Media Evalualtionnn

8/3/2019 Media Evalualtionnn

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Evaluation

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challengeforms and conventions of real media products?

Before production of our documentary could begin, it was important to establish modesand conventions. The ambition for our documentary was to have the style of cinemaverite, however wanted to look deeper to gain knowledge about particular traits andconventions. Looking at research from Bill Nichols, I was able to verify the differentaspects from each mode he had distinguished. Due to the factual information given byus and interviewees, our documentary has aspects of the expositional mode. Ournarration provided a story telling scenario which was omnipresent. An example of theexpositional mode is the cutaways which appear throughout our interviews. Aspects ofthe observational mode are also present through the use of certain shots displayedwhere the camera is as unobtrusive as possible. Shots of students in the canteen,

walking to lessons etc are examples of the camera being used in an observational way.In documentaries such as Morgan Spurlocks supersize me, he became participatory tohis own work, however we did not use this mode as we wanted to appear as subjectiveand not use an argumentative tone. There is also a tiny element of the performativemode as the story we created acted as an almost autobiographical description ofsubjective truths that were significant to use. For example, the opinions aired about theriots and teenagers were the truth to us as film makers, therefore we showed our viewsthrough a subjective documentary.

Our documentary has the part of the realist documentary genre as we have shownteenagers in their natural educational habitat with minimal treatment on recordedmaterial. However, we also have a subjective genre as our personal opinion onteenagers involvement in the riots was revealed.The tone of our documentary was to be serious and uncritical as we wanted to show the

opinions of teenagers and adults towards the riots. The serious tone was implementedstraight from the beginning as the destructive shots of the riots appeared creating thetone we wanted.

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson identified four types of narrative structure whichwere story telling, categorical, rhetorical and associational. Our documentary had part ofthe structure for the rhetorical as we identified the problem of youth involvement and themedia within the riots and explained facts about the events, however we could not getfurther within the narrative structure then this, and this could be due to the limited time ofthe documentary.

Initially, all members of the group had similar generic conventions, which were found inexamples of documentaries. These were important to incorporate into our documentaryto ensure it was a professional as it can be. The American documentary Super-size meused many conventions which were similar in our documentary. For example,


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professional interviews used tripods which added to the sense of importance of theinterviewee.

To begin with, we all had different ideas for the establishing shot. This was a veryimportant decision as this can be used to captivate the audience to watch the rest of thedocumentary. To clearly show what thedocumentary was going to be about, thedecision became final to use vox popfootage from the recent riots to engage theviewer and to add a dramatic beginning tothe documentary. The shots of the riotswere chosen carefully, as only a fewseconds are dedicated to each clip, itbecame of importance to choose clips thatfeatured teenagers being violent as thisbegins the questioning on youth violence.To accompany this, a violent backing trackwas used which suited the shots ofrobberies and the youth violence that wewere showing. It was important to find thecorrect music to accompany the shots asthis can create a certain mood throughout the documentary.

As shots of college were introduced, the music became investigative and upbeat toportray the pace of the documentary and the qualities of the college. The musicremained in the background lightly throughout the whole documentary, which is also aconvention found in real media texts. Sound levels had to be adjusted so all voices werebalanced; this shows the documentary is of professional standards.

Vox pops are common in documentaries as they engage the audience and can cover avariety of topics all through a few opening shots. For Aesthetic reasons, vox pops areuseful for our documentary to portray the different types of stereotypes and introduce thesixth form college to the documentary. However, it is of key importance the documentary

uses relevant vox pops; forexample the voiceover inour documentaryannounces the sixth formcollege-;vox pops of thearea and students withinthe institution were relevant.This would be expected ifour documentary was to be

similar to real media texts.

In order to understand what features are necessary within a documentary, manyexamples were watched. A documentary about Alcohol produced by Panorama had thefollowing conventions:

Camera

Tripod is used often when introducing the show and showing the streets ofYorkshire, this is done to keep the professional element of the programme.

All interviews are done using tripod.


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Hand held camera used for interviews on streets to give a sense of realism. Most common shot types are two shots to show the presenter is always

present. Also, MCU's (medium close ups) are used to create a sense of

closeness to the person so the viewers focus on what they have to say. 'A piece to camera' used throughout.

Sound/graphics:

The principal source of sound is diagetic and ambient sound to give a sense ofrealism of clubs and bars.

Panorama's theme music is used throughout which makes the showrecognisable to viewers and keeps consistency

Graphics such as panorama being in a spinning globe and maps of citiesare used to portray information in a more appealing way to the viewerinstead.

