A2 MEDIA EVALUATION

MoniCon Productions

Brief

We were asked to choose from a number of option for A2 media , some include : Music video, a short film, documentary etc: along with 2 option which included : a newspaper advertisement , poster, radio advertisement , a web page etc.

We have chosen to produce a short , 5 minute, documentary about racial identity along with a newspaper advertisement and a double page magazine spread.

Our previous media production was a opening sequence for a thriller film and we did not get the option to choose the genre of the film. This had impacted our desire to produce something different to As Media , as we believe this would challenge our skills , ideas and widen our knowledge. As a result a 5 minute documentary was something that we’ve all agreed on to proceed with as we think that this will help us achieve a competitive product which will challenge the existing media products.

Racial Identity The idea of our documentary was born from our experience

of being wrongly identified. We believe that In the UK that mis-identification of ones race

is common. Also the idea of exploring race and stereotypes is a sensitive topic in the UK due to the history behind it.

Me and Srijana have decided to find out the reasons behind why people assume identities . Does the assumption depend on the stereotypes or is it just an innocent guess?

In the documentary we interview some members of the public and ask them questions about assumption , whether they are right or wrong , on a mission to persuade people to not just assume.

Interview questions These are the questions that we asked the

member of the public about racial identity. 1) Where do you think I’m from? 2) What makes you think this ? 3)Do you think people should feel offended by

assumptions? 4) Have you ever been wrongly identified? 5)Do you think it’s right to make assumptions

about other people’s race/ cultural backgrounds?

Changes to questions: After conducting some more research and

gaining feedback from our focus group , some questions needed to be changed. This is because some questions where confusing and not straightforward. For the interviewees to be able to understand the question at once is key as this does not give them time to plan meaning that the response given will be honest and truthful.

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

Our media product challenges conventions of real media products as we have created and represented a debatable idea. This is because discussing racial identity in the UK is usually considered as a sensitive topic. We have found interest in this and have used are skilled and understanding to deliver and explore our experience of racial mis-identification.

As for producers of the documentary this gave us clear , planned ideas of how we want to deliver this documentary to the audience. As we've all experience being wrongly identified we knew that sharing personal experience will attract the audience to watch our documentary.  

Question 2 : How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts ?

Ancillary Texts-Double Page Magazine spread & Newspaper advertisement We’ve used a colorful title of flags in order to represent the idea of identity

and race. The use of the white background came as an idea from previous research that we've conducted on different magazine pages which has been carried throughout the documentary as our title was in white and

through the ancillary texts. The advertisement includes a white title along with the background. This white theme has been carried out through the three media products that we've produced in order to help the audience

recognize and memorize our documentary. The review section of the documentary was also used for persuading purposes. This section was also inspired by the real media product magazines as majority include audience reviews. The star rating is also as a selling point for the audience as the 4

and 5 star ratings suggests that the documentary is definitely worth watching. Lastly we have included a number of images across the double

page magazine which was done once again from the conducted research of film magazines. By including shorter articles we can target the younger

audience who judge a film / documentary through the images.

Racial Identity : AdvertisementChannel 4 – Helps the audience identify a common channel on which this documentary will air on.

A bold , white title makes the poster stand out. A common theme is carried out as a way to increase recognition.

Red quote : Don’t Just Assume’ symbolizes importance and danger of assumptions.

Collage of 2 faces. Creates confusion, guessing and gains the audiences attention.

The title ‘Seven Days’ puts a time limit which intrigues the audience.

Information to the reader: The Date and Time of the new release. Helps the audience which are interested not to miss it .

Channel 4 logo : orange colour the same as the titles. The colour stands out from the collage.

There is a dominant picture given away however the womens features are used to hide it .

This is one of the film advertisements we

have been annotating analyzing

Newspaper Advertisement Along with the effective use of colour

there are some improvements which can be made to make this advertisement more competitive against the others.:• The editing of two faces has been

done using photoshop which did not allow us to move bits and peaces freely.

• The use of color may seem dull and simple for the audience. Compared to other newspaper ads, include bright and warm colours such as, red , orange , yellow and pink.

• The title could’ve been more bold and outlined. This is because the background itself is white which leads to the title leaking into the background.

The title symbolises world wide race.Adds color and stands out.

