Evaluation Matt Edwards

8/7/2019 Evaluation Matt Edwards

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In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Codes and Conventions of Real

Media Products?

I based my documentary on the show Panorama which covered an episode called Are the net police coming for you? which consisted of them seeinghow the effects of the internet is effecting students and young adults, which is the same as mine but its on social networking instead of the interent.

Like Panorama I tried to use the same types of shots and the same sorts of conventions, so I used a presenter to introduce the show, which was placed in

front of the same building where I came to find out about how teenagers are getting effectedby social networks, like how the presenter of Panorama is

in front of the building he is using, offices to show how the internet is used all the time in offices.

I used over the shoulder shots in the dark to try and show that they are doing it in secret and that it bring out the computer screen more as its brighter

than the background


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In our documentary we were try

ng to find out theeffects ofsocial networking on young adults and

teenagers as more and more people are using them and wasting time on them. It is broadcasted on

channel 4 at 9pm. The reason for this being our target audience is of the ages between 16 and 24 as

these are the main people that my research has told me usessocial networking sites. Getting facts

from the Internet and placing them in our

documentary has allowed people to see theeffectsthat different sites have different ways of getting

into people

s lives and can start to become a main

priority in their lives. My documentary is based on

channel 4 at 9 so this uses a typical media

convention as research says teens watch channel

4/e4 more than any other channel as their favourite

shows for example skins friendsetc. areshown on

theseshows and more importantly they areshown at around 9pm which shows me that teenagers

are in and watching television around 9pm more than any other show so thisshows us that our

target audience will be around at the time of 9 ready to watch theshow.

Our documentary uses real media codes and conventions. One of which is that we use a presenter

who starts the program off by introducing it and then after the opening minute he talks again about

what we are going to see in the documentary. This isverysimilar to the research I did about

documentaries and a documentary that used thesame idea as us was panorama- are the net police

coming for you. This is a documentarysimilar to ours where they try to find out how the internet is

being used by teenagers and how illegal downloading iscausing problems with record companies

whereas ours is trying to find out how teenagers are using the internet on social networking sites

and how it iseffecting their personal and social lives and also college work. To also try and use

similar codes and conventions we got a few different voxpops with a range of people from different

genders and ethnic groups this was too range of audience more by not having it set to one gender

or even oneethnic group. The interviews we got were all thought about and wereall relevant to the

topic we havechosen. We got an interview with a person who as addicted to social sites a person

who was bullied via facebook and we also interviewed thecollege

scounselor who has helped

people who have had problems with social networking sites. So each of these people two of which

had captions because one didnt want his nameshown, were relevant towards how social

networking iseffecting people more than it seems asyou could spend hours without realizing sitting

on thecomputer or now on your phone on thesesiteschatting to people or just seeing what people

are up.

To try and use as manyconventions as possible, we tried to base our documentary around a similarone which was based on how the internet iscausing teenagers to illegally download and their

parents dont even realise its happen. This ascalled Are the

Net Policecoming for you? so with ours being based on the

effects ofsocial networking within a teenagers life, we

researched into this documentary to see how it keeps the

target audience, teenagers, interested.


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The use ofconventions:

We used some transitions in our documentary, which helped to flow oneclip to another. Transitions

are used to help slide oneclip into another not just haveclip jumping from another to another.

These helped to make our documentary look professional and realistic as real documentaries use

transitions to help the flow ofshotsslide into each other without a sound break or black screen.

We had to zoom in on some peoples face to remove objects in the background but by doing this it

create a more realisticshot as it became a close-up shot of the person, making them seem more

important and gave them the importance of being on screen which makes people listen to them

moreclearly as they areclearly important.

How we used thecamera in our filming was a key part to getting our conventions as real as possible

to an already made documentary. So we used varies of different shots to help create a sense of

reality.

Extremeclose up- this gaveclip importance and thesense that it had to be

watched as it was zoomed in theclose for a reason, and this reason is tomake it stand out.

