Charanpal Singh

A2 Media A2 Media Studies: Documentary evaluation``

Nick Warring

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

The code and conventions are elements that make up the media text. There are many codes and conventions which media texts follow. A documentary has also have these to follow in the categories such as in editing, sound and titles. In our documentary we followed many of the codes and conventions of regular documentaries. There are many aspects of a documentary in which we needed to look at such as the sort of sound we would use, the pace of our editing, the style of our editing and more. We had to decide whether or not we would follow normal codes and conventions whilst making our documentary. For the start of our documentary we wanted it to be fast paced with different clips, so that the audience would want to continue watching. We noticed that many documentaries do this so we decided to follow this particular convention. Previous documentaries on the riots had also used footage from the riots to emphasise how serious the riots were. We too followed this convention and obtained footage of the riots using YouTube.

Editing: We had to make sure we got the editing right as this could be the difference from what makes a documentary good or bad. As our documentary was on the Birmingham riots we decided that the editing for our documentary would be fast paced which created the effect of urgency to show the dramatic nature of the documentary. This seems to be the convention of many documentaries of a similar genre which is good as it hooks or target audience in and allows them to keep on watching without getting bored. In professional documentaries not many transitions are used however we Fade into another vox pop did decide to place some in our documentary, we used some fades to smoothly move from one vox pop to another, to show they are of a similar sort of interview however we mainly used straight cuts to show the seriousness of our documentary. However one convention we could use next time which we did not use this was the use of cut away shots which would

Charanpal Singh

A2 Media

Nick Warring

have been good as it would have reinforced what was being said by the professional in the interview. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017pld0 It also would have kept the concentration of our viewers better as they would not have just been watching the interviews all the time.

Sound There are two types of sound that is added in our documentary diegetic noises which are sounds that are already there for example in a vox pop interview the noises in the background would be diegetic. The second type of sound that was added in our documentary is non diegetic sound for example background music. The music we used was fast paced and kept a tense feeling about our documentary which was good as our documentary was meant to be dramatic. Also we tried to make sure that all the sound levels were the same throughout the documentary which allowed our documentary to seem more professional. However we did have to increase some levels which did decrease the quality of some sounds. Also we kept the narrator of our documentary the same throughout which is following the convention. We did this as we did not want to confuse our audience with different voices. Also we kept the sound levels for the voice over the same all the way through the documentary. Interviews: There are generally two types of interviews that are used in documentaries, Vox pops and formal interviews which usually are interviews with someone of importance. In our formal interviews we tried to make sure the mise-en-scene matched the person we were interviewing. For example in the interview with the criminal lawyer we filmed the interview in his office to show his profession. This gave a better affect to our audience as it meant they could see that he was someone of power. However in our interview with Economics teacher, we were unable to gain a suitable mise-en-scene, therefore we used his class room, with posters of graphs in the background to try allow people to see his position of an economics teacher. We also used titles at the begging of our interviews to introduce them and tell our audience who he is. These are usually placed in the bottom left hand corner of the shot and we have kept this consistent through all our professional interviews. The shots are usually taken in medium close up or medium shot. We decided to this because in the two documentaries we watched on the riots, we noticed that the professional interviews in those also so had those shots. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013xy9t/Panorama_The_August_Riots/

Charanpal Singh Medium shot

A2 Media

Nick Warring Not looking at the camera

Title of the interviewee

Sitting down rather than standing up to show position of importance

When filming Vox Pops, it is a very different set up to a professional interview. The mise-en-scene for the Vox pops is usually in a crowded place or outdoors to show that we are interviewing the general public, also we usually film them standing up and with a medium shot also we kept in the dietetic noises to keep the realism of the interview to show they are just the general public and we are hearing their unprofessional opinions. In all our interviews we make sure the interviewee does not look directly at the camera but rather at the interviewer we did this to follow the convention.

