Satpal Loha

A2 Media Studies Coursework evaluation.

In what ways does your media product use, Develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
As soon as we started the coursework project each member of the group brought there own knowledge of codes and conventions. We all looked at different types of documentaries in and outside of lesson to help expand our knowledge. We finally decided to do a documentary on the recent riots that happened in august 2011 and brainstormed our ideas on what we could include

We then did research into finding out what target audience our documentary would suit and who it would appeal to, we did this by handing out questionnaires to different age groups and see what there appeals would be.

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There are many media conventions that media texts follow, one of the main conventions documentaries use are interviews, we used many different interviews in our documentary we used an interview with a media teacher, economics teacher, lawyer and a maplin team leader.

Not looking at the camera

Not looking at the camera

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017pld0 http://www.channel4.com/news/channel-4-hosts-live-debate-onriots http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013xy9t/Panorama_The_Au gust_Riots/

My media product as a whole generally tends to use conventions that are typical of a documentary. To help us understand the forms and conventions of real media products we watched different documentaries to gain visual experience of what was expected with a documentary, we watched Panoramas inside the riots. I feel the main convention of a documentary is to be informative and we have done that by

Satpal Loha using statistics and facts. We have done this to show how much it costs to keep a convict in prison and what affect this has on the economy.

Picture of statistics

Interviews
We also followed media conventions by having formal interviews in our documentary, during filming we had to take into account that our interviews had to look as formal and professional as possible, to portray this we made the interviewee look as if they were having a direct conversation with someone away from the camera, we asked if he or she could look away from the camera and sit at a slight angle, we did this as we thought it adds more effect even though the interviewer was not in the frame. I used different rules in structure of my interviews for example i asked if the interviewee could focus fully on the camera rather than switching eye contact back and forth from the camera to the interviewer, here is an example of this:

Our documentary

BBC Documentary

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We got this idea as many documentaries we watched portrayed the same idea as we initially planned, this technique is seen in the documentaries coppers and one born very minute to show they are formal interviews and are professionals We also tried to match the mise-en-scene with the person we was interviewing for example, we interview Kobir Ahmed, the Maplin team leader, we interviewed him at his place of work on the shop floor as we thought it would be most suitable, this gave a good effect to our audience to show that he was of somewhat importance. We did the same for interview with the lawyer as we interviewed him in his office to show that he was powerful and a very important and professional individual. During professional interviews the setting tends to be quite apparent, there is not usually too much of a distraction behind the interviewee to prevent the audience from loosing concentration.

We did fail to gain adequate mise-en-scene for our interview with a economics teacher, Richard Gough, we then decided to use his class room as the setting for his interview, we did this as we thought that the setting of a class room could show that he was a teacher and he again was an important individual. We used medium close up shot on all of our formal interviews as we saw that this was the norm of all the interviews we watched before had in programmes such as Michael Jackson and The Doctor Documentary and The Abuse of Prescription Drugs.We used titles on all our formal interviews to introduce the people into our documentary and introduce their job roles and names. While filming professional interviews we also used conventional framing on the interviews and recorded our interviews with a camera on a tripod rather than handheld, we also tried making the interviewee the dominance in the frame make making them as large as we could following the rule of thirds. This is the most common rule for a photographic position as it shows clearly how big the person is to the page and shows what is the main dominance, we had to make sure we found the balance from making the interviewee the main dominance in the frame and making them have so little head room that they looked cramped in the frame.

Our documentary Professional Documentary

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When we filmed Vox pops we realised that it is a completely different set up to a professional interview, the mise en scene of a vox pops is usually outdoors or in a busy area to show that that they are the general public and have no professional say on the topic. We again also made sure that our Vox pops did not look directly at the camera but rather at the interviewee. We filmed all our vox pops with a medium close up shot as it was the same as the formal interviews and we saw that in other documentaries we watched they didnt change the length of the shot just because they were formal or informal

