a2 media documentary evaluation

8/2/2019 A2 Media Documentary Evaluation

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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2

A2 Media Documentary Evaluation1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge codes and conventions of real media products?

Our documentary “Is it worth it?” was created as an educational documentary for students and parents for Channel 4 to view. The documentary goes into detail about

the rise in university fees and how it has affected students, parents and even head

teachers at school/colleges. Our documentary includes a couple of interviews with

professionals who have a strong view on the rise in tuition fees and also other

interviews and focus groups with students attending college and are planning to go on

to university.

We decided to use Channel 4 as a broadcast channel as it usually plays documentaries

about teenagers and also real life situations. This is why Channel 4 would be perfect

for our documentary as the rise in university fees is a real life satiation which will

affect a lot of people of the future.

When researching into other similar documentaries about the rise in tuition fees there

was a range of videos, I found documentaries, interviews with professionals,

discussions and debates with government representatives. All videos had good points

about hem and we took them into account when producing our own documentary.

Some of the facts that I got from the videos were used in our documentary by the

voice over.

Use of Codes and ConventionsTo make our documentary seem as real as possible we had to follow and includecertain codes and conventions in our documentaries. We found most of the codes and

conventions by watching clips of other documentaries on YouTube, Channel 4 and

BBC iplayer.

IdentEvery documentary we looked

at each had an ident of the

channel they were being

broadcasted on. When doing

more research into idents Ifind out that they are a very

important convention in the

production of a documentary

as it gives the documentary

credibility as a production of

the channel it is being broadcasted on. We used a channel 4 ident and also had a male

voice over cover the ident, the voice over introduced or documentary and said when it

will be on and then mentioned another programme which is regularly played by

channel 4. We did this because it gave our documentary a sense of realism.




Expert InterviewsIn real life documentaries experts are always used to provide there view point which

will be classed as a strong opinion as they are professionals. However you would not

ask a dentist about students fees because he has a different profession, rather ask a

professional who is relevant to your documentary and the topic your are discussing. A

principal for my documentary is perfect as he will have a great view point on studentfees. We also interviewed a college chancellor who also spoke as a parent, we tried to

show a wide range of opinions from different people. To introduce the professionals

in our documentary we used captions which also allowed viewers to recognize the

importance of that professional.

Paul Ashdown – Principal, The 6th Form College,

SolihullPaul Ashdown is the principal of our college, in the

documentary he gives his opinion of what he thinks of the rise

in university, he tells us what the worst outcome could be as aresult of the rise and also ensures students that university is

the best option. In real life documentaries interviews are done

in surrounding environments of the subject, this creates a

sense of realism within the documentary and interview. Our

interview with the principal took place in his office, which

was the best place we could interview him as his desk was in

the background, also his computer.

Neil Attewell – Chaplain of The 6 th Form

College, Solihull & Parent Neil Attewell is the college chaplain and is also a parent.

Neil works with student’s everyday so he was a perfect

interviewee, he gave us his own opinions and also his

opinions as a parent. This was very good as he gave us 2

different viewpoints. Again with Neil out interview with

him was in his office so the objects in his office gave a

sense of realism e.g. His computer, chair posters filed

papers etc.

Student Focus Group

Instead of interviewing several students one by one wedecided to have a focus group, asking students what they

thought about the rise in student fees. This would be

better as it would be less time consuming and more

efficient, in the sense that questions would be answered

more directly by students. Also a advantage of a focus

group was that students could bounce of each others

answers and be confident as they were being

interviewed within friends. When recording with the

camera we used 3 students and all of them were pictured

in the shot, and we also added zoomed in shots when

students answered certain questions.




Use of Camera ShotsWe tried to use as many type of shots as we could to make our documentary look

more eye catching and keep the attention of viewers.

Establishing Shot

Establishing shots are very important conventions used in all documentaries. They areso important because they introduce the documentary and take you to where you are

going for example, the room of where your interview is taking place. In our

documentary out establishing shot is of Solihull and also The 6th Form College,

Solihull. The establishing shots helps us give the documentary a sense of location,

which all adds to the realism and professionalism of the documentary.

Medium Close Up ShotThe medium close up shot was use in both interviews

with professionals, this type of shot was best because

you could see how the professional was dressed and

also see the surroundings, which in our documentary

supported the professionals as they were in offices

which relates to their job titles.