Mise-en-scene outside to show realism

No titles to show he is not someone of importance

Standing up rather than sitting down to show he is just a member of the public (vox pop)

Charanpal Singh

A2 Media

Nick Warring

Comparison of our interviews to actual documentaries: Mise-enscene is place of work Mise-enscene is place of work

Not looking at the camera Alsoanother mediumshot whichisused inprofessional interviews. Not looking at the camera Medium shot was used to show, the mise-en-scene of the solicitors office.

Like in actual documentaries we to used filler footage to introduce something new or reinforce what the narrator was saying. You can use filler footage anywhere in the documentary and can be used to change the pace of it. The filler footage is usually relevant to your documentary, for example in ours we used shots of people walking calmly to contrast it with the way it was when the riots happened. We also got shots of the magistrates courts when the narrator was talking about where the rioters would be trailed.

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

The 3 media texts we produced was a documentary, a radio advert and a double page spread.

Charanpal Singh

A2 Media

Nick Warring

Brand identity is a big aspect of media, and we wanted to try make sure when you watched our documentary, listened to our radio trailer and looked at our double page spread that you would know they are all linked. We also wanted to make sure that all three of our texts were targeted at our audience and would keep them intrigued. We included many images from the documentary on our magazine article including images from interviews, and filler footage. We did this to keep the brad identity up and so it was recognisable when you watched our documentary. As our target audience is young adults, we did use a lot of images but also balanced it out with enough text for them to read. This way we could try and keep them intrigued to read on and then watch the documentary. We also tried to keep the colour scheme of our documentary similar to allow our audience to recognise one of our texts. We did not want the colour scheme to be bright because the topic of our documentary is of a serious one. We did use black and white but also added red in so our target audience would not be uninterested by the same colours. However in our documentary we kept the text colour white as we did in the magazine article, so you could see the ancillary texts come from the same brand. It may be difficult to recognise the radio trailer in the brand identity as it is just sound however we used some techniques to overcome this. Firstly we used 5

Charanpal Singh

A2 Media

Nick Warring

the same background music in the radio trailer that we did in the documentary this was our audience can easily recognise they come from the same text. Another feature is that we used a young narrator for the voice over; this allowed the documentary to relate to our target audience more as it did not sound like an adult just describing how bad the riots were. It is important to have brand identity in your media texts so that your audience can easily recognise when you have produced another text. In the radio trailer we also used quotes from the actual documentary which would allow our audience to recognise that the radio trailer is linked to our documentary. There are ways we could have improved our brand identity however. Firstly we could have used the same font in our magazine article as we did the documentary, for example the heading in the magazine spread could have been the same as the title in the actual documentary. We also could have used the same narrator for the radio trailer and documentary. However this could turn too repetitive and our target audience could become dissatisfied by hearing the same voice. It is the job of the radio trailer and magazine article to promote our documentary and get people to want to watch it. These will therefore usually include the best pictures, quotes and maybe an interview to try and intrigue the audience to come watch. We did include these in our media texts. Radio trailer: I believe our radio trailer would advertise the documentary well. It is just over 30 seconds which is a good amount of time and it is not too long to the point where the audience would get bored and want to stop listening. Also our voice over for radio trailer was loud and lively, we did this so that the target audience will remain interested in what they were listening to. The start of the radio trailer was contained a lot of sounds including sirens so that the audience would become intrigued and want to find out what the advert was for, as our target audience was for 16 plus we believe this will work well. We would then put quotes from the documentary in the middle of the advert, including some fascinating facts and controversial quotes, which would hopefully make our target audience want to watch the documentary. Overall I believe our radio trailer went well for our target audience as it was fast paced, gave out the required information and ended before it could be called boring. Magazine Article Our magazine article could have been improved so it would attract our target audience a bit more. The layout looks more of a poster than an actual magazine article, which may make the audiences a bit wary about it. We could have used a drop cap at the start of the paragraph to make it look more professional. Also the interview paragraphs are rather large, we could have made more columns to make it look more like an interview based article. The