Our vox pops

A professional documentaries vox pops

SOUND
We have 2 types of sound in our documentary, diagetic and non diagetic, diagetic sound is sound that is already in the footage for example the background noise of a street during the filming of a vox pops. Diagetic sound is artificial sound that we added in ourselves, for example background music or a voiceover can both be seen as diagetic sound. We kept our background music fast paced and upbeat throughout the whole of our documentary to show that the documentary should be portrayed as quite tense and serious, the also adds an element of drama into our documentary and keeps the audience hooked. We kept the diagetic sound in the documentary for the vox pops to show that they are just general public off the side of the streets, this shows that this is the views of normal everyday people and have no interest in the subject and are allowed to amplify their pure opinion. The voiceover in our documentary was quite slow but clear, we wanted to have it this way so the audience could keep up with the narrator while they were still in sync with the images they would see on the screen, this would show that this is a serious documentary as they were taking time putting each point across instead of rushing through worrying about if this is keeping the audience hooked. We decided to use a voice over as in the documentaries we watched

Satpal Loha that subject was on the riots or a criminal debate, they all used voiceovers, this was seen in documentaries such as Inside the riots and 1980 New Mexico State Penitentiary prison riotwe found out that the voice over is sometimes relevant to depending on the topic of the documentary as we found out during our research that some documentaries didnt use a voice over as they saw it as irreverent due to the topic that was being discussed. While planning our voiceover we knew that because our documentary was quite serious we had to have a clear spoken voiceover with Standard English dialog with no slang to show that the whole documentary should be perceived as formal. We saw that in the documentaries that we watched during any over the documentary the voice over was always in clear Standard English with no slang. Throughout the documentary we found that we needed to keep the sound levels of each clip exactly the same to make the documentary look as professional as possible as in the documentaries we watched none of the sound levels jumped at all.

Sound levels for our radio trailer

EDITING
In our documentary we used quite fast paced editing to show urgency and show that our documentary was serious. We used a very small amount of fades because of this factor and used straight cuts instead to show that our documentary was serious and straight to the point. We saw that this was a regular convention throughout most serious documentaries and we decided that, that would be the reason to keep the convention going into ours.

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Straight cut editing

One convention which i think could have improved our documentary was cut away shots, i think this would have improved our documentary as this would have backed up statements that would have been said during the formal interviews, this would have also helped to keep the audience entertained and stayed hooked onto our documentary as this could have give the audience a better idea of what the professionals in the formal interviews were talking about. Being honest with ourselves i believe if we did use cut away shots it would have made our documentary better as it would have kept the audience entertained and would have been able to cross cut effectively to different interviews rather than straight cutting which made it look like the documentary was going onto something new.

Original Image

Brightness edited

Another example of editing techniques we used was fade transitions, we often did this to change from one subject to another as it created a fresh start effect to show that a totally new topic was coming up for example we used this from talking about media

Satpal Loha influence and stock loss at Maplin. We followed another code & convention for editing by adding in titles for the formal interviews as every documentary we watched did this, this helps bring the person into the documentary and lets the audience know who it is. We also had to edit some of the footage for brightness and contrast in some places as when we recorded the footage it was at different times in the day but we needed to make it seem that we were recording everything all at once.

Titles for professional interviews

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? Ancillary tasks
As part of our media coursework we had produce two ancillary texts, these were a radio trailer advertising our documentary and a double page spread article from a TV listings guide magazine. We analysed several student and professional double page articles so we could see what kind of thing we should include in our own.

We first started off with what i believe to be the harder ancillary task as this required us to follow the main codes and conventions of a radio trailer and we didnt know what these were. So we had to do our own research and planning on what we would think a code and convention of a radio trailer would be. In order to make our documentary match with out radio trailer we made a list of what things we could use to make our 2 tasks linked, we used the same background music throughout the radio trailer and the documentary we also used sirens in both the documentary and radio trailer, we also made the main link between the two tasks when we decided to use

Satpal Loha snippets from the documentary in our radio trailer, we did this as it would tell the audience what would be in our radio trailer. We also had to make sure the script was tell written and make sure no slag was included in the dialog, this was an obvious important part of our radio trailer as language used by the narrator is one of the things that would appeal to the audience the most. We then had to decide what channel we should broadcast our documentary on and why, In this case we chose channel 4, we did this because our research results showed us that channel 4 shows the most political and criminal documentaries throughout the UK we also found out that the documentaries channel 4 broadcast are not just all aimed at one specific target audience but change all the time depending on the documentary showing. We saw this as an advantage as we could attract our own target audience by broadcasting with channel 4 but also lure in some of the other target audiences as well. Once we had completed our script and research we then had to piece it together in a programme called final cut express. We were then able to see the sound levels of each piece and how long the radio trailer lasted for.