Narration/voiceover

The presenter does 'a piece tocamera' and seems as if he isreporting to the viewers directly.his voice is used as a voiceoverand is very successful in piecingthe shots together and explainingwhats happening on screen.

Research

As this is a panoramadocumentary, it is expected thatmany facts and research has

been found to inform the audience of Alcohol abuse. They discuss the changes in council laws, which some may not know. Give facts on the amount of pubs and bars there are e.g 19 pubs and

27bars.

Try to shock the viewers by using facts such as 25 incidents per week arereported in certain nightclubs and 58% of people are to afraid to go to townin the evening due to violence.

Using a documentary such as this, we wanted to incorporate similar conventions such asusing a voiceover, which explains what is happening on the screen for the viewersunderstanding. Also, we wanted to inform the viewers of our documentary, therefore

using facts was an important part. All documentaries,such as teen species: girls, airline and supersize me all

use hand held camera for un- professional interviews togive the feeling that the viewer is also a part of thescene. For example, in supersize me hand held camerais used in the doctors surgery so the viewer feels theyare a part of the consultation also. With our documentary,we used hand held for all other interviewers however; ourdocumentary was more opinion based therefore did nothave the conventions completely of a fly-on-the-walldocumentary.

Such conventions then allowed us to produce a storyboard of how the documentary may be shot to give usclarity during the actual production stage.


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The most popular type of editing is the straight cut which can easily be found in anydocumentary. However, we challenged this convention and used transitions such as

fade to black to ensure our documentary flowed smoothly. Also, it added to theaesthetics of the finalpiece.

Generically, it would be expected names of the professionals being interviewed aredisplayed for viewers to know who they are. We ensured all of our professional

interviews had names- we also designed thestyle in which the names were to bedisplayed. An example of this is below.

Stills were used effectively through rostrum footage. An image from a looting in Londonwas taken and creatively shown from right to left diagonally within our documentary(rostrum); conventionally, looking at moving images is far more pleasing to the eye thana still image, therefore we decided to incorporate this.

Generic conventions within a documentary are:

Narration which seems as if they are addressing us directly

Two shots, MCU shots

Background music

Use of hand held for realism

Research and evidence

Use of graphics

After research into radio trails such as sports trails and comedy trails, genericconventions became apparent. For example, the common about of tracks for each trail is3; consisting of the backing track, voiceover and any ambient tracks. In our radio trail we

used 2 tracks (voiceover and backing track) with the beginning using an ambient sound


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alone. Also, the tone of voice affected the mood of the radio trail, therefore it wasimportant to have an upbeat tone for the voiceover, which matches the music etc. Forexample, the sports trail for F1 used an excitable tone, which caused an excitement for

the listener about the last few seconds of the race. The general length of time for the 5different trails I encountered were no more then 50 seconds, therefore we created a42second radio trail which advertised our documentary but did not drag on for too longwith opinions, which could cause the listener to not be interested after a certain amountof seconds.

It is important to ensure you adjust the sound levels to all 3 tracks merge together well.The image (on the left) shows blue dots, which allow you to put the sound levels higheror lower. The backing track needs to be lower then the voiceover for clarity, which is a

generic convention.In order for the radio trail to be of par to real media texts, It is important to follow the keyconventions such as:

Voiceover which creates mood

Date and time of the advertised piece

Background music

Adjusted sound levels

Relevant sound clips which relate to the piece you are advertising

I believe our radio trail follows all of these conventions. For example, the date and timeof Running Riots can be heard at theend of the trailer, we think this Is a goodthing to do as it leaves the listener with

the important information they wouldneed to remember if they wanted towatch the documentary. The voiceover,using myself, was upbeat andconsistent to the documentaryvoiceover. The group had chosen the backing track carefully as the basis for theadvertisement is using sounds, therefore using a backing track that is constant andpleasing to the ear is beneficial in all media texts.

Conventions associated with the double page spread includea by-line, this gives a summarised description of the article,this can be found in majority of the articles, especially in theRadio times which were the publication we used. Our by-linegave some factual Insight on the riots and opened up the

topic of the medias role in the portrayal of youths.

Edit decision list


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The masthead had to be effective if it was to catch the eye of the reader. However, with

the publication we used, our masthead challenged the conventions of that magazine. Byusing the strong black colour and having a masthead, which jumps out of the page, givesa strong mood to the article that may not fit in with the radio times.The rule of thirds is used to placed images/text on to page symmetrically, commonly,columns are placed and images are bundled together so the layout is clear andconsistent. Our double page spread uses this convention as we have columns that havea structural form, also images are generally together near the bottom right of the page.