Close ups are used to symbolise the importance of that object, but you

can see what is in the background but the main focus of theshot is it grab

theviewers attention of what is happening, for example in thisclip its to

show that he is important and hestands for something otherwise he

wouldnt be zoomed in on.

Establishing shots- these were used to show theviewers where we

were filming. This allowed them to be able to put themselves in the

shoes ofsomeone in that area so theycould see what is going on in a

certain area.

We also used other types ofshots, which included of group shots and over theshoulder shots. We

used the group shot to show that its not just happening to one person but to a range of people. And

the over theshoulder shots we used to be able to put theviewer in theshoes of the person whos

shoulder we are looking over so it gives theviewer the opportunity to see what is happening in first

person.


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Thevoiceover- Thescript

Social Networking it affects many teenagers and young adults with its different ways of being

involved in their lives. Most people use thesite like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter, with Facebook

being the most popular, to communicate with friends and to share the latest news and gossip. But as

time ischanging, so is the way people are using thesesites. Peoplespend numerious hours on social

networking sites ti read about the latest news, as people tend to now watch or read the news then

post about it over the web so that other peoplecan see it too. Some people have become addicted

to logging on so much that itscausing problems within their lives. Its not just personal lives that have

gotten effected as grades have taken a drop since thesesorts ofsites havecome around showing us

that people prefer to be on them rather than getting on with their education.

With over 200million people logging onto social networking sites a day in the world, and over

15million in the UK, wecan see that people all over the UK areeffecting by the networking sites.

Now with thesesmart phones, they allow people to access the Internet or even download an

application to allow them to access networking sites whilst they are on the go. With blackberries and

iphones being the most popular phones at this moment in time, wecan come to the town of Solihull

to find out how often people use and accesssites.

Whilst in Solihull, wevisited thesixth

form college to find out how thesocial

life and theeducation of onestudent

has been effected bysocial networking

as he has become addicted to using

thesesites. However addiction is not

the worst thing to hit students whilst

using thesesites. Cyber bullying has

become a major part ofsocial

networking with 42% of people using

thesesocial networking sites have had

at least oneexperience of bullying on

thesesites but with 1 in 4 having it

happen to them more than once. A student at the Sixth Form College has had a traumaticexperience

with cyber bullying and we managed to get a small interview with him.

Thiscollege though doesnt just let things like this happen, thecouncilor hasexperience in handlingcases like these and its her job to help thesestudents do whats best for them.

This was written and recorded by me. I did this after recording theclips we wanted because it

helped me to decide what order I wanted theclips to go in.


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Listing page

My Listing Page radio times listing page

I intend to base my listing page of a similar one in a magazinecalled radio times. The reason I tried

to base mine on this one is die to the fact that thestory in radio times was based on a teenager who

was going through a tough time as he had a disease but hecome through it. This is well suited as

people are addicted to sites like Facebook and Myspaceso these addiction could beclassed as a

disease which arechanging peoples lives for the worse as the lose hours of their lifestaying up on

thesesites not doing much.

My listing page issimilar then to this one in Radiotimes as the genre and target audience issimilar. It

is also similar by the way it is laid out. This is due to the fact that it has one main picture in the topright hand corner, which takes up one third of the page. Then it has two pictures on the right hand

side of it with the text at the bottom underneath the pictures.

The way the text is laid out is also verysimilar as its in columns underneath the pictures and also the

before the articlestarts, it has an opening introduction then underneath that it has thechannel, the

time and the date it is on. I also have a title on the main picture which is used to grab the readers

eye by having a catchy phrase, which isshort and snappy.


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The radio trailer.

We analysed a few different genres of radio trailers, which consisted of an F1 trailer, and a couple of

documentaries.

First I analyzed:BBC dio 5 Li

- 5 Li

Spo ts Ext

Target Audience - The target here is for 5 live listeners or sports fans of any kind. They areadvertising a sister station so theycan cover moresporting coverage at once. This means that tennis

fans will get to listen to the tennis while the main station covers a big football match. This gives

listeners and sports fans an extra service, which means they will listen more.