How we edited sound levels.

When it came to producing the double page article i was pretty confident we would produce something that would be able to fit right in with a real double page spread. I was confident thanks to our research and ideas on how and what we should include in the article and how it would link to the documentary, The first way we made sure to link it to the documentary was to use the same bold and effective colour scheme we saw this as a way of creating a great brand identity between the two as they both would be able to match easily. Another way we made our brand identity stronger is by adding in screen shots from our actual documentary to show that they linked and that the audience would be able to see what they was going to get before watching the whole thing, creating a snippet effect.

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Once i had decided what images were going to go onto the double page i decided to focus on the text, we decided to add information on what time and when the documentary would be on as this is one of the main codes and conventions of a double page spread, this also made all 3 tasks link as they all had the same time and date advertised. I also had to make the dialog match between all 3 texts and keep the same style of language throughout making sure to not use any slang.

I feel that my ancillary tasks complimented my main task well as they both followed the main codes and conventions of their product while providing a distinct link between the 3, this also helped to summarise the documentary and provide a snippet of the documentary both at the same time.

Our finished magazine article

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What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience questionnaire

During our audience feedback we had a mix response from different people, we had different views and opinions from different ages to see what different people would find not to be to their liking. While caring out our audience feedback we was told that our video footage was of a high quality and was appropriate for our documentary, we were also told that our professional interviews were of a good quality and were informative. Most of the audience liked the fact that we were not over dependant on vox pops and relied more on the professionals. The audience found that the background music that we chose for our documentary was suitable and linked well with the topic that we picked. The audience also liked the usage of statistics and facts to show that we had done our research and also found this quite informative. There was although a few points that our target audience didnt like. When we showed our audience our documentary they said that the background music could have been louder in places. They also said that we could have made more use of the editing available to us. Our audience saw that parts of the footage we showed was cut but they believed that this could have been covered up by a transition. They also said that our sound levels jumped from place to place at different parts in our documentary. Some of our audience believed that the mise-en-scene for Richard Gough the economics teacher could have been better as it didnt really highlight his place of work or him teaching, they believed that he was just thrown in a classroom which being honest i can see were the audience is coming from because Richard sitting at a table was not backed up with any evidence but this could have changed if

Satpal Loha we used any cut away shots. The audience also noticed that the title for the Maplin team leader, Kobir Ahmed was not there when it was supposed to be. The final thing our audience didnt like about our documentary was the fact that during the opening minute of our documentary we had a part of footage with no voiceover. Our audience however did like our radio trailer quite a lot and said that they would have expected that to be something you hear on a real radio station, they said they liked the use of sirens to let the audience immediately know what the trailer is about, and most of the audience like the fact that there was more pull quotes from the documentary than a narrator speaking as this let them know what was actually going to be in the documentary rather than someone just saying it, however some of our audience said that this was a disadvantage as the audience dont know enough about the programme the trailer is full of pull quotes. Another disadvantage they said about the radio trailer was that the sound levels were not the same throughout the trailer. Our feedback then took a dip when we showed our audience our magazine article for our documentary. They said they liked the big bold title to set the tone and show that the article would be quite serious and so would the documentary, they also liked the big drop paragraph to show what the documentary would be about and when it would be on, they said they thought this was very eye catching with a simple use of colours. They said the final thing they liked was the pull images from the documentary at the bottom of the page as it showed the target audience whats in the documentary. They then said that they didnt like the use of different colours throughout the article as it was confusing, made it seem less serious and looked as if there was too much going on. They also thought that there was no need for the police car on the side of the page and had no captions on any of the pictures, they also said that the article only had one page number

I believe that most of the audience feedback we received we expected the both the pros and cons, we did see some of the comments as harsh but we believe that we had more pros than cons, i believe we have now learnt how to improve our documentary into making it have the same level of quality as what you see on tv. I also believe that if we tweaked our documentary with the cons we were given we could have one of the best riot documentaries made, i also see that from our audience feedback we now know specifically what our audience really want to see in our documentary and how they expect us to make those changes, i can also see what the audience didnt like and feel that it shouldnt be in a documentary either of this genre or for this target audience. I did feel that some of the criticisms took us by surprise as we believed to be challenging a code and convention not making our documentary worse, for example not using cut away shots some of the audience saw as a con but we saw it as a pro as we didnt use as much editing and kept it as original as possible.

