kealey eval pdf

8/2/2019 Kealey Eval PDF

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Evaluation

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms ofreal media products?

Our task for the coursework was to produce a five minute opening extract of a

documentary, this enabled us to be able to focus our attention on the introduction

research for other documentaries of a similar genre. During our coursework for this

topic, each member of the group contributed to tasks set, bringing their own

knowledge of documentary codes and conventions. Combining our knowledge aloud

us to gain a better understanding and begin to produce the main elements for our own


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documentary. During the production of our documentary we aimed to include as

many documentary codes and conventions as possible in order to make the

documentary as realistic as possible and guarantee some form of professionalism.

During the research for the beginning of the documentary we found out that most

documentaries have an opening montage of some sort, we decided to try and replicatethis to an extent using a quick pace opening montage at the start of our own

documentary. Even though we had decided to create an opening montage rather

quickly at the start of our coursework we encountered a few problems with what the

montage was going to be, as this would be the first thing that the viewer sees and

would undoubtedly leave a lasting impression through out the rest of the

documentary. We began to storyboard several different options which we could

potentially use for our opening montage. In the end we came up with the idea that we

was going to do a quick pace opening montage of a range of many people of different

races saying, this is Birmingham which was a closed replication to a video which we

had watched and researched into followed by a collection of various interviews, by

the exposition of our opening montage it aloud us to initially grab the viewersattention while introducing where our documentary was based and give a little insight

to what the documentary was going to be about.

In the development of our opening montage we encountered an obstacle which was

that our montage become to long, which we concluded would lose the interest of the

viewer, this resulted in our group having to cut the end of the sequence so that we

would not lose the viewers attention within the first ten seconds of the documentary.

We came to this conclusion as our target audience is 15-25 year olds who may lose

interest if something is too long and carried out over a longer period of time than it

needs to be. Although we had this problem we still tried to mirror the codes and

conventions of other documentaries by using the fast pace montage for the opening

sequence.

While adding any clips

with sound, including the

sound bed of the

documentary, we had to

ensure that the sound levels

were tweaked, making sure

that all volume levels were

adjusted to ensure that thevolume did not peak or

clip. We noticed that it was

peaking when some sound

levels were higher than

others, which then showed

some signs of clipping as it

was starting to distort. We

had to ensure that the

volume levels were

consistent through out the

documentary to prevent distortion.


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Another convention which we decided was a higher relevance than others, which we

decided to include in our documentary, is our interviews both with students and

professional interviews. We decided to try and replicate interviews which we had

researched into, allowing us to understand how to frame an interview properly and

supply us with the knowledge with the use of cutaways during interviews to stop the

documentary getting to boring with just the subject speaking for a long period oftime.

During our filming we collected a wide range of filler footage including relevant

websites of the BBC being accused of racial stereotyping and establishing shots of

relevant places such as groups of the same race sitting together. We found that the

technique of using the filler footage is similar to cutaways during interviews and

stops the documentary from lacking interest. For most of our filler footage we

filmed over the shoulder shots to show the websites and panning establishing shots of

different races of people, this footage was used for cutaways during interviews and to

have something showing on the screen while there is a voiceover speech. Another

camera shot we used was a mid shot of the people saying this is Birmingham for thevox pops for the opening montage, we used this specific shot as we increased the

speed of the footage and because the mid shots are central this keeps the viewers main

focus on the image on the screen.

Showing an over the shoulder shot which we used as

filler footage within our documentary.

Throughout

editing our

documentary

we used

different editing techniques including fade transitions when going from one part ofour documentary to the next. During our documentary we included certain elements

such as text on the screen of which the voiceover reads out clearly going into

interviews where the interviewee answers the question which was initially asked.

Whilst editing the documentary we decided to include transition techniques such as

fade through to black, this gave our documentary more of a dramatic effect when the

interviewee was answering the questions, as with our current knowledge we

understood that fades through to black is often used at dramatic points in

documentaries, therefore we took that into account and decided to use this transition

effect in our documentary to enable us to create the dramatic effect we wanted to have

on our target audience.


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Showing different

shots of filler footage

and cutaways which

we embedded within

our documentary

during interviews.

Also in the production of our ancillary tasks; the radio trailer and a double page TV

listings magazine article, we still had to take into consideration the media conventions

to which apply. To do this we researched into both the radio trailer and the TV listings

magazine article and analysed several different examples to gain knowledge of what

ours should replicate.

Our radio trailers backtrack was produced from the following tracks featured;


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Nearly all the radio trailers which we analysed had clips from an upcoming

programme they were trying to advertise. To try and resemble this we took certain

clips from our documentary and included them into our radio trailer. Just like the

documentary we had to ensure that the voiceover the radio trailer was clear and only

included necessary details as the radio trailer we had to produce was only 30 secondslong. We had to produce the backtrack sound for the radio trailer and also record the

script which we had wrote. During the production of our radio trailer we had to tweak

the decibel levels as we could see that the decibel levels started to go red, this is

where the sound started peaking, when this happens it can start to distort the track

which has been created and sometimes leads to a clipping noise.