Another convention, which is common in real media texts, is the use of page numberaccompanied by information such as the date. Our spread has page numbers, whichgives it a professional appeal; also the publication is used Radio times

Generically, the date and time of the programme would be made clear at the beginningof the article; we also have followed this by ensuring the date/time/programme is clearlydisplayed which is used for easy referral to the details. I also believe our colour themethroughout using black, white and red for quotations is consistent throughout the article,which is very important when establishing a brand identity.

Question2: how effective is the combination of your main product and ancillarytask?

The target audience were 16-35 year old males and females, and it was important toensure both the radio trail and double page-spread correlate to the documentaryproduced. Collectively, a decision was made to create a brand identity, which wasrepetitive throughout the main and ancillary tasks.

The documentary began using dark rock style music which connoted the trouble andviolence caused throughout the riots. With regards to the double page spread, thebackground colour used was black to keep in with the connotations of the riots. Acracked lettering style in the masthead indicated the shattered remains after the riots

and fitted in with our brand identity.

As the documentary and the radio trailer were visual audios, this made it harder toportray a clear brand identity with the double page spread. Still images were taken fromour documentary and placed on the double page spread to make it recognisable.


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However, the double page spreaduses an interview with the

producer of Running Riots whichmay not be as thrilling andcaptivating for the younger targetaudience. This is a flaw in theancillary task; however bykeeping the colour theme similarto the documentary, the aim wasto entice our target audience witha glance.

A positive element about the double page spread is the clarity of the article. It is easy tounderstand when the programme is on and the channel it is being aired on. Theintroductory paragraph gives an in depth insight to the documentary topic- the mediasrole in the portrayal of stereotypes. The bi-line in our double page spread is generic andcan be found in most articles; therefore we deciding having a bi-line would make ourdouble page spread read better as it gives an overview about our topic area.

Altogether, the double page spread is relevant to our documentary and the theme weused is consistent throughout, however there are certain flaws in the double page spreadsuch as the quotations, which could be seen as misplaced and straining to read againstthe black background.

The radio trailer also uses the same voiceover and extracts from the documentary, whichwould be easily recognisable if people have watched the documentary also. The pace of

editing in our documentary is fast; therefore it was important to keep the pace throughoutthe radio trail. The trail gives a


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small insight as to what the documentary is about and even asks the rhetorical questionyouth violence, whats your opinion? Asking this question indicates the documentarytopic but does not give too much away.

However, the music used in the documentary is extremely different the radio, thiscreates a completely different mood for each task. This is an issue, as the brand identitymay get lost through the choice of music. The sound levels were as consistent as ourdocumentary which thorough checking of levels throughout postproduction. Both thedocumentary and radio trail sound professional due to the sound levels.

Overall, I believe the ancillary tasks accompany the main documentary task very wellwith a recurrent theme throughout. Both the radio and double page spread advertise thedocumentary effectively and the name brand of Running Riots appears clearly. The

generic conventions for both tasks were followed to ensure we created something ofprofessional standard which had the brand identity of us throughout. It was important tohave ancillary tasks, which correlate to the main production as this ensures an effectiveproduction piece is made, which I believe we have managed.

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To begin with, we created a questionnaire to see what our target audience knew aboutour topic area, this involved questions such as define the word stereotype It wasimportant to get feedback from our target audience before we embarked on this task as itgave us a clear insight and aided us in our decision making.


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From this questionnaire, it could be found that the key words and phrases used to definethe word stereotype were judgement, assumptions and classifications of a group of

people. This question was asked to see if the target audience understood the definitionof a stereotype and could describe it. A unanimous opinion became clear as all of theparticipants thought teenagers are portrayed in a negative manner. Due to this, wewanted to show this opinion in our documentary in contrast to adults opinions.When questioned about the riots, most peoples opinions classed rioters as being selfishand disgusting. It was clear that although teenagers took part in the riots, mostteenagers believed it to be negative themselves. Most perceived the riots to be a smallminority but the media has shown the majority. Responses such as this have aided us tomake decisions about what to show in the documentary; such as, finding the point ofview from a media expert to give an insight to the effects of the media on portrayal ofyouths.