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How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
During the making of my 3 products i used many different types of media to make sure we could make the best possible documentary, radio trailer and double page spread possible.

The main media technology i say i would have used during my time making the 3 media texts is the use of the apple mac computers. Being an owner of a pc made life very confusing when first using the apple macs but then throughout the time i started to understand why we did use them, they have much more to offer when it comes to production and allows you to do things faster than if you were doing it on an average pc.

Another One of the main media technologies i used was the internet to research on how we could make the perfect 3 products. The internet helped me as i was able to search for many different things from codes and conventions to people views on specific ideas. The main reason i used the internet is for the research and planning stages of my products as i was able to watch other documentaries and see what codes and conventions i wanted to follow for our own documentaries and leave out the conventions i werent so keen on. The main place i did this on is BBCs iplayer and Channel 4s 4 on demand

Satpal Loha I decided to use these two sites the most as they host the most footage of documentaries similar to my genre. This gave me a rough idea of what the documentaries in my genre include and what they dont. I was then able to put my ideas into practise by using the video cameras, learning to use the cameras effectively really boosted our documentary quite a lot as we was able to get the best possible footage at a high quality. Learning to use the video cameras professionally helped us as we was able to change thing we didnt like, if we was looking straight through the lenses, for example if we didnt like the contrast of the video footage we was recording we could change it.

We also used microphones effectively which helped us get a good quality sounding voice over for both the documentary and radio trailer, this also helped us to get good quality sounding interviews and vox pops. The tripod balanced the video

camera, So there was no shaking while it was recording. The microphone and headphones were for interviews, so we could check that the sound was clear and loud enough.

We were then able to arrange our documentary in a programme called final cut express, this allowed us to log and transfer the bits of footage that we wanted to keep from the long tapes we recorded. We also could see our documentary take shape on this programme in a timeline view to help us see what clips go where and what footage would work well with each other. We also used final cut express for our radio trailer, this allowed us to see what parts of the radio trailer come when and if the sound levels were all the same. We decided to use final cut express for our radio trailer as we could exactly what we was doing to out radio trailer and we decided that it would be easier to use the programme now that we are used to it thanks to using it during the making of the documentary.

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Another media technology we used was the site www.blogger.com this allowed us to keep a diary of our documentary and what stage we were at, at a specific point in time, blogger also helped us to see what other members of our group were doing so we wasnt repeating ourselves. I found blogger quite useful as it showed what we were behind on and if one of the group members were away, what they missed. The only fault i could say about blogger.com is that its on the internet which isnt always easy to access.

During the making of our double page article we used both Adobe Photoshop & Indesign. Photoshop enabled us to make the bold heading of our double page spread and make the images brighter and tweak them in any way needed. Indesign helped us keep to a layout of a double page spread and allowed us to move things around still in the double page spread format to see if things would work better in different places. I found Photoshop very easy to use as i have used it many times before. I found Indesign quite confusing to use at first but soon got the hang of things after going through the tutorial and playing around with the software.

Another media technology I used was YouTube, this allowed us to look at a whole range of different documentaries both good and bad, this enabled us to what makes the documentary look good and also things we didnt like. YouTube also helped us in using different equipment as if we was unsure on how to do anything we could find step my step tutorials telling how to do something.

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The final piece of media technology i used was Scribd this allowed me to upload my evaluation of my coursework onto the blog and allows me to have any layout i desire. This helps as it makes my evaluation less of an essay and more as a visual aid. I liked the idea of using Scribd instead of posting my evaluation straight on to the blog as this allows me to have working clips and keep everything organised into the layout i want it, and not just have paragraphs on a blog.

In conclusion i think that all the different media technologies i used help me create 3 great pieces of media text and help me stay organised and have a smooth running process. Using the products more and more helped me to develop new skills in order to produce a good documentary and ancillary texts.

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