Sound Effects - They usesimilar effects to the last analysis. They use tenniscommentary in a exciting

gamesituation. They also enhance thecourt squeaks from the players trainers and crowd noise to

enhance theexcitement. Theseeffects give the listeners a sense of thequality ofcommentary they

will produce on this new station.

Use of Music- The music is a standard back track to make the advert seem fast paced and exciting.

Sound levelsstay thesame and it dies out at theend.Sound Levels - The background musicstays thesame however thecommentarygets louder and the

excitement builds up, thesound effects get louder as well t enhanceexcitement. And the tannoy

comes on to give a real sense of realism (likeyour actually there).

Length - This trailer lasts for 25 seconds which isshort, snappy but informative.

I analyzed:BBC dio 5 Li

- t li n G nd ix T il .

Target Audience - The obvious target audience would be fans of Formula One to remind them when

and where it is on. It is also to attract common radio 5 live listeners to try and get them to watch it

by making it sound exciting.

Sound Effects - Theystart with thecommentators from a race, with excitement in hisvoice

commentating on theexiting action he isseeing. This is backed bycommon soundsyou will hear at a

grand prixsuch asengines and cars flying past at high speeds, which isvery much associated with

grand prixs. They also throw in thesound ofexcited fans. This is all part of them making it sound

action packed and exciting to get the listener to tune in.

Use of Music- The music is thevery well known formula one music that is played on theBBC every

time the grand prixstarts. It is known to theshow and listeners will mostly likely recognize it. After

commentator finishes music picks up so the introduction to the program also seemsexciting. The

music used isveryclever and gives it an identity without pictures.

How many tracks -There are two tracks in the trailer, theslow paced track that is the one that is

very much related to theshow. The fast paced track to make it exciting and makesyou want to

watch the Italian Grand Prix.

Sound Levels - The musiccan always be heard underneath commentary at thestart. Sound levels

pick up when fast beat track comes in and thevoices are now louder due to the rise in sound levels

in background music.

Length - This trailer lasts for 30 seconds, which is how long we would like ours to last for.


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These are two detailed analyses of two different radio trailers, which havehelped us with ours. This

is because wecan see how

they use background music

along with thevoiceover of

the narrator. This has

helped us by being able tomatch the upbeat music

which changes into a

different beat asyou can

see, the blue bars, so this

can compare with these two

trailers as they have two

different beats in the

background as the

voiceover talks about what is going on in theshow. It also compares as we use bits of he

documentary, likeclips ofvoxpops, which slide into each other to make the radio short and snappy.

How ff ti

isth ombin tion of

ou m in p odu t nd n ill

t sks


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To get our documentary noticed and heard about, we had to get our brand identitysorted out first.

This is important because it was needed to get our documentary across to our target audienceso

they get to hear about it or read about it.

Our documentary is based on how the

effects ofsocial networking iseffecting the

social lives of teenagers and theeffects it

also has on studentscollege work as they

can spend more time on sites like

Facebook rather than doing work.

The purpose of our listing page is to introduce our

target audience to our documentary. This is by

allowing the readers of this to be able to have a

quick view of what is happening in the world of the

social network. So to start we introduce it, by

giving a quick paragraph to introduce the work we

have done and givesome facts and figures. We

then give the time of the documentaryso they

know when its on then our article about our

documentary. So this is providing our audience a

chance to gain background information about our

chosen topicso theycan understand more about

why we havechosen it and the real effects that are happening which

they might not have known about beforeeither reading this article or

watching out documentary.

The purpose of our radio trailer was to broadcast a message/trailer of

our show in 30 seconds to the publicso theycould hear about what ourdocumentaryconsists

of and what happens

in it.

These preliminary tasks are good to advertise our

documentary as they both provide information on


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when our show is on, time and date, and what channel it will be broadcasted on, channel 4.