Charanpal Singh

A2 Media

Nick Warring

colour scheme of our magazine article also consists of dark and dull colours, although this reflects the seriousness of our documentary, we could have used a lighter, brighter colour somewhere to contrast it. However we have not used too much text so our readers could quickly read the interview and see what the documentary will be about. There are also a lot of images from the documentary so our readers can see small previews of what will be expected in the documentary. Overall our two media texts of the magazine article and radio trailer do advertise our documentary well although some improvements can be made on the article page, it gets the job done. Bother tell the audience what the documentary is about, what they can expect as well as giving them small snippets of it as well.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To get feedback on our documentary I handed out questionnaires to see what peoples opinions were on our documentary. For the documentary I gave out 20 questionnaires to different genders and ages to get there views on it and to see if we were successful with our target audience.
Was the opening titles effective?

Blue: Yes Red: No

The opening of our documentary was important to us as if it was slow, our audience may not want to finish watching it, however all 20 people answered yes to the first question. Which was good as it meant our opening was fast paced and intriguing.

Were the sound levels equal through the documentary?

Red: No Blue: Yes 12 8

Sound levels are a big part of a documentary, and you want to make sure that they are equal throughout, 7

Charanpal Singh

A2 Media

Nick Warring

Did th e r ad io t r aile r k e e p yo u in te r e s te d t h r o u g h to u t th e d o cu m e n t ar y ?

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From this we can see that our radio trailer was a success as 17 people did feel it was interesting throughout.

Does the magazine a rticle contain the required conventions of a professional magazine ? (e.g. headings, w hen the documenta ry is on e tc)

From this we can learn that there are improvements that we would be able to make on our magazine article.

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Charanpal Singh

A2 Media

Nick Warring

Documentary Overall our documentary received a positive response. We were able to find out from all the questionnaires that we had appropriate background music, which was good as it allowed the documentary to flow and did not interfere with the visual or what was being said. We too believed the background music was good as we used it in our radio trailer as well, as part of the brand identity. We also found that out of the 20 people we handed out questionnaires to, that 18 believed the camera work was good, with no errors for example a shaky camera or the mic on screen. This is good as we wanted the visuals to look good and professional. For the documentary we found the main problems were that the sound levels raised when on the Richard interview, which we could have addressed to make it better. Also we were able to learn that the voice over was fast at certain times and that if we had slowed it downed, it would have benefited the documentary.

Radio Trailer We also got a positive response for our radio trailer, which was good as it meant we were successful in advertising our documentary for this particular media text. All 20 people that filled in the questionnaire agreed that the radio trailer kept them interested throughout, that the sound levels were good and that the quotes used were relevant to the documentary. This is good as it means our target audience were satisfied with what they heard. It is surprising that the older people who filled in our questionnaire also agreed as these are not in our target audience as we created the radio trailer specifically for our audience. We also learned that 14 out of the 20 people would watch our documentary after listening to the radio trailer which is good as it meant the radio trailer did its job of attracting viewers. Magazine article This was the least successful of our three media texts in the eyes of our audiences as they believe it could have been improved to make it more appealing for the documentary to watch. 11 of the 20 believed it included the relevant codes and conventions of a double page spread. However some did find that it was jumbled and you had to look to find the information. Therefore next time we could make it so that these were easily noticeable. Another point that was made about our article was on the layout. 16 out of the 20 felt the layout could have been changed in order to appeal to our target audience. This is not good as it meant the article could have edited our magazine article in order to make it so our target audience would like it. 12 of the 20 also believed the colour scheme of the magazine article could have been changed, with many of them suggesting a

Charanpal Singh

A2 Media

Nick Warring

lighter colour could have used to bring out the content more. However 90% of the people said the use of images were appropriate. Other comments that were made were that our main image was striking and did make people want to read on. From these results we are able to see that whilst there are improvements that can be made; many of the people were generally satisfied with the magazine article.