Star ratings : sells the

documentary for the

audience to watch.

Group picture and the creation of the documentary idea: Producers/Director introduction to the audience.

Director interview: helps the audience engage with the ideas of the director.

Newspaper advertisement included: Helps the audience memorize and recognize .

White background color: white theme carried out in order to link are ancillary texts and the documentary

together.

Audience reviews:

This shares opinions after

watching which allows to persuade

audience to watch the

documentary.

Shots from the documentary of people being interviewed.

Directors commentary:Questions aswered by the director.

Short descriptive article about the film. This encourages the audience to review this page as there is less typed information.

Huge , high resolution image used . This attracts the audience to look closely.

A picture from one of the scenes in the film. Suggest the main protagonist is being revealed. First introduction to the character.

ANT-MAN

The color contrasts :Good vs evil , which symbolizes crime and action film.

Double Page Magazine SpreadThe double page spread has been succesfully produced through intense and detailed research. However there is always room for improvement.• There could have been a

better use of text font which would help to outline key information.

• The structure of the article could’ve been more free verse in order to add more creativity and style.

• The title may look better if constructed 3D and outlined.

• Images could’ve been spread out better in order to attract the audience.

Racial Identity (Documentary) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiDe

YiHTeg4

Audience Feedback

Our audience feedback

Majority of the audience feedback suggested that the idea of exploring racial identity in the documentary was a creative and interesting choice.

The quality of shots and images was well appreaciated and noticed by the audience.

Adding on majority commented on the music used in the documentary as ‘ very modern’ and ‘tense’ which worked well with the exploration of such topic. The music used in our documentary

Also the newspaper advertisement was well edited to reflect on the idea of vast variety of races. The advertisement was comment to be less colorful but very effective in terms of detail. It helped attract the audience to closely try and identify the races in the picture . The poster was succesful as our initial idea of an advertisement was to attract the audience by the collage image which was proved to do the same.

The double page magazine helped the audience learn about the making of the documentary and how the idea was born. The audience felt attracted to the colour used in the magazine and felt welcomed as there were country flags displayed I the title. Also the audience felt as if the magazine explain the reasons to why this documentary was produced and how it was inspired which persuaded them to watch it.

3 :What have you learned from your audience feedback ?

We have learnt that the colour, image quality and and the idea of any media product is very important when trying to target audience.

The idea of our documentary was well rated by the audience however some people felt as if the questioning was not enough. Some feedback suggested that more factual evidence and information should be used in order to make the documentary seem

Also there were some editing errors: fade in and out of video led to shaky shots, the continuity was at some parts rough/not smooth. Also the introductory start of character introduction was at some places low in audio. This was due to poor use of the microphone as the use of different camera shots has led to varied sound quality.

The poster was recommended to have more radiant color as it’s mainly white.

4: Who would be the audience for your media product ?

The audience for our media product would most likely be for people aged over 12 years old. This is because after researching young people under 12 years old are less likely to watch documentaries. Whereas for people over 12 to the age of 40 debatable documentaries are popular. This may be due to many reasons such as : for educational reasons, wanting to explore opinions or being able to relate to the idea. I believe that we have provided the ability to do all of the three things as our documentary allows people to learn about racial identities , displays a number of opinions and and highlights the most common mis-identification which then helps people relate to these. 

5: How did you attract/address your audience ?

We have used a number of techniques to attract  the audience.

Our newspaper advertisement uses a collaged picture of two different racial background pictures. This makes the advertisement stand out as the facial features have been editing together in order to make the picture stand out. Also as the two faces are collaged together some people may start to analyse it closely to see if they can unfold the races which that are portrayed in the picture.

We have also used a red colored phrase at the bottom which says ' Don't just assume'. The red color signifies importance which is our case symbolizes the main idea. This phrase is directly addressing the audience which has been used in order to suggest that we all assume but we should be more careful. If located in a newspaper this would definitely catch the readers eye as we've also added a white title written in bold , big letters.

Double Page magazine Our double page magazine includes a title which is designed

from country flags. The title also stands out as it contains variety of colors such and the flags symbolize the different racial identities. 

