A2 Media Evaluation Amer Chohan

8/7/2019 A2 Media Evaluation Amer Chohan

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A2 Media Studies Coursework Evaluation

As an A-level Media student I was given the task to create a 5minute Documentary along with a Radio trailer and also a Magazine

article. Firstly in order to broaden our knowledge of documentarieswe watched a few which where shown on channel 4 and we alsowatched some which where created by previous students. As well aswatching the Documentaries we also analysed them looking at thecodes and conventions which are included in documentaries.Amongst my group we came up with the idea of choosing to do adocumentary on Social Networking. Our target audience of thedocumentary would be mainly young adults but it also is directed atall types of users of Social Networking sites. The main aim of ourdocumentary was to inform people of the positive and also mainlythe negative implications in which Social Networking has on oursociety today.

In What ways does your media product use, develop orchallenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Before we began creating our documentary we studied andanalysed many professional documentaries which had been made.This then gave us an idea of what the common codes and

conventions in a documentary are.One of the documentaries that we analysed was Are the Net Policecoming for you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwoPTYTLcRg

The hyper-link above takes you to the documentary on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwoPTYTLcRghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwoPTYTLcRg


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From the analysis of all the documentaries that we watched wefound that some of the fundamental aspects of a documentarywere:

That the Documentary is Factual based.

It portrays and represents the truth That the documentary is Entertaining

The Documentary is to some extent contemporary

It also includes interviews

Uses a range of camera shots

Uses both digetic and non-digetic sound

When I and my group began creating our documentary we madesure that we incorporated all the fundamental aspects of adocumentary into our documentary to develop the realism of our

documentary.Below is some the evidence which shows the comparison betweenmy documentary and a professionally made documentary.

On the left hand side shows someimages from my documentary and onthe right hand side there are imageswhich have been taken from theDocumentary Are the net policecoming for you?

(My Documentary) (Are the Net police coming for you?)


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When analysing all documentaries I found that before thedocumentary starts its always introduced by an ident which showsthe channel logo but also uses a voiceover to give the name of thedocumentary and maybe an insight to whats the documentaryabout.An example would be, a Channel 4 ident voiceover would normallysay:

My name is Earl in half an hour but first my feet are too big in theIT Crowd

So we incorporated this into our documentary and on our ident ourvoiceover said:Have Susan and Lunette caught each other thats DesperateHousewives later on 4, but now what are the real implications ofSocial Networking.

We chose to use an ident and a voiceover to introduce our

documentary because it makes our documentary seem much morerealistic than if we would have chose not to.


All the documentaries we watched all had their title of theirdocumentary displayed on screen aswell as being said by thevoiceover.When we choice to display our title in our documentary we wantedto have a relevant background image so we chose to show the title


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being typed in on a Social Networking site. We thought that thislinks in well with our whole documentary concept.The title is also a Pun Is the Social Net-working? We did this forentertainment purposes, so this reinforces the aspect thatdocumentaries should be entertaining.


Another key aspect of documentaries was that they all include an

interview of some kind; we also used this aspect in ourdocumentary.We showed five interviews in our documentary all with differenttypes of people; one interview was with a student, another with acollege social worker, another with a parent, another with a Phoneshop sales assistant and the final was with an ICT computer expert.All this interviews showed different perspectives and views of socialnetworking.The inclusion of these interviews also helps show an element of thetruth in our documentary because we used real people of different

backgrounds and of different ages.



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All the professional documentaries we studied all used a variety ofshots and cutaways. Both in the images above it shows a close upof fingers. These close-ups help contribute to make the

documentary more entertaining and also more realistic. It alsohelped to portray the truth because we used real people in thesecutaways and real hands for example in this picture.

I also used many different scenes for the mise-en-scene, my mainfilming was done in the Solihull area so I started the documentarywith an establishing shot if the Solihull sixth form sign.

T.V. Listings page

We also created a T.V listings page to compliment our documentary.Firstly In order to be able to create a successful documentary meand my group had to analyse previously made listings pages to seethe common codes and conventions which are needed to make alistings page. Some of the codes and conventions are listed below:

Main Central image

Headline

Image Caption

Title of Magazine

Page Numbers

Pull Quotes

Drop Caps

Title of article

Use of Columns

Here is an analysed listings page that I did:


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This is the listings page which I created; it shows the inclusion of

most of the codes and conventions of a real media listings page. Itincludes the use of columns, a main dominating image; pull quotes,drop caps, a title, page numbers and also the Date and name of themagazine.