The script for the radio trailer was as follows:

Are you or any others around you being affected by racial stereotypes?

Racial stereo types effect every minority group in western civilisation

Do you believe that your racist if you stereotype people of a different ethnic

group.

Find out what effect racial stereo types have on minorities.

Turn over to BBC 1 at 9 for an in depth look at racial stereotypes in modern

society.


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This is our magazines listings page, which contains conventions from real TV listings

pages such as;

A Master head and buy line

A Drop caps

One main image

Page numbers

Pull quotes


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In the production of the

double page spread we

made sure that we followed

most of the conventions

which had specified from

the research of othermagazine articles. I

personally feel that the

magazine is our weakest

production throughout the

whole coursework

production process. I think

that the TV listings page

was not produced as well as

it could be, this may be

because we prioritised the

radio trailer and the editing of the documentary over the TV listings page. I alsobelieve that for a TV listings page that there is not enough text, I believe this

happened because we produced the article on InDesign and the text in Microsoft word

that the length of the article may have been difficult to judge.

After carrying out extensive research into the topic of our documentary which is racial

stereotypes & discrimination we have decided that our target audience will be (15-25

year olds) People aged between15 & 25. We have decided this because our

documentary is made for this age category to express their views and opinions on this

topic & therefore they are more likely to have interest in it than a child. Also, this

suitable age category for understanding and speculation to come of our documentary

& this is our main aim: to help the public understand the effects on racial

stereotyping. In terms of social class, we are aiming our documentary at all social

classes as we feel this is an issue that affects us all.


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2) HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT

AND ANCILLARY TASKS?

In my personal opinion I believe that all of our three media products interconnect

significantly well. I think that they are entwined in certain ways such as some clips

from the documentary has been entwined into the radio trailer which we done tocreate continuity and brand identity. Due to

the fact that clips from the documentary have

been used in the radio trailer this will allow for

the products to be more memorable, and allow

the viewer to instantly recognise the products

if they were to hear both the documentary and

the radio trailer. The listing article has some

recognisable people who feature in the main

focal image, people who take part in the

documentary, this is what allows for me to

come to the conclusion that all of the productsare entwined in some way.

Another way in which the products are

entwined is the music which we produced for

the background of both the radio trailer and

the documentary. We chose to create pieces of

music which are similar to use as thebacktrack of both the documentary and the

radio trailer as it would allow for them to be

easily recognised together which shows that

they are both interconnected in this way.

I believe that throughout the three products

which we had to produce that they have been

successful and I think that they will suit ourtarget audience. I am able to come to such a

conclusion as I believe that all of the

products are relevant to our chosen topic and

all entwine with each other which enables us

to believe that the products we produced

would be able to reach our target audience

successfully as they have memorable

conventions about them and they all

interconnect in some type of way.


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3) WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

To gain audience feedback on all of our products which we have produced, we

created a simple questionnaire and distributed these throughout our class mates to rate

our overall products which was screened.

The following graph shows how our class mates rated our products (out of 20)

How class mates rated our products

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

Documentary Radio trailer TV listings page

Very good

Good

Poor

From this graph we can see for the documentary and the radio trailer that none of our

class mates rated them as poor, where as for the TV listings page that only one class

mate rated it poor. From the previous discussion I believe that the TV listings page is

the weakest product we produced, this is reflected within the results of our

questionnaires.

Throughout the distribution of our questionnaires we also found out the

following:


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Documentary

85%

15%

Interesting

Uninteresting

This graph gives us an insight to how people view our documentary; I think that it is a

very good outcome as the class mates are in our target audience range. From

discovering what our target audience think of our documentary we found out what we

needed to improve within our documentary and would take this into consideration if

reproducing our documentary.

Radio trailer

67%

33%

Interesting

Uninteresting

The graph above shows the results which we collected about the radio trailer,

throughout our discovery for the radio trailer we found out that 33% of the class

mates found the radio trailer was uninteresting, we researched into why and found out

that it was because there was a different voice used in the voice over to the

documentary, even though this is correct the 67% of people who said it was

interesting said that it did not affect the overall view of all the products as you can tell

that they are meant to be together due to the interconnection between the back ground

music.


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TV listings page

95%

5%

Interesting

Uninteresting

From the data which we collected we found out that only 5% of the people we gavequestionnaires to found the TV listings page uninteresting. We asked the following

95% of people to tell us why they found in interesting, they informed us that it was

due to the fact that there was not too much text within the TV listing page and that the

main focal image gives an insight to what the documentary is about allowing the

viewer to get a feel for the documentary before they watch it. Also they told us that

our pull quotes were very good and really attracted them to the page.

