Coursework Evaluation - Nadia Kamal

8/7/2019 Coursework Evaluation - Nadia Kamal

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Coursework Evaluation

Question One - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge formsand conventions of real media products?This asks you to compare your piece with real life documentaries. You should explain the

ways in which you have followed the common codes and conventions of tv documentaries,referring to specific documentaries you have seen and citing the specific areas in your piecewhere these conventions have been followed, and why you have chosen to follow them. (Usestills and clips from other pieces to support this when possible). You should explain why youhave done this and how pleased you are (or not) with what you have done. If you feel youhave developed or challenged the codes and conventions, then you have to explain how andwhy you have done this, again with supporting evidence.

Under the Influence; Media, Teens and Society" is the title of our five minutedocumentary. Already, a typical convention is being used. Many documentaries, for example"Dispatches" has its main series title and then a headline following it e.g "Truth of HospitalFood" which similarly links in with our title "Under the Influence" and then the headline"Media, Teens and Society".

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Our documentary started with the channel four ident. An ident isthe introduction a channel gives showing there logo in order topromote themselves. In having one, we used a convention type. Overthe ident, we had a voiceover which is another typical documentarytrait. A voiceover is the voice which goes on throughout a

documentary to introduce the show, give statistics and figures and give an unbiased update.Our voiceover was male. The reason we decided to have a male voice was because we wantedto reach a broader range of audience as our documentary mainly featured females, adding

males adds more variety.

A montage is a series of fast paces clips and shots signifying the topic of the documentary. Our

documentary was reflecting media so the images we had were very media related;

magazines, newspapers, televisions, phones, iPod etc. A montage is a typical documentaryconvention. Similar tohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZRQ8Gv5Lfw&feature=fvsr

which also shows a montage with a variety and shot types from close ups to zooms.

This clip also uses some vox pops which is similar to our documentary. The help audiences and

viewers relate to others and know what the public thinks about the issue at hand.

Unlike the documentaries Panorama gives, our documentary didnt have a presenter. Thisis due to the fact that instead we keep a voiceover to give statistics and figures and thecase study to give own opinion therefore no third party is needed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZRQ8Gv5Lfw&feature=fvsrhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZRQ8Gv5Lfw&feature=fvsrhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZRQ8Gv5Lfw&feature=fvsr


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Here is the script of our voiceover. Asstated before, the voiceover explains

everything in detail and acts as an

introduction. For example Melissa is a 17

year old student at the college the factthat the voiceover gives information makes

audience aware and doesnt leave them

guessing. Also it gives more of a casual feel

also if the interviewees dont have tointroduce themselves so it links well to our

target audience.

In our documentary expert advice was shown. For example we had Julie Maitland, a collegecounsellor to talk to the viewers about the mental side of media and the effect it truly hason the students. Also we did an interview with BRMB presenter Russ Morris so that he couldgive the factual and expert view on the issue. This is similar to other documentaries forexample in Panorama Net Police Louis Walsh was the expert in the documentary giving theview on downloading music.

Our case study

was of Ellie, a student at the college and she was used to give her point of view. Casestudies are important and are used to prove a point so that after the case study, the

audience can make up there own mind about it all.

This convention is a typical aspect in documentaries, for example in Panorama Net Police a

family were shown as the case study so that they could give a daily record on downloading.


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We created a listings page and analysed it after in order to recognise the codes and

conventions used and many different ones were found.

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000001006a210000000001000000e802000000000000e8020000010000006c0000000000

0000000000002c000000710000000000000000000000873b00008d23000020454d4600000100e80200000e00000002000000000000000000000000000000981200009f1a0000ca0

000002101000000000000000000000000000023130300f6660400160000000c000000180000000a0000001000000000000000000000000900000010000000100e00006608000025

0000000c0000000e000080120000000c000000010000005200000070010000010000009cffffff000000000000000000000000900100000000000004400012540069006d00650073

0020004e0065007700200052006f006d0061006e0000000000000000000000000000000

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000e73609300

0000000040000000000ae30243709300000000047169001000002020603050405020304877a0020000000800800000000000000ff01000000000000540069006d00650073002000000065007700200052006f006d0061006e00000000000000ce33093050dbae300033150

00100000000000000b449110032b50230b44911004c5eaf30cc4911006476000800000000250000000c00000001000000180000000c0000000000000254000000540000000000000

0000000002c00000071000000010000005fcc87405eb38740000000005a0000000100000

04c000000040000000000000000000000100e00006608000050000000200007af2d0000

0046000000280000001c0000004744494302000000ffffffffffffffff110e000067080000


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QuotesImageseem professional and well structured.