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The main purpose of this listings page was to promote ourDocumentary. In the listings page we would tell the audience whatthe documentary is about, what time and what channel its showing

on. I believe that I have covered all these aspects in the listingspage informing the audience about our documentary.

Radio Trailer

We also where set the task of creating a radiotrailer to go alongside our documentary. Thisradio trailer was created to broadcast andpromote the showing of our documentary, itwould state the time, date and channel thedocumentary was showing on.Here is the script for our voiceover:

Voiceover: "21st century is a virtual reality"

*Music kicks in*

Voiceover: "400 Billion active posts and file shares every 24 hours" (Fact to furthermore entice

audience member)

*Music volume increases*

Voiceover: "Billions of the people worldwide"

*Music tempo slighlty increases*

Voiceover: "Is the social net working?"

*Music continues to play but gradually slows tempo down.*

Voiceover: "Catch Corey, Jay and Amer This Saturday at 8!" (First names increases familiarity possible

to entice audience member)


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Here is a link to a professional Radio trailer which was done topromote a Doctor Who episode on the BBC -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynhbkSKci-c

Both mine and the professional radio trailer have many similarities,

these similarities are:

Both radio trailers use voiceovers to advertise and also informthe audience when the documentary is airing and what itsabout.

Both try and entice the listener however my radio trailerdoesnt take full advantage of this as it sounds informal insome places.

Both use background music; however the background musicin my radio trailer did appear to affect the clearness of our

voiceover, and therefore made it difficult to understand theVoiceover.

What have you learnt from your Audience feedback?

Once our documentary was finally finished we showed it to a groupof individuals who represented our target audience, below is animage of some of the students who viewed our Documentary.

Below are some of the images from the Viewing of ourDocumentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynhbkSKci-chttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynhbkSKci-c


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We showed the documentary to our targetaudience which where mainly 16+. They whereall then asked a series of questions on the

Documentary to see whether they graded thedocumentary excellent, Very good, good,Ok or Poor.

Here is an image showing the targetaudience filling out thequestionnaires. I then took the

results and tallied them up, showing theoverall results.

This table shows all the results we derived from the questionnaires

Here is the graph which was created to summarise all the resultsfrom the overall rating of the audience feedback.


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What was learnt from the Audience Feedback?

The graph above shows that 60% of our Audience thought that thedocumentary was of a good standard, 30% of the audience gradedit as Very good and the final 10% graded it Ok.

However these are only the overall gradings, when we look at theindividual scores in the tally table above we see that there someareas which received an excellent reception whereas other areasreceived are poor grading.Below is a list of what areas received the best feedback.

What people liked best about the documentary:

The choice of topic of the Documentary

Appropriateness for the target Audience

Filming and shooting of the appropriate material

Our interviews

However some areas in our documentary werent so favoured by theaudience, the list below shows the areas of the

documentary which they were:

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Percentage

Excellent Good Poor

Rating

Overall Rating for the Documentary

Serie


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What people disliked about the documentary:

The sound levels and music

The lack of editing

How well it compared to real life documentaries

It was evident when watching our documentary back and also fromthe audience feedback that our sound levels were not the best. Insome places they were louder than others. In contrast to thesenegatives the audience favoured our choice of topic for thedocumentary and also the relevance of the topic for society today.

However I have learnt that each person who viewed thedocumentary is an individual viewer and there are some aspects todocumentary that this individual will really like whereas other

individuals wont like as much.We also only showed the documentary to college students who areall from fairly middle class backgrounds, if the documentary wasviewed by teenagers who werent students maybe the feedbackwould have been different.

How effective is the combination of your main product andancillary texts?

After me and my group had completed the documentary we startedto create our ancillary tasks which where a magazine listings pageand also a radio trailer.In order for all these tasks to be successful on a whole we needed toensure that there was a level of consistency throughout all theproducts.

Our documentary title was Is theSocial Net Working? this title wasthen used in our Listings page; it wasalso used as the main heading there.Our documentarys purpose was toinform the viewers about theimplications of social networking, thataspect is also carried forward into ourlistings page; its done so in the mainimage where there is a teenagerreading an article about the problemswhich arise from networking sites.

I also mentioned the Time, channeland date the documentary is showing on.


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I also took an image from my documentary and used it in thelistings page, this creates a link between both the documentary andalso the listings page.

This is the image from our documentary whichwas used in the Listings page.

As the radio trailer was purelyverbal the only way it could belinked to the other two productswas verbally and through thedialogue of the trailer. So the link

in the radio trailer was the voiceover explaining what thedocumentary is about and also quoting lines from thedocumentary such as the title and also facts and figures which wereused in the documentary. The voiceover also mentioned the date,

time and the channel which the documentary would be showing on;this is linked to the listings page.