By doing this questionnaire, we were able to see whether our target audience had anyknowledge into the topic area and what opinions people felt about the riots. Due to this,we decided to ask students to define a stereotype within the documentary to ensure thetarget audience understand the meaning which we refer to.All responses said they did not agree with the negative representation, along with it notbeingA following questionnaire was conducted on the target audience of 16-35 to gain overallfeedback about our documentary, double page spread and radio trail. The questionnaireasked participants to rate each task from good to bad. A further question asked for anyimprovements that needed to be made for all 3 tasks and the final few questions askedgeneral closed questions such as was the documentary interesting?, was thedocumentary similar to those of the BBC? And do all 3 products relate to each other?There was also the option to add general feedback at the end.

The reason these questions were derived were to get informed answers about the good

and bad of our tasks, by asking for improvements we could make, we could understandwhere our faults lay and if all our products had the brand identity we wanted it to have.

This column chart shows the exact number of ratings. It can be seen that 2 peoplebelieved our documentary and radio trail to be the rating excellent and 3 thought thedouble page spread was excellent. Majority of participants (5) thought the documentarywas good. The radio trail also seemed good to 4 participants and the same amount was

rated for the double page spread. No participants rated any of the tasks bad or awful


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which shows our production was of a good standard. As expected, majority thought ourefforts were good, with documentary and double page spread gaining equal rating.

Question 2 looked for improvements on each task. Naturally, the documentary had themost improvements to be made which is due fact it is much longer and an audio visualtherefore there is more to analyse. As the table indicates, the major issues with thedocumentary included the camera work and lighting. Once certain shots has be filmed, iknew there were certain lighting issues, however as the shots from the Solihull highstreet were difficult to get, they had to be used. I also agree with the point about music,although the mood is investigative, i believe changing it during the documentary wouldhave created a more uplifting effect.

With regards to the double page spread, the improvement for the colour was mentionedfrequently. We believed using the black would be effective and the masthead RunningRiots would stand out well. However, i do understand using a brighter colour could bemore appealing for a person to read the article the whole way through. The radio trail

admittedly needed sound levels of the voiceover to be adjusted; however this was theonly criticism for that task which is pleasing.

This pie chart shows the general questions we asked. It can be seen the results are splitevenly showing each participant thought our documentary was interesting, similar to aBBC production and relevant to each other. However, as this is only a closed questionsome may not be able to put in certain thoughts. The general feedback we gained werecomments such as fantastic, well done, and positive comments on the professionalism ofthe productions.

From this audience feedback i have learnt that our productions were seen as very goodand enjoyable to most. The opinions demonstrated in the previous questionnaire were

Task Improvements

Documentary Lighting during High street interviewsSmoother pansClearer riot footageMore relevant footageSound levels to be improved

Double page spread Second page needs less imagesMore structureBrighter colour

Radio trail Voiceover needs to be louder


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shown also in the documentary which shows we have taken on board audiencefeedback. However, improvements can always be made and from this feedback i amable to understand where faults are throughout the documentary, radio trail and double

page spread.

Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction andresearch, planning and evaluation stages?

The initial idea for our documentary was to focus on the theme of teenagers and theirrepresentations as our brainstorm for this was the strongest. As we began research intothe topic and began thinking of story boarding, it became clear that focusing just onrepresentations of teenagers was too narrow. Also, as the idea was so wide, thedocumentary could a number of different directions; we were not sure which one to take.After careful consideration, it became apparent we needed a more focused theme;therefore we used the riots as a basis into a portrayal of negative stereotypes. From this,we were then able to imagine a well aimed documentary looking into the medias role ofportraying teenagers.

Before ideas could be further produced for our documentary, it was important to watchother form of real media texts to gain an insight as to what the genres there are.Household equipment such as a TV/projector and DVD player/computer are needed toallow DVDs of documentaries to be shown.

A target audience had to be decided in the initial stages of planning , Unsure of whetherto use BBC 3 or BBC4 for our channel, we did further research via their websites as totheir target audiences, the types of programmes they show. Using the website gave usadequate information to make the decision to go for BBC 3.

We began searching for clips of the riots using www.youtube.com. The broad variety ofclips made it a very long task and could be frustrating when we were not able to find theexact clips we had in mind. Youtube is a common piece of software most teenagers are

in

contact with; therefore using this website


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was easy as we all understood how to use it. Many of our footage from the riots camefrom this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zRUojIKrn0 A disadvantage aboutusing Youtube is there are many videos, therefore when looking for something specific

causes difficulty as you must go through many videos that do not have relevance to findthe right scenes of the riots.