If we were to reproduce the products, we would take into consideration the feedback

from which we gained from the questionnaires. During the process of the

questionnaires we gained knowledge on what we would need to improve if doing the

products again such as make the TV listings page image better and more images

instead of one main focal image.


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4) How did you use media technologies in the construction, research and

planning and evaluation stages?

During the process of making the three products, our documentary, TV listings page

and radio trailer, we inevitably used an assortment of technology both familiar and

unfamiliar to members of the group.

Throughout the production and research of our TV listings page we required a

standard classroom, computers and the internet which would allow us to research into

other TV listing pages. We analysed a couple of other TV listings pages to extend our

knowledge which would allow us to develop our own TV listing magazine page.

Youtube and video on demand proved to be very useful during the research for our

documentary. These service aloud us to research into different documentaries and see

the conventions of documentaries which have already been produced.

An essential piece of technology which we took full advantage of was the scanners.

We used these very often to show work which we had done on paper such as the

layout of the TV listings page.The scanners which we used aloud us to put

things onto our blogs to show what we had done

by hand.


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Once we began to produce our three products we were able to use a

range of different technologies, such as the cameras which we used to

film all of our footage for our documentary and to get images which we

needed for our TV listings page. We used a tripod to enable us to keep

the camera still while filming for our documentary this allowed our

documentary to have a sense of realism. Also the microphone which weused enabled us to pick up any sound, this sometimes caused problems

as the sound that was picked up was also irrelevant when

in busy places, such as some of the interviews and

Vox pops which we recorded. Due to the fact that

we used a directional microphone this defeated some

of the problems which we encountered as this

allowed us to focus on recording the sound which

was completely relevant which was particularly

important during interviews. Even though the

camera, Tripod and the microphone were fairly light and

compact enabling us to travel with them (but only within short distances), we stillencountered problems. As we travelled to Birmingham town centre we came across

problems such as travelling on public transport was not always reliable which

consequently left us returning the equipment late.

Above are some of the applications which we used throughout creating our threeproducts. I think that the Apple macs are always a better way to work during a

creative piece of work, as there is much more creative applications on the macs than

what are on a standard windows computer.

Final Cut Express was the application which we used to create our documentary, even

though this software was new to the whole group, after someone showing us how to

basically work Final Cut Express we were able to get on with the creativity of our

work and start to create our documentary. It took very little time to familiarise myself

with this programme and was easy to work my way around the programme and find

out how to edit the documentary myself.

This is some of our documentary in Final Cut Express:


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We had to use adobe InDesign to create our TV listings magazine.

During the production of our TV

listings page we used InDesign. We

used this because it was seen to be the

most simple design applicator on themacs. Also the group was familiar with this

programme as we used it for previous work,

therefore all of the group members had

knowledge of using InDesign. I think that

Indesign is similar to photoshop in the way

that it has direct selection tools which are easy

to access, and enables fir adjustments of

objects such as framing photos.

From using Indesign and being a previous user I think that we was at an advantage

when it come to using Indesign as some other group had either forgotten or hardlyused Indesign before. Overall I think that Indesign, even though it can be a complex

programme it is a very powerful piece of software, which allows for a professional

finish to products which are created. For our TV listings page, we used many different

affects which indicate that we know how to

use InDesign in a satisfactory manor. Such

affects included, a back drop to allow the

Master head to stand out of the page, also the

layering of the text on the images, which

could be seen as a complex affect to use.

During the time of production of the

documentary, from the start all of the filming

had to be logged and transferred into Final

Cut Express. After all of the relevant filming

was logged and transferred we had to add them to que which aloud for them to be

put into the editing stage in Final Cut Express. We them added clips by dragging the

clips onto the timeline and put them in the most relevant places possible to try and

follow our storyboard. After this stage we went through the time line and edited the

video making numerous tweaks throughout. We used affects such as, fades, dissolves

and fade to black, such affects allowed our documentary to become more fluent andfree flowing.

When the time come to produce our radio

trailer, we were allocated to use garage

band which was also a new programme for

all of the group members. Even though it

was a new programme Garage Band

was easier to familiarise with than

Final Cut Express as there was not

much you had to do once you hadthe basic rhythm of sound track.


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Adding affects to the track was simpler

than adding affects in Final Cut Express, add affects such as fades and adjusting the

decibel levels of the sound used was a lot easier. It only took one take to record the

voiceover for the radio trailer, this was how simple it was to use. All over I think that

garage band was the simplest programme we had to use which aloud us a lot more

time to focus on other points of the three products which we had to produce.

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