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Overall I think that the products themselves worked well together,all maintaining and portraying a consistent brand identity.However the main purpose of the ancillary tasks was to publiciseour documentary, I believe that the two forms of publication that weused to reach our target audience was not fully effective. Most of

our target audience when asked said that they dont read listingspages and even though some do listen to the radio its was clearthat the amount of times in which they listen to it wasnt regular.Maybe an alternative to these products could have been to createan advertisement page on social network sites as it is clearlyevident that most teenagers use social network sites.

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

Research and Planning

In order to be able to create the best documentary and ancillarytasks we had to some background research and basic planning.

Our research first started at looking at the history of channel 4 andalso the types of documentaries which are shown on the channeland what times they are shown. Depending on the topic and thecontent of the documentary would result in the time its shown, forexample a documentary on drugs and alcohol would be show later

on In the evening whereas a documentary on the Chilean minerswould be shown earlier.Once this information was obtained we could then start to thinkabout what time we would want our documentary shown.


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Once the research on channel 4 was completed we started to watchand analyse real life documentaries.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwoPTYTLcRg This is a link toone of the documentaries which we studied, its called are the netpolice coming for you.

Blogging

Throughout this whole task I andmy group have used a blogging site. This blogging site has allowed

all the tasks to be shared equally between all the group members.Every time a piece of work was completed it would be uploadedonto the blog, not only was this good for meeting deadlines but italso was a benefit as all the group members could share and accessthe work which had been uploaded.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwoPTYTLcRghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwoPTYTLcRg


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Here is a screen shot of how we would upload the work onto theblogging site. We could choose to import pictures and also insert

video clips within the post.

Once all the posts whereuploaded if we needed to editthem for maybe corrections thenwe could also edit them.

Production

Before we started to obtain initial filmingfootage we first began to get any of thestill shots required for the documentaryand for the storyboard.In order to take these photos we neededto use a camera, so this is where myskills first began to broaden in terms ofusing camera equipment.Not only did my camera skills improve, I

also started to consider more of themedia concepts such as mise-en-scene.


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Here is an establishing shot I took with the camera. Because thedocumentary was recorded in the sixth form college I took a stillshot of the college logo with the college appearing in the

background.

Once the stills had been taken they could be placed into astoryboard to give us a much more detailed plan of what footage weneeded in our documentary.

Here is one of the storyboard sheets

which were created for planningpurposes. We used the images whichwere taken with the digital still cameraand then used alongside the text togive us a clear idea of what image anddialogue would come at that point.

Recording

When gathering the filming material for thedocumentary we used a Canon videorecorder.Here my skills really started to developbecause when obtaining footage it was alotdifferent to when I was taking stills with

the digital camera, although the mise-en-scene aspect was the same I had to


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consider the sound levels and also the movement which would be ina shot. For example If I wanted to record people walking past Iwould have to consider what pace and in what direction they wouldbe walking in.I also had to consider in more depth the type of shot I would want

for example if I wanted an extreme close up (ECU) or a long shot(Ls) etc.

I also used a microphone when filming.The microphone would be used mainlyin interviews and also when we wouldwant digetic music for a scene.My skills also developed as I had toalways consider the sound levels whenrecording.

Final Cut Express

Once all material was obtained I then used a programme calledFinal Cut Express which allowed me to construct the documentary.

This

programme allowed me to edit, add music, and remove any clipswhich were irrelevant to the documentary.Although many difficulties where experienced with this programmedue to the complexity of it, my skills did develop as I got familiarwith the programme.


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We placed all our clips onto a timeline and then where able to editthe length, music and transitions on the scene. We also where ableto add a soundtrack on the documentary

Here is an image of me exporting still images to use in my Listingspage.


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Here is a picture of all the non-copyright soundtracks we could

choose from.

Indesighn

When creating the listings page I had to useindesighn for constructing the main article.


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We used the column feature in indesighn to make the listingspage look professional.

I also added an effect to the title, to make it stand out and lookmore attractive.

Here is the printscreen of meadding the effectsto the title

Photoshop

My skills really started to develop when I was usingPhotoshop; I began editing the photographs and also addingeffects to them.


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Here is animage of mecropping thepicture so itwould fitproportionallyinto the Textbox.

Here is an image ofme adding effects tothe image. I did thisso the picture wouldbe more clear andmore appealing tothe audience.

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A2 Media Evaluation Amer Chohan

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