These two tasks, a listing page and a radio trailer, are a good way to advertise because as well as

having a television trailer for our documentary, which would only be broadcasted on channel 4 and

channels related to channel 4 such as E4 and 4 music, wecan broadcast it over other products. Radiotimes is a television listing magazine which helps to give information about our documentary and we

planned to broadcast our radio trailer on BRMB as it is one of the most listened to radio station by

teenagers, other than radio 1 which doesnt advert so wecouldnt use that.

Combining the 2 tasks with the documentary.

I think the two tasks work well together to produce a good way to advertise our documentary to the

public. The magazine usesstill images from the documentary which provides the readers the main

subject stories about the documentary as the pictures used are the most important and relevant

images used from the 5 minute opening we recorded.

The radio trailer worked well because it used quotes from the documentary, mainly ones used from

voxpops, quick interviews which gave the listeners a sneak preview

to what to expect later on in the program. The upbeat music usedin the radio trailer gave the listener something to feel excited

about, like the topic in choice was the latest news for theeffects

which arechanging teenagers lifestylesso by using upbeat music,

it gives the impression ofexcitement and its thesort of music

which appeals to teenagers, upbeat lively musicso it relates back to

the target audience.


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The only problem with using a radio trailer and a listing page for promoting and advertising our

documentary is the fact our target audience may not read or hear it due to the fact they might not

listen to the radio or read RadioTimes. Teenagers nowadays will not read magazines due to the fact

of the increase obsession with doing everything online, so by advertising in a listing page rather than

on a well used website like google, youtube or facebook, the target audience may not even see that

listing pageso they wont see when its on or what channel its on.

The radio trailer also may not be heard assome teenagers who actually listen to the radio may not

be listening to BRMB so they wont be able to hear it. Also the main point about not hearing the

radio trailer is due to the fact they may not listen

to radio, they usually use their phones, mp3

players or CDs to listen to music on the go. CDs

are used in cars to listen to instead of the radio

and nowadays teenagers will hardly listen to the

radio at home as they will useyoutube to listen

to music and websites or itunes to download

music instead of hearing them on the radio first.


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Wh! th !"

# youl # ! $ ntf$ om audi# n% # f# # dback &

Our target audience:

Our target audienceconsisted of all teenagers, boys and girls,

associal networking isnt a topic which is based on one group

of people. Everyone uses thesites like Facebook so it

wouldnt be right to target a specific gender. The age bracket

would be between 16-24 asyoure not meant to start a

profile until you reach 16 and people who use thesites mostly

are people in college up to university to socialise with friends

and to catch up with family. We targeted a multicultural

audience as to make it politicallycorrect we would need a balance ofethnic groups. To show this we

used different people in our voxpops, different gender and ethnicity.

With our documentary being based on channel 4, we wanted as many viewers

as possibleso we targeted a larger audience and even some older adults as it can

be linked towards how theycan speak to their children about using these different

sites and the right ways of using them.

We used a small based teenage group of people to conduct our findings from our target audience

which included boys and girls from different ethnicity.

Wecan see our audience

watching and evaluating our

documentary as they watch on.

We gaveeach person a

questionnairesheet which gave us a chance to see what people

thought about our documentary.

Wecan see our target audience writing about our

questionnaire. Each question gave us feedback to each

aspect of our 5 minute opening so wecould find out

how to improve our documentary which allowed us to

make it better if we were to make on in the future.


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Thestrengths of our documentary

We got a generally good feedback from our target audience with most peoplesaying our

documentary was good, very good or excellent.so as

you can see from this over two thirds of our targetaudiencevoted our documentary was good and over.

We were also told that thechoice of topic was good as no onevoted anything below good, which

also applied to the use ofeffects and the appropriateness for the target audience. Theediting and

the filming we also good as they didnt receive any poors but they did receive an okayeach from

someone but it still meant that is became a good documentary as no oneclassed it as poor.