Title of the documentary ' Racial Identity'. We've also used a number of images in order to make the double page spread more appealing to the audience. This has been done after conducting some research which proved that people are more likely to read text if there are colors and attractive pictures used. We have also noticed that majority of film magazines include a lot of images and color. Therefore in order to stay competitive we needed to make sure that our newspaper advertisement and the film magazine included images and creative use of color. 

Narration In the documentary itself we used shots of

different places in London while having narrations over them. This was done in order to break away of having the narrator in front of the screen. We also used the interviewer us part of the introduction to the documentary. We've introduced the two young women to the audience in order to help the audience follow through the documentary.

The narration was recorded using an Iphone 5s. At first we did not feel like there will be a problem with the quality or the ability to upload the recording onto a device. However after fully recording the whole narration I have realized that the m40v format had to be converted into an mp4 for it to upload onto Adobe Premiere Elements 10. As a result it was time consuming to use an Iphone for recording but the sound clarity and quality was worth it .

However…

6 :How did you use media technologies in the constructions and research ,planning and evaluation stages?

I used media technology in all stages of my production starting with a Canon EOS 1200D for all of the still pictures. We used pictures for our documentary , newspaper advertisement and the double page magazine spread.

The camera was easy to use but required accurate use of the lens in order to help focus the image. We also used different lenses in order to create good  quality pictures full of detail.

We've used Panasonic HDC SD100 video camera for all the video clips and interviews for the documentary. This camera allowed us to shoot interviews in busy streets very efficiently and quickly. This is because it is very light, good focused camera, clear microphone and uploads high resolution vdeo clips.

Research For research I've used the 'Internet' , browsing through

Youtube, BBC , E4, Channel 4 and other media websites. All of these media websites were used for evaluating and analyzing the real media products which are currently in the market which helped us learn how to produce a media product that challenges the rest. This research helped us with the presentation of our media product as we've found the key elements that are commonly used in media texts. These things include: colorful images which are shot in high resolution, catchy titles , variety of shots, variety of locations presented and interview huge number of people for a more reliable response.

Planning: For planning we have created : Brain storms- ideas of genres for the documentary to give as an idea of

what we all would like to film about. Storyboards- planned the shot sequence which helped us to build an

idea of what the documentary will and should look like . Media work done outside the subject- Promotional videos for our school

has helped us to with planning. This is because we were given around 3 weeks for each promotional video to be planned edited and prepared for viewing. This has helped us to become more efficient .

Scripts- Introduction scripts for the interviewees and the documentary opening. The scripts helped us explain our idea to the members of the public which then persuaded them to participate.

Analyzing other media products- We’ve been closely researching and viewing different short documentaries and films such as ‘How racist are you ?’ ‘About a girl’ which helped us understand what we needed to include in our 5 minute documentary.

Editing software Our skills are well developed using Adobe

Premiere Elements 10 software as we've used it in our As production. Using this software we were able to add text, add inserts , transitions and various effects. We used fade in, and out of the videos in order to help the audience establish the responses to various questions. Adding on it's important for the audience to be able to easily establish between responses to both mine and Srijana's questions. I've also used magazines and newspapers to research about the presentation , advertisements of films. 

However… However we were unable to create certain things such as different shots

due to our lack of high technology  equipment. Some shots that are seen in documentaries like establishing shots that require height and high quality cameras. 

Our editing software Adobe Premiere Elements 10 , does not have all the tools needed to create certain effects. For example, music needed to be edited on garage band in order to ‘audio gain’ and speed the tempo. Also the available title ‘text’ did not allow us to produce ‘3D’ , ‘animated’ titles.

Also the use of 2 cameras has led to shots not fitting to the frame. This was due to the different camera resolutions which led to time consuming changes that needed to be done in order to fix this. I had to re-adjust the footage in order to fit it on the screen properly.

Adding on at times, our research on internet was time consuming, this is because of the slow computer operating systems installed. As we’ve use Imacs for most of the research , we were unable to conduct this quickly an defficiently. As a result we needed to move onto latop to be able to conduct this research efficiently and upload the evidence online.

Conclusion Overall, as a team of three, I believe that

we’ve learnt a lot in A2 media . This is because I believe that we’ve used all the media technology which was available to us as best as we could to produce three successful , challenging and creative pieces of media products. The skills which were gained in As media have been massively improved as we’ve learnt how to work quickly, creatively and well as a team.