Documentary Evaluation

Q.4 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Rhiannon Lewis

Rhiannon Lewis

Throughout the process of research, planning and construction of the documentary, blogger.com was used to document the process. I used the blog as a diary to date when we filmed and used videos and still images on the blog to illustrate some points made.

Rhiannon Lewis

Research and planning StageMain usage of technology for the planning and research page was the internet. Internet browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera were used to research our topic of making it big in the music industry and ideas for content of the documentary. It was also used to construct questionnaires for the target audience and interviewees, as well various sites from the internet such as Facebook, Myspace, Youtube and Hotmail as sources for cutaways and contacting interviewees.

The search engine Google was used to find research ideas and to locate cutaway images for our documentary.

Rhiannon Lewis

Wikipedia was used as well as other various sites for research into the topic of the documentary and its contents.

The University of Chester's website was used as a source of contact information for the lecturers, our experts, and the information on their commercial music production course page was used to base or questionnaire on for the lecturers.

Rhiannon Lewis

Hotmail, MSNs e-mail provider was used as a source of contact between myself and both university lecturers.

Youtube was used as a source of cutaways for our documentary such as The Saturdays – work and Slipknot - Duality (featured image). Kissyoutube was used as a way to download the videos so we could use the footage within our documentary.

Rhiannon Lewis

Myspace and Facebook was used to see how big the band was , i.e. number of fans/followers and to preview a sample of their music before we went and filmed them when they played live.

Rhiannon Lewis

Microsoft Word was used to create the questionnaires for the band, lecturers and the target audience.

Rhiannon Lewis

Microsoft Excel was used to create the running order and to construct the graphs for the results from the target audience questionnaires.

Rhiannon Lewis

ConstructionFor the construction of the documentary hardware was used as well as software to create the documentary.

To capture the footage of the live bands and the interviews a Cannon XM2 camera was used. Within the process of capturing a set of headphones and microphone was used to ensure the sound for the footage was picked up and could be heard.

Rhiannon Lewis

A mobile phone like the one in the image was used as a camera to capture pictures of my group filming, the live bands and images to be used for the print advert.

An ipod was used as a portable hard drive was used to store and transfer images and the music used for the documentary.

Rhiannon Lewis

Mini DV tapes were used to capture the footage filmed. A DVD capture deck was used to capture the footage that was on the mini DVD tapes. A fire wire was used to link the DVD capture deck and the computer together so the DV capture deck could be controlled more easily from the computer.

Samsung LCD monitors attached to the computer as an alternative to viewing the documentary rather than displayed on the computers monitor.

To create the documentary a quad core computer and TFT monitor was used.

Rhiannon Lewis

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 was used to create the documentary and radio trailer.

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[2] [3]

Using the Source Monitor, I could view clips [1], set edit points [2], and mark other important frames before adding clips to a sequence. For convenience, I could break a clip into any number of sub clips, each with its own In and Out points [3].

Rhiannon Lewis

Adobe Photoshop CS5 was used to create the print advert.

Photoshop was used to create the print advertisement. I used the move tool to move different pieces of the poster around on their individual layer. I then used the crop tool to crop pieces on the original image. I also used the colour tool to change the colour on some pieces on the image.

Rhiannon Lewis

EvaluationQ1. In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

To complete the evaluation I had to use a variety of methods to present the answers to the questions. I decided to use a different method of each of the four questions.

For this question I answered each piece being the documentary, print advertisement and radio trailer separately and in a different way. For the documentary I answered it in a comparative style, print advertisement in the form of a presentation and radio trailer as a annotated image and description.

Rhiannon Lewis

For this question I answered it in a comparative style comparing the documentary with real documentaries. I did this question straight onto the blog and used still images from my computer. I used youtube to view the documentaries and used TubeChop to trim the videos into sections that I wanted.

Documentary

Rhiannon Lewis

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For this question I answered it as a presentation, uploaded it slideshare.net then embedded the code into my blog. To create the presentation I used power point and ‘Channel 4 Identity Style Guide’ from http://www.channel4.com/about_c4/styleguide/downloads/C4StyleGuide1.1.pdf, I then used slideshare.net to upload the presentation.

Rhiannon Lewis

Radio Trailer

For this question I answered it as a annotated image and description. I annotated the components of the radio trailer on a screen shot of the time line. I used the list of codes and conventions on my blog and stated whether it had been done or not and how and where it was in the radio trailer.

Rhiannon Lewis

Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

For this question I decided to answer it in the form of a short video with a voice recording and using images as evidence. To capture my answers I used a guitar hero microphone as unfortunately my microphone wasn’t working correctly. I used the programme Sound Recorder to record the sound followed by the programme Windows Movie Maker to create the short video. When finished to play the saved format Windows Media Player was used.

Rhiannon Lewis

Q3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

For this question I answered it different ways. I answered it in a written format with oral answers from the audience. I used Youtube to show the audience our documentary.

I then got the audience to answer a questionnaire that I had created on Microsoft Word.

Rhiannon Lewis

I then got some of the audience to give some general feedback on the documentary and recorded it using Sound Recorder. To then transfer this on my blog I used Windows Movie Maker .

I then used Youtube again to print screen feedback on the documentary.

Rhiannon Lewis

Q4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

For this question I decided to answer it in the form of a presentation. At each stage I described the different technologies used such as for the construction stage I mentioned using: camera, mobile phone, mini DVD tapes etc.