Medium Angle ShotWe used a medium angle shot when recording

the focus group as we needed to get all 3

students into the shot and also show that they

are inferior in this situation, we tried to show

that the rise in university fees was having a big

impact on them and their lives. We had to make

the audience feel that these students are

genuinely upset about the rise and that it is

actually affecting them.




Sound & Editing

Voice Over Most documentaries include a voice over and a

presenter, we decided to use both as typicaldocumentaries also have both. Our presenter was a

female member of our group and our voice over was

another male member of our group. We decided to use a

male voice over as it would create a sense of authority,

however I think by using a student we showed clearly

who our documentary was targeted at as it was mostly

student orientated.

Sound BridgesTo link different scenes and clips in our documentary we decided to create several

sound bridges which also helped with adding transitions and putting scenes together.By using sound bridges we were able to prepare the audience for the upcoming scene,

for example, when the montage finishes and the scene changes and goes to the

presenter the music is stopped and then carried on after the presenter is finished

talking.

Theme MusicAs a group we decided that we should use a more upbeat and fast paced beat, which

would keep viewers intrigued and keep their attention. The soundtrack we used was

perfectly suited for our audience, as most of them would be students who are

teenagers and would prefer upbeat music rather than slow music.

TransitionsIn the documentary we used many different transitions and also used the more simple

straights cuts and fade outs. Transitions helped us move from one scene to another

and also complemented the sound bridges when we used them to change scene.

Whilst creating the documentary or group realised that all the answers we were

getting from our questions which we asked students and teacher where very biased to

either for the rise in university or against. We had to use more of the against the rise

in university fees as that was what our documentary was based on. We had to display

the truth so we had to cut out certain clips to show what we wanted the audience tohear. People have different opinions and views on the rise in universities but we had

to show why people are against the rise.




Magazine Listings Page

Radio Trailer The purpose of creating a radio trailer was to give the audience a short 30-45 second

insight to what out documentary will be about and what it will feature. We recorded

sound for our radio trailer separate to when creating the documentary, however sound

bites from the documentary were used in the radio trailer.

Conventions Presenter – The presenter in the radio trailer was probably the most important

part as the presenter would introduce the radio trailer similar to how a

presenter introduces a documentary.

Sound Bites – I used sound bites in the trailer which were from our actualdocumentary, I used parts of the documentary which were explosive in content

and ear catching to draw in listeners.

Title – The title of the documentary was mentioned at the start when the

presenter introduced the documentary and also the channel the documentary

will be viewed on is mentioned. Both of these conventions give the radio

trailer a sense of identity.

Background Music – The music which we used was upbeat and was the best

for our documentary as it would keep the attention of our target audience,

teenagers.

I could have improved the radio trailer by adding more opinions of professionals andstudents rather than just the one voice of the principal.




2. How effective is the combination of your main product

and your ancillary tasks?

Creating our documentary was the main focus and aim of the group however, we also

had to create a magazine article and a radio trailer which were very important inccreating an identity for our documentary and chosen subject. We used many features

from our documentary to link it with the ancillary tasks, our main linked aspects were

direct images and quotes from the documentary.

The student we used in our

documentary as vox pop was also used

in our documentary, the student is a

studying at The 6th Form College,

Solihull and is stressing about the rise

in tuition fees. By using him on the

magazine article we have created astraight link from the documentary,

this shows a sense of identity and if

our audience read the magazine article

and then watched the documentary

they would see many familiar aspects.

We used Neil Attewell in our magazine article as

he was used as a professional in our documentary.

By having Neil on the magazine cover it shows

that there is an opinion of an older much wiser

person, whose points on the rise will be very

strong.

Also we used an image of the focus

group interview in our magazine

article, this was very effective as

they were all students, and this was

a direct link and also a direct link to the audience as they will be of

same age and same position.

This is a direct quotation used on the magazine article

straight from the interview with Neil Attewell from the

documentary. By doing so we create a direct link and

readers who also watch the documentary will be able torelate to the article.




When creating the radio trailer I

decided to use direct sound bites from

the interview with the principal from

the documentary as his opinions would

be essential, I did this because it would

link both and also give thedocumentary a sense of identity from

the audience’s perspective. However

the radio trailer was okay but I think I

could have added Neil Attewell being

interviewed and also opinions from

students themselves, so students could

actually relate to who is talking whilst

the radio trailer is on air.