Captions to explain images

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00e000000140000000000000010000000140000000400000003010800050000000b0200000000050000000c0237010802040000002e0118001c000000fb020200010000000000bc

02000000000102022253797374656d00000000000000000000000000000000000000000

00000000000040000002d01000004000000020101001c000000fb02f2ff0000000000009

001000000000440001254696d6573204e657720526f6d616e0000000000000000000000000000000000040000002d010100050000000902000000020d000000320a0d0000000100

04000000000009023701203f0700040000002d010000030000000000

The listing page proved that it used a number of different codes and conventions in order

to portray a recognisable and professional demeanour.


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Question Two How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary

texts?

Here you need to look at how effectively your three texts combine. You need to consider

how issues such as how effectively they all target the same audience and to what extent you

feel you have created a clear brand identity for your three texts. You also need to

consider the effectiveness of your radio trailer and your magazine article. Be honest andreflective.

Our main product was the five minute documentary we produced and the ancillary texts are

the listing page and the radio trailer for our documentary.

Our documentary was called Under the Influence; Media, teens and society. It is a fiveminute opening documentary piece targeted to those ages thirteen and over who have an

understanding of media and feel that media e.g television, music, programmes are taking

over there lives. Our two ancillary tasks were the listing page and the radio trailer. Both

were created to add to the idea of brand identity and to promote the documentary.

Here is the listing page (article). It uses bright

colours such as orange and green to appeal to the

audience and to attract there attention. Images arealso used in this for readers to be aware of the

gender focus and to give a snippet of what thedocumentary will feature. The fact that our image

is of three teenagers instantly appeals to teenagers

because they will be able to relate to them. The

only negative aspect about the article is that the quotes tend to be too formal for a brightteenage magazine contradicting the style of it.

The radio trailer was spoken by a female presenter followed by a male and female voice

acting as vox pops. The fact that we used both male and female voice shows that weaddressed our audience well and didnt make it too biased. The documentary, listings page

and radio trailer all come together to produce a band identity because they are all related

to the same thing and are used as promotion and advertisement to the main product.


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Question ThreeAfter completing our documentary, we carried out a questionnaire consisting of a variety ofopen and closed questions to decipher whether our documentary was successful orunsuccessful.

This is one of many copies of the questionnaire our audiences took. The first box

requires them to state what our documentary is about. Our documentary was aboutexploring medias influence on young people as shown. The questionnaire then featuresquestions on overall ratings, topic choices, filming material, editing, sound, effects,target audience and professionalism in which the audience have to tick the box they findappropriate; excellent, very good, good, ok or poor. The questionnaire featured hereshows that all of our questions have been rated good and above which is a positiveoutcome.The last two questions give the audience a chance to add detail in their answers so thatwe, as the makers, will know our positives and negatives. They are what did you likemost about this documentary and What changes would you suggest?

Below features our overall answers received for a few questions so I can analyse them and

see how our documentary was received positively and how it could be improved on.

This graph shows the overall response to the documentary. From the ten people we asked,seven answered very good to the question of our documentary overall. Though thisquestion doesnt focus on a certain aspect, it still shows that our documentary was receivedwell. Two answered good and one answered excellent. Due to the fact that majority ofour audience thought that our documentary was very good and we didnt get a lower ratingthan good shows that overall our documentary was liked.

The next aspect analysed was whether the filming of our material was appropriate or not.Again, seven out of ten said that it was very good which meant that this too was taken well.Our documentary images and filming contained shots of media related items; phones,

magazines, computers, radios etc and the fact that people appreciated what we used showsit worked and was noticed.

We chose to do our documentary on medias influence on teens because our target audiencewere teenagers and we thought that they would enjoy this topic choice because they will beable to relate to it. Our audience feedback on this question shows that again, we didnt get arating under good and more than a quarter of our audience thought that this topic choicewas excellent and more than a half thought it was very good. This shows that the topicchoice was successful and that our audience enjoyed it. The audience response to thisquestion I felt was surprising because of the fact that our documentary mainly featuredgirls therefore would be seen as more of a females documentary, however it was good tosee that our male audience also liked the topic.

This graph shows the appropriateness for target audience. Six out of ten though that weconsidered them very good, three thought it was good and one thought it wasexcellent. Our target audience was for teenagers and the fact that we used young peoplein our documentary rather than just older professionals show that we considered ouraudience so that they would stay interested. Though we used teenagers which would appealand relate to all our audience, as stated before I was still surprised to find that the maleaudience also thought that the target audience was appropriate to them.


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The use of sound and music wasconsidered good mostly and this isprobably because of the fact that weoverlapped our music with our dialoguewell and we used our volume control

appropriately also. We tried contacting amusic channel to ask if we could use theremusic, however they didnt get back to ustherefore we had to use standard soundsfeatured on the computer. In order toimprove our sound next time, it would bebetter if we had real music and variety.

The next feature in question was our use of editing. This answers given for this question

showed that our use of editing was very effective due to almost half of our audience saying

that it was excellent and a half saying it was good. Our editing proved to show a numberof different shots from close ups to panning showing a variety in our documentary and thefeedback showed that it was effectively used and liked by the audience.