Fromtheresearchandplanningstagerightthroughtomakingthedocumentarywe havebeenusingdeferenttechnologies. Research and planning Rather than using Windows PC for our project we used Apple Macs. This became to be good thing as although at first I was unable to use them, it soon became easy. The layouts of Macs enabled to us to work how wanted as its layout is more customisable that a Windows PC. Also it has less icons everywhere which makes it easier to go through tabs and programmes.

For the research and planning we had to upload all our work to blogger.com. This was a website that enabled us to create a blog and upload any work we had done. The blog allowed us to upload text as well as images and videos; however we found that it was difficult to customise the document to your specific needs. For example it was harder place images exactly where you want them without interfering with the text. Also

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Charanpal Singh

A2 Media

Nick Warring

when clicking the upload video tool they supply, however this did not always work as it did not always upload the video. However we were able to embed YouTube videos using the embedded code which was good. I believe that this was still a better form of recording our research and planning than using pen and paper as there would more likely be mistakes and you can often lose your work with no backup. Blogger was a satisfactory way of uploading the research and planning however a better blogging site could have been used, which allowed us to customise our documents more. Although we typed up most work on computer, we did actually have hand written work to complete such as the storyboard and the logging and transferring sheet. In order to upload this, we scanned in a copy onto the computer in order to make a digital copy and then uploaded it. This was easy enough as I did not encounter any problems when scanning it through.

The internet was largely used throughout the entire of the project, blogger.com was a website we needed to use the internet to access it. We also needed to use websites on the internet such as YouTube to get videos to reinforce what we were saying. We embedded videos from YouTube onto the blog. We also did other research on other websites such as BBC news. We also used other TV on demand services to get videos and links for our research and planning including BBC iPlayer and 40d. The use of the internet was good as it allowed us to get a lot of valuable information to improve our documentary such as facts and figures. It also allowed us to watch other documentaries to give us ideas about how to improve our own.

Documentary Upon producing the actual documentary we realized we will be using a lot of new software and hardware that we would have to learn. To film our documentary we used a cannon HG20. This was good as it took footage in very good quality and was not hard for us to learn how to use. The camera itself had many different setting for us to change which was good as it means we could change how it filmed depending on the environment. For example when filming on a bright day, we could adjust the brightness in order to see what we wanted to record better. We also had preset settings we could use for if we wanted to record YouTube videos on the screen. Once we had filmed our footage it was easy to playback

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Charanpal Singh

A2 Media

Nick Warring

what we had just recorded instantly just in case we needed to change anything, Also when we got back onto the Macs it was pretty simple to upload the footage. To record the sound that we needed, we used directional mic rather than the mic on the camera. We did this as it meant the sound could be recorded more clearly. As it was a directional mic we pointed to where we wanted the sound to be recorded. It was easy to use and the sound quality was recorded very well. Once we had filmed the footage and uploaded it to the Macs, we were required to edit it to turn it into the documentary. To do this we used the software final cut express. I had not used the software in the past but did get used to it relatively quick. This is where all our footage is that we can use in our documentary. Individual video preview This shows the video point on the selected timeline

Video timeline Sound timeline Toolbar witch tabs such as 12 move, and crop on there.

Charanpal Singh

A2 Media

Nick Warring

Before actually editing our documentary we were required to log and transfer our clips. This is where we took all the footage we recorded and cut it down to the clips we were going to use. We had a logging and transferring sheet which we used to say what were going to use. Once we had logged the footage, we would rename it so we knew what it was and then it would appear in the section which you can see on the right.

When making the documentary we put all our footage and sound files into the timeline. This way we could edit it easier, as the clips were individually added we could move them around, add transitions and change the volume on the selected ones. This is good as it gave us more freedom on how we could make our documentary. We could put clips on the same layer if we wanted to add transitions, which usually made it easier however we could also place clips on separate layers, if we wanted to edit it a bit more. An example of this was adding titles to professional interviews, by adding it on a separate layer we are able to make it appear on the interview video and we are easily able to change the length of it.