Nowadays radio trailers and magazine

articles are not as effective as they weremany years ago at promotion

documentaries amongst the teenagers of

today. Since the internet has developed

dramatically and social networking sites

have now been made available for people, most teenagers are a

part of one social networking website. Therefore instead of using radio trailers and a

magazine article I would rather have use online social network sites like MySpace,

Twitter, and Facebook.

3. What have you learnt from audience feedback?From analysing student feedback, I realised that students did really take a liking to our

topic, this being the rise in university fees. Students found that the topic was relevant

to them as they were students and also they found the interviews with Neil and the

principal very good as they would have liked to hear their opinions on the rise in

university fees. We handed out questionnaires to students within our class who

watched the documentary and asked them to rate our documentary, the results from

the questionnaires are listed below:




50% of people who completed

our documentary felt our choice

of topic was very good, 40%

felt it was just good and 10%

felt it was excellent. From these

results we gathered that our selected topic was very liked by

our audience and also as the

audience were students, we felt

as we had met our target

audience.

Results for the appropriateness

of our target audience shows

that majority of people thought

out decisions for our target

audience was very good and therest of people either thought it

was excellent or just good.

These results show that we

successfully determined our

target audience.

Results show that majority of

people felt our documentary

was good based on

professionalism and how it was

in comparison to real life

Documentaries.

Results for the filming/shooting

of material show that themajority audience thought it

was good and a decent amount

of people thought it was very

good. As we never had any poor

results, we can conclude that

out footage was appropriate for

our documentary.




Results show that majority of

people thought the use of

sound/music in our

documentary was appropriate,

also there is an equal number

of people who thought the useof sound/music was just ok

and excellent.

Results for our editing of the

documentary so it could be

understood came to majority

of thinking it was good and a

couple of people saying it wasvery good and one person

thinking it was just ok.

Results for the use of effect

show that most of the people

thought they were good and

a few people who thought

they were very good and just

okay were equal.

Overall our audience thought our

documentary was good about 70%thought this, 25% thought it was

very good and 5% of people

thought it was OK. These results

tell me that overall our

documentary was a hit with our

audience, we could have easily

improved but in the time that we

was given we produced a good

documentary based on the rise in

tuition fees.




What you have learned from out student feedback?

Likes

Good selection of topic.Good interviews.

Range of opinions from

professionals.

Range of footage.

Titles, captions etc.

Dislikes

Sound levels needed improvements.

Needed a more enthusiastic voice over.

Lighting was very dark in certain places.

Transitions through interviews.

Conclusion of Feedback The interview with the principal had lighting issues which could not be fixed

throughout the editing process, this was due to us having to rush the interview with

the principal. We had to rush because we previously recorded an interview with the

principal which did not go as we had hoped, there was a major problem with the

sound as we could not hear anything. But in the end the interview with the principal

came out to actually look away, despite having a few errors.

The magazine article had a very effective and simple layout but was not very eye

catching, the colour scheme needed much improvement and also the main image as it

just did not look right. Overall I think the listings page needed a lot of improvement,with the main focus being on the colour scheme and also the main image, with these 2

improvements the magazine article could have been much more appealing.

The radio trailer was produced by me in a very short space of time, I produce it on my

own so I rushed through most of it. It was very relaxed and the sound bites were very

engaging for the audience. The radio trailer sounded very professional however,

sound levels could have been improved as it was slightly quiet.




4. How did you use media technologies in the construction,

research and planning and evaluation stages?

During the research and planning stage of producing our documentary, the internet play a huge part in helping us decide as a group what the topic for our documentary

would be. Finally we had decided what our topic was, we started researching into out

topics and listing ideas for footage. We used search engine websites such as Google to

find other articles and documentaries which linked to our topic choice, we also used

BBC News as a source of updated information on the rise in tuition fees. Below are

some articles which helped us with the research and planning of our documentary:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17053581

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/tuition-fees

http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/futurestudents/undergraduate/funding/facts-figures-about-new-finance-

system.html

YouTube, 4od and BBC NewsLooking at documentaries online on

YouTube and 4od gave us an insight

into what we should involve in our

documentary such as typical codes and

conventions in typical documentaries.

The reason why we looked at

documentaries on 4od was because our

documentary would be played on

channel 4, therefore we would have to

have certain codes and conventionswhich were the same such as ident, title

sequences etc.