Any

research and planning produced about our documentary or ancillary tasks were to bepublished onto a blog (www.blogger.co.uk) a standard blog looked like this:

Collectively, we agreed this layout was bland and decided to use the software and editthe settings which allowed us to choose a different layout which looked more pleasing tothe eye. Again, our brand identity can be seen through our blog with the use of the

colour black and the multicoloured spirals across the page symbolise chaos. However,


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blogger was not clear on how to edit certain features; therefore it took time to figure outhow to use the software.

Throughout the post production of the documentary, Powerpoints were produced usingMicrosoft powerpoint and Slideshare which demonstrated the different stages we wentthrough to get our final piece. www.slideshare.net enables you to upload yourPowerpoint onto a piece of software which produces slides and can be used on otherwebsites such as blogger.

Due to these features, we uploaded our slide share onto the blog to make theinformation look better.

Although Slideshare has its benefits, i was unable to use this piece of software to beginwith and at times i encountered difficulties uploading the Powerpoint to the blog,however, with practice it began easier to use this website and it has allowed us to

present our information in a different way on the blog which is interesting.

Before we could begin filming, a short video uploaded on Youtube gave us an insight onhow to use the camera (cannon HD) and the tripod so we were able to go off andeffectively produce the documentary we wanted. The videos were easy to follow andhelped me to understand the hardware i was working with for the number of followingweeks.

The following links will take you to those videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g38qc0htJ1U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKrzxhZfK6c&feature=player_embedded

On the camera, i learned to use white balance (holding a white sheet of paper in front of

the camera) to level out the colour of the shots; this was very useful as our documentary


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On the camera, i learned to use white balance (holding a white sheet of paper in front of the camera) to level out thecolour of the shots; this was very useful as our documentary mostly had consistent lighting. Also, effects such asmanual focus could be used which added to the professionalism of the documentary and gave us the ability to createan appealing documentary.

Also, for our documentary an audio technical directional microphone had been used which enabled sound to becomeclearer; this was useful when background noise in the college took over, the micro-

phone still picked up the sound of the interviews clearly.

Research into the documentary was found using the most common piece of software-www.google.com-when we typed in facts on youths in the riots, we were able to findsufficient facts and figures to shock and inform our viewers with. Research withoutsearch engines such as Google would have made the task of finding information verydifficult.

An M-Audio digital recorder was used to record voiceovers for our radio trail and documentary. Having used thispiece of hardware before, this task became easy for me. I also knew how to upload these sound clips onto the docu-mentary quickly, which became useful when more recordings were needed on short notice.A scanner enabled us to add in extra information onto the blog such as the edit decision lists which show all the clipswe decided to use; and the analysis conducted for the radio trails.

All post-production was done on the Apple Macs. Only having used this hardwareone before briefly, i found it difficult to use. Luckily, one member of the team hadfrequent use with the Macs and was able to direct me when i needed help. The 3

main software programmes i used were: Final cut express, Garage band and In-design. I had experience of using garage band and In-design before which madethe production of the radio and double page spread slightly easier. However, I stillstruggled with In-design as i forgot how to use most of the features to create theeffects i desired.

Final cut express was new to me, however once a demonstration was given it be-came fairly easy to use. To begin with, a log and transfer is needed to add all theclips into a bin we could use. From then on, our desired clips could be dragged onto the time line and edited. As i became familiar with this particular hardware, i un-derstand now how to add in effects such as rostrum footage, transitions, voiceoversetc.

Scripting for the radio trailer, documentary and the article for the double pagespread were typed on to the Mac, using Microsoft Word. This made it easier toproof read and correct any mistakes that were made. The software was designed Rostrum footage

Radio analysisEdit decision list
http://www.google.com-/http://www.google.com-/http://www.google.com-/


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Examples of software I used on the Macs

The software was designed specifically for Macs, due to this I struggled sometimes to find the tool boxes i wantedtoo use.

Overall, in order to construct the planning and research forthe task given, many different forms of media technology were needed. Using such a vast variety gave me thechance to increase my knowledge and progress when using software. Although i had my difficulties using certainpieces of software and hardware, with a bit of guidance and using my initiative- i was able to effectively make use ofthe technology available to me and create an interesting documentary, radio trail and double page spread for Run-

ning Riots.
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=powerpoint+for+macs&hl=en&gbv=2&biw=1280&bih=550&tbm=isch&tbnid=t1iI9OJutCRo5M:&imgrefurl=http://www.iconspedia.com/icon/powerpoint-mac-35-8.html&docid=Cm8Tes3K1pcDSM&imgurl=http://aux.iconpedia.net/uploads/1647349420.png&w=25

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