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Charanpal Singh

A2 Media

Nick Warring

Final cut express was an advanced piece of video editing software and allowed us to freely customise the way we wanted to edit our documentary. Using key framing I was able to add 4 different clips on the screen at once and made it so that they each came on to the screen at separate times. Another feature I was able to take advantage of, was the blur tool, I managed to blur out the background from some filler footage and then add text on top of it, to show our audience facts. This was good as it looked better than adding it on a plain and simple background colour which could have bored our target audience if it was on too long.

(Usingkeyframing,Imadefourdifferentvideosappearonthescreencominginat differenttimes) Aswellaseditingthevisualsofthedocumentary,wehadtoeditthesound. Unfortunatelywhenrecordinginterviews,fillerfootageetctheydontallrecordat thesamelevelsowewererequiredtochangethistotheextentinwhichtheydid becomethesame Wedidthisby modifyingthe decibelsinthe soundwhether thatrequiredus toincreaseor decreaseit.We hadthechoiceto increaseor decreaseitbyup

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Charanpal Singh

A2 Media

Nick Warring

to5dB.ButwemodifiedItuntilwefeltitwasthesame. Radio trailer As we had already used Final cut express for the documentary and had learnt how to use it to an appropriate level. We decided it would be wise if we used Final cut express to make the radio trailer as well. Also after looking at the features it had we believed it would be the better decision. We were able to edit the sound quality with easy as well as modifying it by normalising the sound. Also using the timeline we were able to easily move the sound files to where we wanted them and how we wanted them to start. Before we started our radio trailer we were required to record the sounds, again we decided to use the directional mic as this worked great in the actual documentary and did not cause us any problems. Once recorded, we then logged the footage onto Final cut express but this time deleting the video file instead, so we just had sound. We would end up with just a timeline with sound files and no video footage on it as you can see below Arranging the clips in what order we needed was simple enough, and again we were able to make any adjustments we had required..

We wanted the beginning of our radio advert to start off loud and energetic so we decided to increase the dB on the sound to an extent we were happy to, but we did not put it to loud which would have made the sound distorted. You can see we turned up the dB by the height of the sound waves.

Once completing the radio advert we were required to export it as a sound file which was either Mp3 or WAV. We exported it as an Mp3 to save on file size.

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Charanpal Singh Magazine article

A2 Media

Nick Warring

For our magazine article we used the software Adobe In Design, unlike previously I have actually used this software before. In AS media we created and magazine using InDesign which was good as it meant I had some experience in using the software. InDesign is a very good piece of software to use because it offers a lot of different features that can be used in order to edit your magazine article.

Toolbar that is used to edit the article such as crop, add text etc.

Standard toolbar in which you can edit the project, save it etc.

Customisable toolbar which included tabs to change colours and fonts.

Actual project. InDesign also allowed us to edit our pictures without having to add them into a different photo editing software first. For example the images at the bottom 16

Charanpal Singh

A2 Media

Nick Warring

were rotated and a drop shadow was added with ease on InDesign. Also we were able to wrap the text around the police car. The colours on the article could be changed at ease without too much hassle. Overall InDesign was a good piece of software to use, we were able to customise the article at will with the features it supplied and it did not even take long to adjust to the software which was good as it meant we could get straight down to making the software. Other technologies used

We also used Photoshop to edit pictures. As you can see below we made the image more horizontal and took at the name of the shop so that we could replace it with the name of the documentary. We also brightened the image up so that it was more striking.

Conclusion: Overall I am happy with the way our documentary has come out. We were given a great piece of software in Final cut express that we could use. This helped us a lot in achieving the overall look that we were going for. The main fault of the documentary that we learned was that the voice levels changed a little. In future I will know to concentrate on this aspect more as it is just as important as the visuals. The supporting media texts of the radio trailer and magazine article also did there job however whilst the radio trailer sounded good the magazine article could have been improved to advertise the documentary more. We could have achieved this by changing the layout and organising the text better.

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