We also looked at news stories about the

rise in tuition fees, to get an insight into

how it was effecting other people. We

found a lot of relevant information which

then we used in our documentary, the

voice over used some of the informationwe found such as the facts and figures

which the voice over was saying were

actually from the research we did at the

start.

The BlogThe blog was a very important part when we had to create our documentary. It helped

us keep up with deadlines for each task we were given. The blog can be accessed by

all students in college and also from home, this is very good as if students are behindon coursework they can catch up from home or if they are off sick they can carry on

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17053581


http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/futurestudents/undergraduate/funding/facts-figures-about-new-finance-system.html


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17053581







with work at home. All information was posted on, information included research for

the documentary, magazine article and the radio trailer. The blog helped us keep up to

date with what work had been done and what work needed to be complete.

After logging onto the blog we would come to

this screen, this is where

we would select to view

our blog, edit our blog or

add a new post.

This is where we added

text, images, hyperlinks etc.

When finished we would

select publish post and our

content of information

would be put onto the blog.

Some features of the blog

were: place images,

hyperlinks, and audio clips,

add videos, format font inevery entry, spell check,

preview before posting and

also edit posts if mistake

had been made.

This is where we were

able to see how many

posts each person has.

We were able to view

posts, edit them and also

delete posts from this

page if they needed to be




EquipmentApple Macs – The macs have been the key to everything we

have done for our documentary, as everything was produced on

the Macs using programmes. We did our research on the macs

and even produced the radio trailer and the magazine articleusing the macs.

Kodak Easy Share Digital Camera – The camera was very

useful when planning and taking images which might have

been used in our storyboards for the documentary.

HD Canon Camera – The video camera allowed us to record our

documentary, the camera had a variety of features such as zoom,manual focus etc, these all helped as they allowed us to do what we

wanted and create a image which we wanted. We uploaded clips

which we recording as soon as we finished recording and put them

onto Final Cut Express, which is an editing programme on the macs.

Tripod – These were essential for us when we wanted the camera

to be steady and no shaky, the most important times when we need

the tripods was when did out interview with our professionals.

Microphone – This was used when recording interviews, it allowed us

to have much more clearer audio then just using the standard

microphone on the video camera.

Headphones – Kept the sound when recording clear and alsoallowed us to easily notify if sound was not right and needed

recording.

Recorder – With this we were able to set audio levels to a certain

volume to keep audio at a certain volume. We had a problem

with the audio levels and also sometimes could not identify

if we was recording or not.




SoftwareFinal Cut Express

This is where we viewed clips and our actual documentary.

Our clips

where puttogether for

each

minutes in

certain bins.

This is the

sound and

video layers,

they have been placed on timeline, idents and captions would be put on another layer

which would be above this.

I created sound bridges in the documentary by using

the fade out tool. This allowed clips to blend into other

clips without looking weird or not professional.

We were also able to change sound levels for clips, this came essential for us as all

our clips had different sound ranges, by using this we were able to change all sound

levels around about to the same level. We could also use the sound levels to fade out

parts of the clip which we wanted to be silent or just did not want in the scene.




Garage Band

For the radio trailer I used

garage band, I used sound

bites from the documentary o

the principal speaking and

also recorder a voice over myself using a recorder. I

was able to easily upload

sound clips onto garage band

and overall found it very

easy to use. Also the

background music for the

radio trailer was sampled

from garage bands own loop

selection, by using certain

drum, synths and guitar loops I was able to create a upbeat soundtrack which worked

successfully and kept the audience listening.

I layered clips over each other this

allowed my whole radio trailer to be

easily visible and usable. Overall I think

using garage band was very easy, it was

not complicated as everything was

simple, also the handout which I was

given by my teacher helped me.

Burning

Once we had completed all of our work we had to burn our documentary and radio

trailer to disc. We used a CD-R disc to burn. The radio trailer was very easy to burn

but for the documentary we had to export our documentary file as a MOV file, then

we used iDvd on the Apple Mac and also then created a professional looking menu

for the documentary.

Evaluation

The best way for me to present my evaluation was on Microsoft Word, this for me

was the best as I found it the most simplest and I was already use to the programme. It

allowed me to import pictures, add hyperlinks and also allow me to make myevaluation as interactive as possible.

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