From the feedback off our target audience we have found out that our:

y Voiceover was well used and it went well with the documentaryy The opening with the montage of images went well as they

flowed well together and into each other.

y The use of interviews went well with the topic that wechoicey The background music went well with the documentary

The weaknesses of our documentary.


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From thequestionnaire we found out that a couple of peoplesaid our professionalism and how it

compared to real documentaries was poor. This was due to the fact we had some humour in it,

which we thought could help the target audienceengage with it as they might like to seesome

comedy but from our source ofviewers we found out it wasnt professional enough.

I could improve this bycutting out the humour and watching another documentary based for

teenagers to see how they keep them watching. Thiscould help me in future to understand in more

detail theeffects used in documentaries to keep viewers

interested and watching.

The other weakness in our documentary was thesound quality. This

could be due to the fact the way we were holding the

microphone because it was thesound levels as theviewers stated

our sound was a good aspect to our documentary, but thesound

quality and the levels were not the best. As in an interview we had to

turn the levels up but theyyou could hear a buzzing noise as thequality wasnt the best.

To improve this I would watch theclip straight away after recording it so I could hear the levels and

thequality on thesound so I was able to judge if theclip could do with being recorded again.

The way we gathered our feedback could be improved by using a larger range of teenagers aged

between the ages of 16-24. Also due to the fact our audience who viewed our documentary we both

between the age of 17 and 18, they were also media studentsso theywere picking up on every

aspect of the documentary and not just watching and enjoying it. So by using people who werent

media students, wecould get a better range of peoples opinions as wecould get information which

wasnt media based but an actual personal opinion.


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Howdid youus' m' dia t ' chnolo(

i ' sinth' const ) uction and research0 plannin(

and evaluation

stages 1

Research and Planning

In the research and planning stage, we used the apple macs and also thecomputers to help to

research about documentaries. We used the

websites blogger, YouTube, moodle and Google,

to help research. Blogger was the main website

we used to help us with the research and planning

because wecould see how older students have

planned out their documentaries and it helped us to get ideas about how

weshould layout our work and style it. Blogger is a website which you can

put posts on, as a blog, which we had to do to show thestages of work we

have done. Other websites like YouTube and Google we used to help us as

wecould watch little bits of documentaries off YouTube and analyse

them.

During thecreation of our documentary, the technologies

we had to use were a digital camera, which was the first

piece ofequipment we used to try out different shots that

we might have filmed later on in the production of the

documentary.

To actually film theshots for the documentary we used a video camera, a microphone, a set ofheadphones and tripod. All these are important

for a creation of a good documentary. The main

piece was ofcourse thevideo camera, which

allowed us to film the documentary, and more

specifically, it allowed us to takeshots and short

clips of images to help create a montage of

images, interviews and establishing shots. The


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microphone was only used so often, because it was only needed when we had to interview or get a

vo2

pop with someone. This is because when we were shooting the other images, the sound wasnt

important, as it would have a voiceover and music over the top of the images. The set of

headphones was used to hear the sound levels whilst recording and the tripod wasused to keep the

shots still so you didnt have a camera being held in a hand and moving around a lot.

To record the voiceover for channel four ident and the voiceover we used a voice recorder along

with a microphone and a set of headphones again. The microphone was used here to produce a

better 3 uality of sound, which made it clearer. The headphones are used here to listen and monitor

the sound but the voice recorder has sound levels on it so we tried to measure the right amount of

sound using the levels along with the headphones to make sure the sound was the right volume.

Construction Technology

Adobe Photoshop- I only used Photoshop in this product for the listing page where I needed to

edit an image. It wasnt used for anything else.

before

after

Photoshop has been helpful then in editing images to my liking for my listing page, because it

can really bring out images used and bringout the detail that I wanted in each image.

As you can see here, I have brightened up

the image to bring out the face of the

erson I interviewed.


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To make the listing page I used Adobe InDesign which involved me moving images around and

using text boxes.

