops and the voiceover from the documentary to allow the radio trailer to sound professional and it to have the largest effect we could on the listener, just like the ones that we listened to in our research.

Overall to conclude, I believe that we used a large amount of conventions used within the documentary genre. I believe that the conventions that were used in the double page spread and Radio Trailer were important and included although not including all of the conventions, included a large amount for the products to be overall successful. By researching into the media products it allowed it to make the products professional and aided us in making them effective and appealing for the viewer.