Though this graph shows that half of our audience found our use of effects good, it alsoshows that there are some who only found it satisfactory. This is probably because ourdocumentary didnt have a range of effects therefore next time in order to improve this;we could have more transitions to show our media knowledge.

Our last question was whether our documentary showed professionalism. More than half of

the group said our documentary seemed quiet professional. In the comments we received,

one of the members of the focus group stated that the montage was up to a professional

standard.

Our last two open questions allowed the audience to write what they feel about ourdocumentary in a detailed way which is beneficial for us because we will know what our

positive and negative aspects were.

What did you like most about our documentary was the first of the open question.

Answers such as good choice of topic, good information on topic and good topic fortarget audience shows that majority of our audience liked our documentary topic as it was

the most popular answer. This seemed like a typical answer and was a response I was

expecting because the topic choice related to our target audience because media most likelyplays a big part in there lives too therefore they will be able to understand it and get

interested easier because the statistics and case study relate to them.The second open question was What should we improve on. Some of the feedback spoke

about how our shots were shaky and wobbly and because of this it could have


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Apple Macs we had, therefore we had to upload the images we took on them. In order to do

this, we had to get a special plug and also the USB cord which both had to be connectedfrom the camera to the computer. Once this was connected, we had to ensure that the

camera settings were right and were set to view the images rather than take them. Once

connected, a folder would open in which you drag the images from the folder to a created

folder on the Apple Mac.

A microphone and a recorder were used when we were producing the voiceover for our

documentary. The recorder at times was easy to use because it was created for justrecording voice and had a start and stop button, however there were times when the

gadget, due to our lack of knowledge, was complicated so we used the video camera instead.

However, whether using the recorder or the video camera, to ensure that the voice was

clear and loud, a microphone was used.

After the recording was complete, to save and edit the volume and sound, Garagebandwas

used. On the college online site, the media faculty had a clip to teach the students how touse this programme. As well as just the voiceover, the soundtrack for the documentary waschosen and edited on Garageband also. Garageband was complicated to use but after the

help from faculty and the clip, it became easier. However, due to the fact that my tasks was

those for student D, I didnt have to use garageband until the radio trailer for our

documentary was created in which then i had to adjus the volume and order and cut bits out.


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Our documentary was designed on this programme called Final Cut. This was used after the

construction part of our documentary, once we filmed everything and took all theneccessary images. In order to upload our files onto Final cutwe used "log and transfer". On

final cut, we were able to put our documentary in order. After the log and transfer process,

we could drag our files into the grey area and then either cut, shorten or lengthen the clips

aswel as adding effects. Our group took turns each lesson on this programme to ensure thatevery member knew how to use it.

My main job was to add the captions which was also done on this programme. This was doneby pressing on the clip you wished to edit and clicking on the "text" tab. A box them

appeared in which you could decide the font, size, colour and layout of the text. Final cut

was the programme our group got the most familiarised with because it was the one used

daily for different tasks.

Comic Lifewas the programme used for creating our ideas with images through a storybook

layout. For example, this programme was first used when designing the opening for our

documentary. We used images we could possibly use and then underneath we wrote the

reasons why it would be a good opening. When making our documentary, we then keptreferring back to this plan type so that we could use its ideas and advance on it.


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The image shown above, is the last time comic life was used by our group. It shows our

documentary through nine still images and below are the images summed up. Comic life was

the easiest programme to use and was effective also because it helped with our planning

aspect.

In order to create a listings page, adobe in design was used. Though at times complicated, itwas still quite simple to use as it was the programme used in last year media to create our

magazine.

The above image shows that we used the colours orange and green to attract the audiences'

eye and also we used our documentary images and pull quotes to reflect and show that weare professional by using conventions of real media texts. We used the programme to

create the layout and design.

Blogger was the website our group used as a step by step diary. On this website we createdour own username and password and recorded everything down. At the start of the progect,


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each group member got a candidate letter with specific roles and tasks. The tasks were to

use certain programmes, do planning and construction or answer questions, once done wewrote down everything on the blog and uploaded it for others too see and get help with.

Blogger was used as a planner and people could see how far we had got with our progect. It

was also useful when a member of the group needed specific information, they could log on

to blogger and get advice from what there group had written down.

Youtube was the website used for our research and planning. We went on for many reason,such as finding out how to use the cameras and tripods and to research on documentary

conventions similar to our own. Youtube proved to be helpful because we got alot of ideas

from the site.

As student D, one of my tasks was to get the channel four ident from the internet to our

Imacs. This was done by going through youtube to find the suitable ident, once found we hadto go on another site called "youtube downloader" and convert the video on our USB in order

to insert it to the Imac drive.

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Coursework Evaluation - Nadia Kamal

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