Placement tool

used to place

images into

InDesign


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The main three things I used in InDesign were changing the colour of the background to use a

colour which related to our target audience and one which brought out the images used and

also the font colour. Also another thing used in InDesign was changing the font to a suited font

which went with the genre of the topic of the documentary. Finally I used the alignment of

pictures, where I placed a picture using the right tool, the moving it around so that I could havethe images in the place I wanted it to be.

Burning to disk

The different things we had to burn to disk were the radio

trailer and the actual documentary. It was the same

process basically to burn these two projects to two

different disk, and that process was to export it onto the

disk. The radio trailer was to be saved as an MP3 then

exported to the blank CD used and the documentary was

saved as a quicktime movie then exported to another blank

disk.

Garageband.

Garageband was used to create our Radio trailer.

This is the editing for each clip used inGarageband. Here you can cut each clip down to the

length required and you can change the levels of the sound.


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Thisisth st r r of Garageband where we placed our clips from final cutexpress and

placed them in Garageband asthe sound, notthe video so we could justhearthe clipswe

wanted. The blue barsrepresentthe sound clipswhich are saved in Garageband and the orange

representthe clipswe have putin ourselves from final cutexpress. The barsin the middle of

both ofthese are the sound levelswhich can be changed, by dragging the line which goes

throughthe middle, to the suited sound level of your choice.

Thisis an overview of Garageband, where you can see the effects on the lefthand side ofthe

storyboard and the save clipsin the white folder on the righthand side. I enjoyed using

Garageband because I enjoyed making the radio trailer because itused our clipswe recorded by

video camera and we had to come up with a way to make these clipsinteresting and flowinto

each other as a radio trailer.


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Final CutExpressisthe program we used to putour clipstogether and create our opening to

our documentary. From the picture you can see a timeline and 2 blackscreens and another boxnextto them with differentpicturesin it. Al l these were needed to create the documentary. I

enjoyed using final cutexpress because allowed me to create my documentary and itallowed

me to do whatIintended to do whichwas create a documentary opening for a social networking

documentary.


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Thisis log and transferwhichwasused to transferthe clips from our video camera to the Apple

Mac. From thiswe could sortoutthe clipswe needed and the oneswe didntwantto use. This

washelpful in the process of making the documentary as from thisscreen we could decidewhich clipswe were going to use and which oneswe didntneed to use. After deciding we gave

the oneswe needed names, thiswasto easily find outwhich clipswe were keeping, and

transferred them into Final CutExpress. I enjoyed this due to the factthatwe gotto watch our

clips a lotoftimes and decided which oneswere bestsuited for our documentary and which

oneswe had to record again either due to sound quality orthe factthatitdidntworkin the way

we wanted itto.

The timeline for our documentary wasimportantasI learned youhad to have the sound bar, thegreen boxes, twice otherwise the sound wouldntsound right. Also the red line which goes

throughthe green bar became importantasitwasthe levelsto the sound so by changing them

youre changed how loud the clip would be. Each clip came with a

sound aswell butyou could delete the sound forthe clip if you

didntwantit, or you could delete the clip butkeep the sound if you

didntneed to video forit. These were helpful when you didntwant

the video forwhen yourecorded the voice over, you justwanted to

the sound notthe video to go withitand the same goes forthe

otherway round where youwanted the voice overthe top of clips

so youwouldntneed the sound from them.


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Thisisthe screen on the rightofFinal CutExpress. Thisshowswhatisin the storyboard atthe

bottom. Thisishelpful because you can see whatyouhave puttogetherin the storyboard by

watching whatis on thisscreen.

The pictures on the leftare our clips from whatwe have recorded. The blackscreen on the right

isused to watch a certain clip whichis on the leftand then could be edited to whatyouwanted

thisto be like. This could be zooming in to it, changing the angle ofthe screen and justcutting

down the time forit. Thiswashandy because thiswasthe before step of putting itin the

storyboard so thiswasthe editing stage before you made the opening 5 minutes.

Documents

Evaluation Matt Edwards