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

Generic Documentary ConventionsDid our documentary develop, adhere to, or challenge this convention?

A voiceover that is authoritative andinformativeWe adhered to this convention as we used a voice that had a formal tone, that was easy to listen to and the script she read from gave the audience an array of facts and information about the topic of, and around, autism. However, we also developed and challenged this convention as we used a females voice for the voiceover, instead of a male, even though a males voice seems to be more conventional. This was because we knew that Holly, the girl who recorded our voiceover, annunciate her words clearly and made the information sound interesting, instead of robotic and therefore boring.

Footage of real eventsWe both adhered to and ignored this convention within our documentary. For example, when we were with our main subject for the documentary, Aaron, we filmed him at the War and Peace show near where he lived, a military vehicle and live-action re-enactment show, which was a real representation of how he acted on a daily basis, and this was documented naturally; nothing was set up. However, when it came to some cutaways within the school environment, although the behaviour they were displaying was natural i.e. revising, writing in books etc., they were almost all set up by the director (Minoli) and the subjects were fully aware that they were being filmed, and therefore these could be seen as not being real events. Despite this, all of the classroom scenes were real and not forced.

Natural sound and lightingWhen we filmed, we did not enhance the lighting in anyway, and nor did we superimpose any extra sounds, other than the pre-recorded voiceover in the editing stages, and therefore we adhered to this convention. When in post-production, we noticed that a lot of the interviews and cutaways varied immensely in terms of colour and lighting so we adjusted them using the software Color, but this was only done to make the different shots flow together in a natural way, instead of having varying shots of opposing light. The use of the natural sound and lighting meant it seemed very professional.

Archive footage/archive stills thatcan't be obtained by the production team themselvesWe adhered to this convention on one occasion. We placed a photo of Aaron standing next to Amber Rudd in the documentary, which was accompanied by the voice of Amber Rudd describing when she met Aaron and Aarons mother Maggie. This was classified as archive stills, as we did not take the photo in question. It was taken by an external source and Aaron had previously used it as part of his own campaign, so the photo could be found on websites online, such as online newspaper articles. We took the photo from online with Aarons permission and used it in the documentary as a visual aid to help the audience recreate the situation in their mind. We did not use archive footage.

Set-ups (not so much in terms of reconstructing events, but in terms of cutaways; set-ups of classrooms with students who aren't actually in a lesson, act as if they are)As previously mentioned, we did set up some scenes within the school environment so therefore we adhered to this convention. We went about this by taking the camera out during lesson time and found students who were working in private study rooms. We asked their permission to film them and then we did. However, we also asked certain students if we could film them pretending to type on computers searching facts about autism. There were many classroom scenes where we asked the teacher whether we could film in their lesson, and if they agreed then we would not disturb their teaching but film around what the lesson was like. However, when we filmed Mary Trapps lesson, she asked whether we needed any particular shots so we asked her to sit down with a group of students on a table and have a discussion with them. The production team set this up, but her discussion with the students was relevant to their lesson, so it wasnt disturbed too much. This could be seen as developing the convention.

Shaped realism (using media language to make theevents shown seem as natural as possible)As a lot of our footage was of natural occurrences e.g. The War and Peace show, students around a school, we did not need to adjust colour or lighting, other than to help in blend with other shots. However, we did use conventional shot types and camera angles such as medium close-ups during interviews and tracking shots when filming Aaron in his natural environment. We consciously added in an unnatural ukulele score track to help the interviews and voiceovers blend together throughout the whole documentary, and this blatantly wasnt natural, but we felt it made the audience recognise the tone and genre of our documentary so therefore they could relax and enjoy it more, making them feel indifferent. We had to edit some of the interviews in a way that meant we could take out natural pauses and sounds like um and err which the interviewees used as thinking time as it elongated the message they were putting across and almost made you lose what they were saying. We didnt make it sound unnatural, but more like they were confident and knowledgeable about what they were saying. With interviews, we placed each interviewee in to a setting that naturally reflected their job or personality. For example, MP Amber Rudd was in an interview room with a world map in the background; Aaron and Maggie were in their home environment and teachers Mary Trapp and Craig Foster were in classrooms and offices within schools. All of the things above show how we adhered to the convention.

Interviews with those knowledgeable in their fields, in relation to the documentaryThe reason we made a documentary about autism was because of a family friend called Aaron who has autism and wanted to make a difference. Due to this, we wanted to interview him as he made himself very knowledgeable about the topic and had relevant opinions as he has experienced the disorder first hand. We also interviewed him mother Maggie who gave a mothers opinion on the situation. Aaron made a comment in the interview that he spoke to his local MP about what was on offer for him in the area. We then interviewed her, Amber Rudd, to get similar answers and a more political viewpoint. As a lot was said about the education system within various interviews, we decided to interview inclusion officers and teachers within a secondary school to give us a different insight. We did not tell our interviewees the answers we wanted them to say or mention, therefore everything they said was on their own ac4count and their own opinion. We kept their answers within context in the editing stages so that what they said was still factual. We adhered to the convention that says we had to interview those knowledgeable in the particular field of autism, but we also developed the convention by asking people who werent scientific experts, but social experts, who had experienced autism their whole lives but were not given the sufficient help to make them fully aware.

Text and titlesWe used titles on the lower thirds of the screen to introduce each of our interviewees. We also used a lot of tailor-made graphics, which Minoli created herself. She used these to create a visual aid, which fitted with what the voiceover was saying. They would include facts and figures, which you could easily dismiss if it was only listened to, and not seen as well. We made sure that when we used text and titles that we used the colour blue, as this we decided would be our theme, especially as the NAS (National Autistic Society) did not have one particular colour that symbolizes their charity. We adhered to the convention but using the lower thirds, and developed it by including it in graphics.